Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party, Minister for Revenue and Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

He said to the Green Beacon Brewing Co., who employ more than 30 people in their microbrewery and restaurant, that he understands that they are very concerned about rising energy costs in their brewing and their hospitality businesses. We must ensure, on this side of the House, that we keep the lights on and that they have access to an affordable energy supply, and we are going to do that through the National Energy Guarantee.

Under our National Energy Guarantee, we will have a reliability guarantee to make sure that we have the right amount of energy available as needed in each state, encouraging investment in new and existing supply. It will work in tandem with our emissions guarantee and it will ensure that we are able to keep pace with our international commitments. Under our National Energy Guarantee, we will see affordable and reliable energy for small and medium-sized businesses without subsidies, without taxes, without an emissions trading scheme and certainly without any new carbon taxes. We want to make sure that electricity bills will be lower than forecast, lower than they would have been under a clean energy target. This, of course, is very good news for small businesses. It builds on our existing energy policy, including making sure that we can deliver more gas for Australians before it's shipped offshore, building Snowy 2.0 to stabilise the system and stopping network companies gaming the system. We have already seen disastrous consequences of getting energy policy wrong. We have seen that in South Australia and we have seen the Queensland government following suit. On this side of the House, we will stand with small and medium-sized businesses and we will make sure they get access to affordable and reliable energy.

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