Emma Husar (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This government lurches from crisis to crisis. It has a problem when it comes to energy. You can't hide it, and you can't spin it. You can't blame everybody except yourself. The Abbott-Turnbull government has been in power for four years and is going into its fifth now. My community know the Turnbull government is failing, because they haven't forgotten the promises made. Every single time they open their power bills, they remember the promise that was made to reduce bills by $550 per year. What a lie—especially when households in Sydney have had an annual bill increase of close to $1,000 since 2013. That's right: $1,000 on your watch.

This government needs to act urgently. It sat on its hands and let 4,000 megawatts of coal out of system and has done nothing to fix it. That's the equivalent of powering six million households, three-quarters of Australian homes. If the bill shock isn't enough, the risk of blackouts this summer is higher than ever before. In my community in Lindsay, we had our highest temperature in history, where the thermometer peaked at 45 degrees, and we want solutions now. This crisis is real. Families need action now and not in five years time.

The Prime Minister must urgently act, pull the gas trigger, end the war on renewables and stop the summer blackouts. I hear the Prime Minister talking a lot about dispatchable power, but I know that right now, if I had the power, I would certainly know how to dispatch him.

I look forward to welcoming everybody in my electorate to the energy crisis forum that I'll be holding later this month.

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