The Prime Minister has undoubtedly failed to address rising mortgage costs and rising power bills. I am yet to see in this chamber a more slippery or pathetic performance from a Prime Minister in my entire time here. The man is incapable of answering a straight question with a straight answer. The truth, what the Prime Minister really believes, slipped out a couple of weeks ago. It slipped out. It was not in scripted remarks. It wasn’t in a note handed to him by an adviser. It wasn’t in some sort of whispered advice from the Treasurer, which often happens when the Prime Minister doesn’t know a particular number, which is very regular. What the Prime Minister said was, ‘It’s been a pretty good 10 months.’

Day after day, we ask the Prime Minister questions about the cost-of-living issues being faced by Australians every single day. There’s no one in this chamber, nobody, who would not be hearing a cavalcade of messages from people in their electorate highlighting what those pressures are. We keep asking question after question of the Prime Minister just to see if there’s any acknowledgement from him, any understanding from him, that Australians now, 10 months after his election as Prime Minister, are doing it so much tougher than they were under the former coalition government. Today was another example, with this slippery, sneaky Prime Minister refusing to answer a question and refusing to acknowledge the pain that is being felt by Australians.

It probably shouldn’t be any surprise to members of this House. When it comes to taking selfies with celebrities, this Prime Minister is all over it. No celebrity can arrive in Australia without the Prime Minister wanting to sidle up for a bit of a selfie. No musician, no former politician, no actor can arrive in Australia without the Prime Minister trying to get some sort of deferred glory.

There are a few inconvenient truths for the Prime Minister and the government. For a household with an average mortgage of $750,000—that is the average; many in large capital cities will be a lot more than that—those people, those families, are paying an additional $20,000 a year in repayments. That’s a pretty good 10 months according to the Prime Minister. An extra $20,000 a year, or nearly $2,000 a month, is what every household with a mortgage has to find in order to meet their mortgage repayments.

This is coming from a Prime Minister who promised in a speech before the election that if he was elected he would deliver cheaper mortgages. Where are those cheaper mortgages? I say to those opposite: where are the cheaper mortgages? The Prime Minister won’t even acknowledge that he made that promise. He won’t even acknowledge that he said the words. We see it time after time. We ask the Prime Minister questions: ‘You said X before the election. Will you repeat it now?’ He never can, on a succession of promises.

The most extraordinary of those is that he promised 97 times before the election not that he would keep our prices where they were, not that he would reduce the increased growth in energy prices, but in fact that he would reduce power prices by $275 a year. I must say, when he made it the first time, most of us looked at that promise and thought: Was this a slip of the tongue? Is this realistic? Does anyone seriously think that he will be able to deliver power price reductions of $275 a year to households? Lo and behold, he went on to promise it 97 times. It wasn’t a slip of the tongue. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t an unscripted, bumbling remark, which we’re very used to from this Prime Minister. He made that promise 97 times.

We get to post election and we see the evidence coming out that, in fact, just with electricity—this doesn’t include gas—we’re going to see increases of up to 31.1 per cent for households and 33.2 per cent for businesses. For those in the gallery, what that means for a household in New South Wales is an extra $564 a year, $485 for someone in South Australia, $432 a year for someone in Queensland and $426 a year in my home state of Victoria, where we will have a by-election on Saturday in Aston. The residents of Aston will pay an extra $426 a year when the Prime Minister promised on 97 occasions before the election that he would deliver a reduction of $275. We get to post election and you wonder what the alibi could possibly be. When he made a promise 97 times what could the alibi be?

The Prime Minister came to question time one day—he hasn’t repeated it since—and said, ‘The reason we can’t meet that commitment any longer is because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.’ People in the gallery might think, ‘Well, maybe that is a plausible explanation.’ The problem is the Prime Minister made that promise 26 times after the invasion, 26 times after we saw the consequences that had for global energy markets. So we have a slippery, sneaky Prime Minister with his pathetic performances in question time where he won’t even acknowledge the promise he made. You’re talking to households that are not only seeing $20,000 a year increases in the mortgages when they were promised cheaper mortgages but are spending hundreds of dollars more a year on just their electricity. In my home state of Victoria I have constituents who have received notices from their gas supplier saying that their expected gas bills for this upcoming financial year will be $1,000 more, so $500 more for electricity, $1,000 more for gas, $20,000 more for their mortgage, yet it has been a pretty good 10 months for the globetrotting Prime Minister who likes to hang out with celebrities.

We also see today, bizarrely, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer come in here crowing about today’s inflation figures. I don’t know if I am living in the twilight zone but never did I think there would be a day when a Prime Minister or Treasurer would walk into this chamber feeling happy about an inflation rate of 6.8 per cent. They were beside themselves with excitement. Let me go through some of those numbers. The most significant price rises were for housing, nearly 10 per cent—9.9 per cent; food and beverages, eight per cent; transport, 5.6 per cent. I hate to break it to those opposite but the biggest rises in inflation are not in luxury items. These are things that people cannot take out of their budget. When you’re talking about a 10 per cent increase in the cost of housing, an eight per cent increase in the cost of food every time people go to the supermarket, nearly six per cent increase in the cost of transport, these are not things that Australians can remove from their household budgets.

The Prime Minister and Labor think it has been a pretty good 10 months, patting themselves on the back, doing a victory lap, a victory parade, every day. Never have I seen a government clap themselves more than in the first 10 months in this government. They clap themselves every day—how pathetic. Australians are suffering out there. Australians are poorer, their budgets are stretched, they are making difficult decisions they don’t want to make for their children and their families, and we have this pathetic mob clapping themselves, and this Prime Minister doing a victory lap in question time every day. Shame on Labor.