Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

When I first read this motion I seriously thought it was a joke. I thought it was a topic of conversation for the next open mic night at the Canberra comedy club—the hide of those opposite! The member for Maranoa moved a motion that 'congratulates the Australian government for its sensible and pragmatic approach to ensuring energy security and affordability in Australia'—are you kidding me? This is the government that has presided over the most horrendous increase in electricity prices in this country that is affecting households and businesses to the nth degree. Yet here they are, congratulating themselves for sending electricity prices through the roof. It says everything about just how out of touch this Turnbull government is.

We all know that electricity and gas prices are increasing dramatically in Australia, and Australian consumers are worse off because of the policies of this Turnbull government. In TheAustralian Financial Review on 6 March, it was reported that hardware manufacturer Alchin Long Group, based in Western Sydney, faced a doubling of their electricity price contract with Origin Energy. It had gone from $53.30 per megawatt hour to $109.70 per megawatt hour. That is the reality for businesses in Australia and for small businesses trying to make ends meet and trying to compete with international imports. That is the reality. That is what the government's policies have done to small businesses in Australia when it comes to energy costs.

Now let's look at households. An ANU study by Ben Phillips in February of this year, based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics Household Expenditure Survey, showed that over the last 10 years, despite falls in electricity use by households, electricity prices increased by 108 per cent. Guess what the worst state for those increases was? It was none other than Queensland, the state which the member who moved this motion comes from.

This government knows electricity prices are a big issue. They know it because they put in place an energy supplement for pensioners when they negotiated their corporate tax reduction in Australia. So they realise that energy prices are a big issue and are affecting households. Why is it that prices have increased so much in recent years? There is a simple reason for it, and that is that this government has no plan to transition our economy from dirty coal-fired power to cleaner renewable energy in the future, and, over time, reduce costs for consumers. They have this ideological addiction to coal that they cannot drag themselves away from. It is costing households and businesses and holding back our nation's economic development. By removing a price on carbon emissions, by reducing the Renewable Energy Target, and by attempting to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and ARENA, they have created investment uncertainty within the private sector in Australia. And guess what! Because of that approach, because of their policies, the private sector is not investing in new base-load energy development in Australia.

It is up to the private sector to bring on new investment, and the reason for that is that the Liberals privatised all the systems in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales. They said, 'No, we'll just get rid of it. We will sell it off. It will be right. It won't affect prices at all.' And guess what! The companies in the private sector that bought those investments are not investing in new technology, because of the uncertainty, so prices have gone through the roof. Prices have gone through the roof because we are not getting this new investment coming on. They are saying, 'Let's invest in more coal-fired power stations.' How nuts can you get? How crazy can you get, to suggest that someone in the private sector would want to invest in a coal-fired power station? It is like saying, 'Let's invest in steam trains. I've got a good idea: let's get a new transport policy and we'll invest in steam trains. That is the way to go—that is talking about the future.' That is what those opposite are coming in here and advocating—that the private sector invest in coal-fired electricity. They are absolutely nuts. What we need to be doing is putting in place policies that transition to clean energy, so that there is a reason for the private sector to invest in clean energy, to grow our economy and to invest in new jobs.

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