David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The hypocrisy of those opposite knows no bounds. Firstly, let's start on their record—the record that they brought to this place over the years of the Gillard-Rudd-Gillard governments, with the great policy of the carbon tax—the $15 billion tax that they imposed on every Australian. The promise that Gillard made during the election campaign was that she would never lead a government that had a carbon tax. The heads go down on those opposite because they know that this was an impost on every Australian and it put Australians out of work. Now they come back into this place with a different philosophy, another philosophy on a 50 per cent renewable energy target. We could not even get the member for Port Adelaide to say that number before. He was too embarrassed to put the number out there. He was scared to say that we were going on a philosophical rant of 50 per cent renewable energy, and so he should be because he has a lot of friends in state governments who have gone down that track.

In my home state of Queensland, they are now talking about wanting to take up a 50 per cent renewable energy target by 2030. We currently sit at 4.5 per cent. That is a 45 per cent increase in renewable energy. That is an amazing transition for any economy to undertake. It is not possible without significant damage to the people of Queensland, and that does not just stay in Queensland. We have the position in Victoria and in Adelaide in South Australia. We have already seen what has happened in South Australia. We have seen what happens when you get to 40 per cent renewable and what happens when the lights go out. It cost the people of South Australia $450 million the day the lights went out because there was nothing to sustain them, nothing to help them and nothing to keep the jobs going. There are 1.7 million South Australians that have nothing because of Labor.

But then you get on to gas. Anyone who understands how energy is priced understands that gas is central to that. In my electorate of Maranoa, we are the ones who are generating the gas. The Queensland Labor government have come in and exploited it, but, like pink batts and the school halls, it was a rushed policy with no concept and no understanding of where they are going to go, and no thought about where we may go as a nation and as a state. They went in and made sure that the gas reserves in Queensland are exported. What we are seeing now is that there is effectively no domestic supply from Queensland because we have a short-sighted Labor government in Queensland and we have one that is trying to be one here.

The member for Port Adelaide walks in at a timely moment. He talks about the virtues of the Labor Party and how they work strongly together. You need to get on the phone to those in Victoria and those in the Northern Territory who have a moratorium on gas. That is what you need to do if you want bipartisanship, if you want a solution to this. This is when leadership comes in—not platitudes and slogans but real action.

But are Labor up to that? They are not. They are up to false philosophies driven by the member for Melbourne and everyone in the Greens, because that is what they are worried about. Each one of them here is looking down because they know the Greens are coming for them. The Greens are coming for them because they have this ideology of 100 per cent. And you have done well; you have done well just to get to 50 per cent. But it does not make sense and it does not pay the bills, and that is the unfortunate thing. But there is no leadership. Gas can change where we are going right here and now. There are people hurting in the now, not just in the future, which is what Finkel is looking at. We need to look at the now, and gas is a key element of opening that up.

But let me finish on our friends in the Queensland state government. The minister spoke before about the cost of distribution: nearly 50 per cent goes to distribution. We have a Queensland state government that is controlling the distribution out of the coal-fired generators, three of which are in my electorate. They are controlling supply, which the ACCC have now become interested in. But the reality around the distribution costs is that the state government are taxing the people of Queensland by stealth. They are taxing them by stealth every time they send out a bill. They send out bills with fees and charges that are so significant that they are being disingenuous to everybody in relation to this. This lies at the feet of state governments just as much as it does at the feet of Labor.

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