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

It's a great pleasure to be here with my parliamentary colleague the Hon. Melissa Price to talk about the importance of the actions that we're taking in the Environment and Energy portfolio. As you know, for the first time, these two portfolios have been integrated in order to not only tackle the very thorny and difficult issue of climate and energy policy but also to continue to deliver good outcomes for our environment. What's important in this budget is that we are investing in our energy future. There is money to follow through on the Finkel review recommendations. There is money to create a consumer access data platform to ensure people get better deals from their retailers, to continue the work of the COAG Energy Council, to ensure that we have a robust fuel security system—we're conducting a significant review in that regard.

When it comes to the environment, there is a huge amount of money—the largest ever single investment—in the Great Barrier Reef, in the restoration and management of this great wonder of the world. It is more than 2,000 kilometres in length, larger than the size of Italy and Japan. It is absolutely vital that we tackle the issues related to water quality, to better management practices by the farmers to avoid pesticide, nitrogen, and sediment run-off, to tackle the crown-of-thorns starfish, to invest in the science so that we create more heat-resistant and light-resistant coral to withstand some of the challenges that the Great Barrier Reef is going through right now. That amount of money, which is over half a billion dollars, has been warmly received by the science community, by the tourism community, by the farmers and by all those with a vested interest in the future health of the reef.

There's also more money in this budget for our Antarctic Science Program, which is internationally regarded. There's money to improve the Bureau of Meteorology's information communications and technology system, bearing in mind how central the bureau is to our defence, to our transport infrastructure, to our agriculture sectors and, indeed, to the broader community. And there's more money for heritage protection and for a new flagship national heritage program which will promote our amazing Indigenous sites as well as other sites throughout the country.

This budget sees more money put into the environment and more money put into energy policy. When it comes to energy policy, the National Energy Guarantee will be absolutely critical to delivering lower power prices and a more reliable system, as well as to meeting our international emissions reduction targets under the Paris agreement. Emissions today are, on a per-capita and GDP basis, at the lowest level in 28 years. When the Labor Party were last in office, they were expected to miss the 2020 target by over 700 million tonnes. We came into government and not only did we abolish the carbon tax, which saw the biggest single reduction in electricity prices ever on record, but we've actually turned around our 2020 target, and now we're expected to beat it by significantly more than 200 million tonnes.

The other work that we've done is intervene in the gas market to see more gas provided for domestic customers rather than exported overseas. Again, the Labor Party ignored the warnings from AEMO and from their own energy white paper which, as a result, saw gas prices go up quite dramatically. We've intervened, and the ACCC said prices have come down by up to 50 per cent. Labor did nothing about the networks, the poles and the wires, which are up to 50 per cent of people's power bills. We've abolished the limited merits review which, if the Labor Party had done it, would have saved consumers $6.5 billion. Whether it's the National Energy Guarantee, whether it is Snowy 2.0 and investments in storage, whether it is a better deal for customers from their retailers or whether it is abolishing the limited merits review or getting more gas into the domestic market, we're delivering a more affordable, reliable, and cleaner energy future, as well as significant investments in our environment.

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