Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

The only reason we are dealing with this MPI today is that the member for Port Adelaide thinks the best form of defence is offence, because, if you had the record Labor has on energy policy, you would not have the gall to come to this dispatch box. When Labor were last in government electricity prices increased by more than 100 per cent. We had the dreaded $15 billion carbon tax, which Australians did not want and did not need. We had more than a dozen different policies. Who could forget the citizens assembly, cash for clunkers, the emissions trading scheme or the carbon tax? The list went on and on. They were very poor policies.

Now, from opposition, they have a quadrella of policies which are only going to send electricity prices higher and undermine the stability of the system. First and foremost, they have a 50 per cent renewable energy target by 2030. When they put that in their policy document they said there would be no details released until October 2017. Then, when the Leader of the Opposition fronted up to the Press Club the other day, it was the issue that did not get spoken of other than a single reference to renewables, with no detail about his policy.

They have a 45 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030, nearly double what we have taken to Paris—a target which will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to meet. They have an emissions intensity scheme, which Penny Wong, the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, when she was climate change minister in 2009, described as a 'mongrel of a policy'. She described it as a smokescreen and as being no credible alternative. Then of course they have a policy to close Australia's 24 coal-fired power stations. They come up in question time today and ask about the Tomago aluminium smelter, but the Tomago aluminium smelter and others like it would not survive if we did not have coal-fired power. What about the member for Shortland? He is a shadow assistant minister, and he has a policy, which he has to defend, that includes the forced closure of Vales Point, which is in his own electorate.

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