Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Calare for his important question on what is a very serious issue for regional Australia. The member's electorate in regional New South Wales is home to the Mt Piper power station, which employs in the order of 300 people. It is these power stations which are vital for providing the affordable and reliable energy that regional Australia needs. It is the power stations in regional Australia that keep the lights on in our homes, in our schools, in our hospitals and in our businesses; but it is the people who work there who are being vilified by Labor and the Greens as dirty, big polluters. Many of those people live in my community. I can tell you that they know they have been sold out by the Australian Labor Party.

The member asks why it is important for regional Australians to have affordable and reliable energy. One-third of Australians live outside of our capital cities, and we want more people to enjoy the great quality of life we can offer in places like Wagga Wagga, Rockhampton, Mildura, Mackay, Dubbo and Gippsland. We want to build a safer, stronger and better regional Australia where everyone can get ahead. But people living in regional areas have, on average, lower household incomes than people living in our metropolitan areas, and when the power bills go up it is the people in regional Australia—those who live in homes in regional Australia—who are hit the hardest.

Reliable baseload energy is also critical for jobs in regional Australia. There were more than 670,000 regional businesses registered in regional Australia in 2015. But they are getting squeezed by higher energy costs. Our dairy farmers, our retailers, our hairdressers and our workshops are all suffering under high energy costs, and they will only increase under Labor's ideological obsessions. If we are serious about keeping manufacturing in regional Australia—and we especially want jobs right throughout our regions—we need to keep providing reliable baseload energy across the nation.

Now, this side of the House understands that. Those opposite have given up on manufacturing. They have given up on coal-fired power stations—

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