Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I take that interjection. Power prices reduced by $200, according to the member for Gilmore. I am sure she will be informing her constituents about this very good news. An optimist might have hoped that this would end after the ascension of the member for Wentworth to the top job. After all, the then opposition leader told the nation in 2009 that:

I will not lead a party that is not as committed to effective action on climate change as I am.

But the short-term, politically driven nonsense on energy policy has continued. We have seen ministers waving hunks of coal in the chamber while promising to use taxpayer funding to build new coal-fired power generators that the private sector call uninvestable and will not touch with a barge pole. We have seen a thought bubble, delivered via a feasibility study, to investigate a pumped-storage plant in the Snowy Hydro scheme that at best could become a reality in five to seven years.

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