Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

After five years of failure from the Liberals, Australia is now in the middle of a major energy crisis. People in my electorate of Wills has seen their electricity bills go up on average to $721 and in Sydney, it's almost a thousands dollars per year. This government has taken over 4,000 megawatts of power generation out of the grid without replacing it, putting constituents at risk of enduring blackouts this summer.

Instead of taking sensible action to solve this energy crisis, the Prime Minister is talking about buying a 50-year-old coal-fired plant, which is due to close in five years' time. Now, I've got my old man's 50-year-old Torana, with more than 500,000km on the clock. I would like the Prime Minister to buy that from me as well, but he might have a problem finding some leaded petrol!

What the government should be doing is pulling the trigger on gas so that Australian gas stays in Australia. What the Prime Minister needs to do is end his war on renewables and get the clean energy target in place so that the market can confidently allocate capital to the investments required to drive our renewable energy future. Take these actions to stop the summer blackouts, because skyrocketing power prices are hurting families now, and the risk of blackouts will hurt families over the summer. This Prime Minister blames everyone else. He has no answers and no idea.

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