Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Oh, no, it was enjoyable; please don't stop. We had five minutes of 'no plan, no ideas.' Those on that side remind me of the arsonist who torches energy policy and then comes in here and accuses us of not putting out quickly enough the fire they started. My favourite bit was: 'Oh, no, it's got nothing to do with the moratorium the Labor states have put on gas exploration. No, that's just a coincidence.' Apparently they haven't done it.

Opposition members interjecting—

So what's Pilliga? Is the Pilliga not a gas field all of a sudden? We could go back to Eddie Obeid and Bob Carr, my favourite friends. What did they do in New South Wales? Everyone got a gas exploration certificate. I think there was a gas exploration certificate over the Harbour Bridge at one stage! When the government identifies that 50 per cent of Australians are potentially paying $1,500 a year more than they need to on electricity prices, when it identifies there's an asymmetric market failure and does something about it, what is the member for Shortland's response? Mockery. The truth is that when anyone comes up with solutions to the problems that you create, all you can do is mock. That's the only answer the Labor Party has. The 280,000 Australians who have gone to the website to check what better deal they can get from their electricity provider and retailer are not laughing. They're clapping, because they're getting a better deal.

Every time we give energy policy to the Labor Party—whether it's in New South Wales or whether it's in Queensland, where the Palaszczuk government is using its wholly owned corporations to hold up its awful budgetary position—three things happen: prices go up, reliability goes down and uncertainty runs wild. That is what we have come to expect from the Labor Party.

What have we done over here? We have created Snowy Hydro 2.0. They laugh at that, but the fact of the matter is that Snowy Hydro 2.0 will add 2,000 megawatts of renewable energy to the Australian energy grid. That is enough to supply 500,000 homes. We're told that all we're doing is trying to make things that already work, keep working and work better. Apparently for the Labor Party that's something to have a problem with. Trying to make things work better without having to spend a lot more money is something they don't like. We saw that in New South Wales, with the electricity grid. They gold plated it for no good reason whatsoever. When we finally came, in New South Wales, to lease the electricity grid, the ETU was opposing it while its own superannuation fund was investing in privatised electricity assets in China and a privatised water asset in the UK. That's what you expect from the Labor Party. No answers, all complaints and the problems never end.

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