Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

This week there is no more important question before the parliament than the question that I think people across the community—households and businesses—are asking, and that is whether all of us in this parliament will step up to take serious action to deal with a deep energy crisis that is gripping this nation. The crisis has become very, very deep indeed. As we have heard in the parliament over the last couple of days, and as households and businesses know only too well, wholesale power prices have doubled in the four years of this government. As we know, across the country retailers are now feeding those wholesale power prices increases into household power bills. AGL, the biggest retailer in New South Wales, for example, is lifting power prices by 16 per cent for households across our largest state. All of that is at a time when wages are flatter than they have ever been. All of that is at a time when hundreds of thousands of workers who work Sunday retail and hospitality shifts will be losing their penalty rate entitlements in the next couple of weeks. And all of that is at a time when this government continues to insist on removing the energy supplement, designed to deal with high energy prices, of about $360 per year for all new pensioners in the country.

The Prime Minister told us yesterday and tried to tell us again today that the only reason that wholesale power prices are going up is because of gas prices, particularly because of moratoria on gas exploration in Victoria—understandably, I guess, from his point of view politically, not wanting to talk about what is happening in New South Wales about gas exploration.

I want to talk more generally about the real reason for household power prices going up. The Energy Council has been very clear, as has every expert body that has looked at this over the last couple of years. Power prices are going up primarily because of policy paralysis—policy uncertainty that has gripped this nation particularly in the four years of this government. You do not need to look any further than a presentation that the minister made to the coalition party room yesterday. It was a PowerPoint presentation headed 'Finkel review into the future security of the National Electricity Market.' In that presentation to the coalition party room the minister, who is at the table today, included a graph saying 'wholesale prices at record levels'. In the next slide in the PowerPoint, which was helpfully provided to people by the members of the coalition, the question was posed, 'How did we get here?' The minister, quite truthfully and admirably, said, 'Policy uncertainty which is holding back new investment'. I do not understand that to be a public document, so I seek leave to table this document as well.

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