House debates
Thursday, 26 October 2017
Questions without Notice
Energy
2:35 pm
Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source
I want to thank the member for Bowman. He's not just a great local advocate for hospitals such as Mater and Redland but also a lifelong medical professional. He is, in fact, an eye surgeon, and to this day he continues to hold pro bono clinics in eye health care—really something extraordinary.
One of the things he knows is that Labor loves higher electricity prices, and those higher electricity prices are a threat to patients. They're a threat to hospitals such as Mater and Redlands and they're a threat to every hospital in Queensland. That's why we're introducing a National Energy Guarantee. That is why only today you're seeing the benefits of the work of the Prime Minister and the Minister for the Environment and Energy in pushing the gas companies to make more gas available, which will bring down the price of gas in this country, and in fact he's already so doing. We're also seeing the benefits of the abolition of limited merits review, another government initiative.
These are things that are aimed fairly and squarely at bringing down the cost of electricity and energy and bringing down the impact of that on hospitals—not just in the electorate of Bowman and not just in Queensland but right around Australia. And the member has also done something that not one person on the Labor side has done: he voted against a carbon tax. Labor introduced a carbon tax that had a $2,425 impact per annum on each hospital bed in Queensland. That was the impact of the carbon tax, on the Queensland Treasury's own modelling. And right now he is fighting against the Queensland government's impact—gouging, with regard to their own state-owned enterprises in electricity, and the 50 per cent RET in Queensland—which we have seen is posing blackout threats this summer.
The member's next task, which he's committed to, is to join all of us in fighting against Labor's attack on hospitals around Australia. Their 50 per cent renewable energy target national pledge is going to have an impact of $300 per year compared with our approach. That's $300 per family per year, and that is going to hurt each and every hospital. So, the member for Bowman isn't just an advocate for better health care and isn't just a practitioner of better health care; he's an advocate for hospitals that don't face the impact of Labor's assault on their electricity prices. He's going to continue to fight against Labor's bad practices, and so will we.
Comments
Tibor Majlath
Posted on 27 Oct 2017 3:09 pm
The $2425 carbon tax cost per bed per year is familiar. Was this the same Andrew Laming who did the 'modelling' back in 2012 of the effect of the carbon tax on the cost of a hospital bed?
Sid Maher, The Australian, reported that "COALITION state government estimates that the carbon tax will cost hospitals between $1044 and $2400 a bed this financial year. The Prime Minister's Office hit back at the Coalition premiers and an analysis by Liberal MP Andrew Laming that estimated the cost of the carbon tax on hospitals at between $1044 and $2400 a bed this financial year."
So, why does Minister Hunt claim "That was the impact of the carbon tax, on the Queensland Treasury's own modelling." It was on Laming's analysis. Hardly objective.
Tibor Majlath
Posted on 27 Oct 2017 2:19 pm
Back on 10 August 2015 - Greg Hunt, Minister for the Environment made wild claims on other modelling in which he claimed that under Labor wholesale electricity prices would be 78% higher in 2030."
He once claimed that we would see a loss of $5,000 per family by 2030. That figure was actually meant to be $4900 gross national income per person.
In parliament June 2015, he reported that refrigerant gas dropped in price by $275/kg with the removal of the $82.80/kg (2014-15) carbon tax!
Now, we are to believe that the NG will result in $100 price drop for consumers by 2020 without any Coalition modelling. Yet Labor's policy will result in $200 additional costs with modelling. Doesn't even match the $550 we never saw.