Matters of Public Importance – Labor Government, Tuesday 6 February, 2024
Senator BABET (Victoria—United Australia Party Whip) (17:13): Prime Minister Albanese’s broken promise over the stage 3 tax cuts was just the latest in a string of porky pies longer than Pinocchio’s nose, in my opinion. Labor promised this: they promised more than 100 times not to make any changes to the stage 3 tax cuts—before they changed the stage 3 tax cuts. They promised we’d have a $275 power bill saving, only to see power bills go up by 18.2 per cent in just 15 months and gas go up by 28 per cent. They promised to lower interest rates, only to have 12 interest rate rises under their watch. They promised to lift wages, only for real wages in this country to go backwards, with disposable incomes falling by five per cent in 2022-23—the sharpest fall in any OECD country. They promised not to touch franking credits, only to go on to remove franking credits connected to capital raising and share buybacks. They promised not to make any changes to superannuation. Guess what? They went on to make changes to superannuation. Breaking promises is about the only thing that this government’s good at—the only thing.
Time’s almost up. I can’t continue too much longer. But I could go on and on about broken promises. And, yet, Labor want to introduce a misinformation and disinformation bill that won’t stop them but will stop the rest of us talking about it if Labor’s ‘ministry of truth’ don’t like it. It’s bad enough that this Labor government has trashed the economy, undermined social cohesion and ruined the electricity grid. But, even worse, if that’s even possible, is that it has destroyed trust and dismantled Australia’s identity. Just for that, they should not be forgiven and they should be punished severely at the next election.
