Senator HUGHES (New South Wales) (17:58): I don't know about anyone else, but I feel a bit queasy now. The fact that we could be staring down a minority government with those opposite and the unicorn farmers in charge really does make me fear for the future of this country. The reality is that we live in the greatest nation on earth; however, the last three years have seen poor decisions by this government mean that all Australians are worse off, that all Australians are a little bit less safe and that our nation has been divided. Every Australian knows that they are worse off than when this government came to office. I think what has also become quite unsettling about this government is their constant need to gaslight Australians. They do it every day in this chamber, when they are one step from saying Australians have never had it so good. You only need to go out and talk to the mums who actually pay the childcare bills to know that child care isn't cheaper. You can say it as much as you like, but it's not true. Every time you tell a mum that you're so good because you've delivered cheaper child care, when the reality is it's up over 12 per cent and more than that for a lot of families, you are just gaslighting these Australian women by saying to them: 'No, you're wrong. We have delivered cheaper child care. You don't understand. We have. No, it can't be that more money is coming out of your wallet each week.' But they know it is. You are gaslighting Australians with this renewable only push. We can imagine how that's going to go when you're in partnership with the unicorn farmers. The only time you'll get a bend in a transmission powerline under this lot is when Mehreen Faruqi is building another house—and the koala can get out of the way of that. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator McGrath ): Senator Faruqi, please, Senator Hughes. Senator HUGHES: My apologies. Senator Faruqi, the potential minister for housing and development, because, let's face it, she's built more houses than the Housing Australia Future Fund. Senator Reynolds: Four times as many. Senator HUGHES: Four times as many. She's been much more successful. She could maybe run the HAFF. But it is gaslighting Australians. It's treating them like mugs, and they can see it. They know they're worse off. They know their power bills are going up, because they pay them. So when you stand there and say that renewables are the cheapest form of energy and that energy is free from the sun and the wind, they know you're making it up. Renewable energy isn't the cheapest form of energy when you put the cost of the transmission lines in. We know the unicorn farmers can't quite figure it out because they never quite passed economics; they were too busy in gender studies and basketweaving. When you work out the volume of materials and concrete required for one wind turbine, let alone its limited lifespan—and the materials aren't recycled; they go to landfarm. The critical minerals are mined by slave labour. The Uighurs in China are making their solar panels. But they know that if your power bill is 50 per cent transmission and the transmission costs go up, your power bill's going up. This gaslighting of Australians is continuing to occur. The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, does have a plan to get Australia back on track. Whilst we're going to see scare campaigns from those opposite, because we know that's all they've got in the campaign drawer, Australians aren't believing them. They didn't believe them in Victoria last weekend. They're not believing them in outer metropolitan areas. They're not actually believing them anywhere. They've never believed them in rural and regional Australia. Australians know you are gaslighting them. You are turning us into a poorer nation. You are dividing this nation. You are lining yourself up. We saw it this week as the Greens jumped into bed with you again to put the guillotine through. I think we're up to 200 bills we've now seen guillotined through this parliament, the parliament that was going to be full of transparency. What a joke! You'd be up for coercive control with the volume of gaslighting that's going on and the way that you're conducting yourselves.