Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The real challenge to the reliability of the energy system is the failure of the current market system to take into account the importance of having base-load power. That is the fundamental problem that we face. Honourable members opposite can persist in ignoring the very obvious failure of their years in government and their approach to energy policy. They were focused on replacing high-emission base-load power with low-emission power that was not base load, the consequences being that the electricity system has become less stable, less reliable and much more dependent on gas. That, coupled with Labor's failure on gas exports, resulted in a higher price of gas and that is what has driven both instability and unaffordability. Now, we're correcting those. It takes time to deal with them. We've had good results already with gas. We're having good results already on retail prices. We're making long-term investments with Snowy Hydro—

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