Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House condemns the Leader of the Opposition for deliberately misleading the Australian public on power prices.

Let's start with the claim. On Tuesday, the Leader of the Opposition stated, 'The research shows that the average power bills for a Sydney household have gone up by nearly $1,000.' On the same day in parliament he said to the Prime Minister:

What about the $1,000 extra that Sydney householders are paying on his watch?

It was a claim he repeated in the House yesterday. Yesterday his shadow spokesman on energy, the member for Port Adelaide, said in the House:

Since this government came into office power bills have gone up by $1,000 for the average Sydney household. That figure is based on data from the government's own Australian Energy Regulator and the Australian Energy Market Commission, reported in The Australian newspaper.

But The Australian newspaper never reported such a figure. It was concocted by the Labor Party and the Leader of the Opposition and was designed to mislead the Australian people. And again Labor members followed their Leader of the Opposition, repeating this $1,000 false claim. The member for Parramatta, the member for Shortland, the member for Kingsford Smith, the member for Lindsay, the member for Werriwa, the member for Wills, the member for Cunningham, the member for Hunter and the member for Blaxland all repeated this false claim.

And then Labor's false claim was repeated and used in the media. Last night, in Andrew Probyn's package on the ABC News, this $1,000 false claim was repeated to hundreds of thousands of Australians. But let me tell the House that the Leader of the Opposition's $1,000 claim for an electricity price increase for the average Sydney household is false, is dishonest and is designed to deliberately mislead the Australian people. It has wrongly asserted data from Australia's independent Australian Energy Regulator and was designed to deceive the Australian people.

This is what the independent Australian Energy Regulator has said in response to the claims from those opposite: '

The Australian Energy Regulator has not published any data outlining the price increases claimed in the article. The price increases in the article are inconsistent with the data published by the Australian Energy Regulator.'

This data suggests that prices have gone down in Sydney by 2.3 per cent from the end of 2013 to July 2017. I table the advice from the Australian Energy Regulator. Similarly, the independent Australian Energy Market Commission has stated in response to these claims: 'The Australian Energy Market Commission's figures cannot be the basis of the estimates of price increases published in The Australian article on 10 July 2017.' I table the advice from the Australian Energy Market Commission, which conflicts with the claims made by those opposite.

There we have it in black and white. The Leader of the Opposition, his energy spokesman and a host of frontbench and backbench colleagues have used the good names of the Australian Energy Regulator and the Australian Energy Market Commission, attributing to them data that never existed while cooking up on that side of the House a fake figure of a $1,000 increase in Sydney households designed to mislead the Australian people. I call on the Leader of the Opposition to come clean, to apologise to the Australian people and to come into this House and correct the record.

We have seen this all before, because the Leader of the Opposition has a pathological pattern of behaviour to deceive, to falsify and to mislead the Australian people. The Leader of the Opposition has a pathological pattern of behaviour to deceive, to falsify and to mislead the Australian people. It goes to the question of integrity, because the Leader of the Opposition is not fit to be Prime Minister of this country. He's not fit to be Prime Minister of the country. We all know about 'Mediscare'. Those opposite were prepared to deceive millions of Australian pensioners and the most vulnerable in our society with a lie, with a mistruth, with a false claim. If we hadn't exposed this $1,000 false claim from the Leader of the Opposition—

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