Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

of this government than the energy policy demonstrated by those in charge of the portfolio, as my friend the member for Chifley correctly points out.

This is also an embrace of post-truth politics par excellence. We have had the key factors in this energy issue outlined by my colleague the shadow minister. He has talked about the gas issue. Of course, we can also hark back to the gas contracts executed under the Howard and Costello regime, which failed to provide a national interest test in developing our gas resources and gas reserves, which has created the cost dynamic that has had a large effect on this energy market and to the privatisation dynamic created by the coalition.

We talk about Hazelwood. This is a business decision that has been made in France and Japan based on purely business factors. That is what you have surrendered. You have surrendered the national control. The secret here is that we have a National Energy Market. The clue is in the title: a National Energy Market requires national responsibility being taken and supported by national leadership, which has been completely absent. We have had nearly four years now of this government sitting back—fat, dumb and happy and sitting on its hands—taking no action to manage the transition we all knew was coming and was happening.

No less of a factor in that transition was the Renewable Energy Target, agreed upon and set by this government. The truth about the wind farm capacity in South Australia is that that wind farm capacity was built pursuant to that Renewable Energy Target. That is the truth of it. That is what Mr Price, your former adviser, has advised. He has revealed the truth to the public. The other factor has been this policy uncertainty vacuum that you have created. You tore up a national framework that we put in place that has been a model that conservative governments around the world have embraced. David Cameron, Angela Merkel and Arnold Schwarzenegger were happy to do it, but not you. We were the ones who had to embrace the forces of the market and you were the ones who embraced the command economy approach—happily taking the North Korean path down the track to national ruin on energy policy. What is also missing is a plan for grid management and transition of that grid. If you want to know what a plan looks like, this here is a plan of 41 pages of detailed substance and thought, which deals with that exact issue of grid management, spelt out the electricity modernisation review process that we intended to put in place.

What also amazes me in this post-truth politics is the Prime Minister turning up to the Snowy Hydro scheme. Suddenly, after months we have had months of vilification of renewable energy, the Prime Minister is standing in front of the granddaddy of renewable energy projects in the country. Suddenly, he has embraced this as a solution to our power problems after vilifying all this year. The incredible irony of this is that the Snowy Hydro scheme was a great Labor project, instituted by Prime Minister Ben Chifley. I am very proud that my great-grandfather, who stood for the seat of Eden-Monaro in 1940, in a speech in September 1940 advocated for the Snowy Hydro scheme and said, 'Why is this government doing nothing about it?' That was in 1940. Why? Because there were national security implications around that as well while we were in the midst of the Second World War. It is instructive that the Chifley government used the defence power to kick off the Snowy Hydro scheme, taking national security responsibility for a national energy issue.

The other irony about that was not only that we had to do that but that the coalition at the time—the Country Party as it then was and the Liberal Party—opposed the scheme when it was announced in 1949 and boycotted the launch ceremony at Adaminaby that year. Nobody was there. Who was there? Governor-General McKell, a Labor appointee; Prime Minister Ben Chifley; the Labor member for Eden-Monaro of the time, Allan Fraser; and the Labor member for the state seat of Monaro, John Seiffert—not a Liberal or Country Party politician to be seen. The irony also is that the Snowy Hydro scheme pumping operations now at the Tumut 3 station are powered by contracted power from South Australian wind farms—the ultimate irony. Of course, that is how they would move forward with the grander pumping operation once it is completed, contracting renewable energy sources in off-peak periods to pump that water.

This is a scheme worth getting behind. Of course, we have to see real money being put behind it. But you need to give up your hypocrisy. You need to come up with a plan. You need to serve the interests of this nation instead of lying to the public. (Time expired)

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