Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) recognizes the need for households and small businesses to access affordable, reliable energy;

(2) notes that the Government’s National Energy Guarantee is recommended by the independent Energy Security Board and that it:

(a)involves no taxes, subsidies or trading schemes;

(b)creates a level playing field that ensures all types of energy are part of Australia’s mix;

(c)provides certainty for investors in new and existing power plants; and

(d)reduces price volatility; and

(3)condemns the opposition’s plan to replicate South Australia’s 50 per cent renewable energy target, which will mean more subsidies and therefore higher prices.

Firstly, last week, I believe we saw a bit of a turning point in this debate on energy in our nation. It came from the CEO of Tomago Aluminium smelter, Mr Matt Howell. He deserves to be congratulated for the comments he made. In fact, I've even gone as far as to say that he should be nominated for the Australian of the Year for the comments he made. I would like to read them into Hansard. He said, 'What we'—Tomago Aluminium—'need is constant energy supply. The question is, when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing, where does that energy come from? If it's not coming from coal-fired power, where is it going to come from?' I will give you an example. Last Saturday, 9 June at 6.00 pm, our national grid needed 26,000 megawatts. That was the demand: 26,000 megawatts. At 6.00 pm, we had zero coming from solar power—the sun had set—and the several thousand megawatts of wind capacity was only generating 100 megawatts. So do the numbers: we had 100 megawatts in total coming from solar and wind, and we needed 26,000 megawatts of electricity to avoid blackouts. That's what Matt Howell was saying. But he went on, 'We have people saying "batteries". The truth is this: the largest battery in the world'—in South Australia—'would power this smelter for all of eight minutes.' Eight minutes—one plant, eight minutes, and the world's largest battery. It is clearly a nonsense. Matt Howell has belled the cat on that—we had the previous Labor government of South Australia running a fraud, a con and a hoodwink on the population of South Australia, telling them that their big battery was to back up their renewables. And yet it could only run an aluminium smelter like Tomago for eight minutes.

Matt Howell continued, 'You've got to have access to baseload power. As we see the continued penetration of'—subsidised—'renewables, it's hollowing out our baseload fleet. If we want to be a nation that makes things, rather than imports them, we need to have internationally competitive energy.' It's worth noting that, at the moment, the cost of energy or electricity in this nation is more than double what it is in the United States of America. He went on: 'And I would say, if it's good enough to export millions of tonnes of high quality thermal coal from Australia to feed the world's growing fleet of advanced low emissions, high efficiency, coal-fired power stations, then it must be good enough to do the same thing here. To do anything less is rank hypocrisy.' Matt Howell, hear, hear to you, Sir! And yet we have the Labor Party of Australia: their plan for energy in Australia is to replicate the failed experiment that we saw in South Australia.

In South Australia, we saw this mad experiment inflicted upon the residents of that state where they had a 50 per cent Renewable Energy Target, and that is the exact policy that the Labor Party wants to inflict on the entire nation. And what were the results of that experiment in South Australia? It gave South Australia not only the highest electricity prices in the nation, it gave South Australia the highest electricity prices in the world. And that is what members of the Labor Party want to inflict on the entire nation. Not only did it have the highest energy prices in the world, but South Australia also had the highest rate of electricity disconnections in the nation. There were kids unable to do their homework at night because they couldn't turn the lights on; people living without a refrigerator, unable to keep food fresh in their fridge; and people unable to charge their phones or iron or wash their clothes. That is the policy that was inflicted upon South Australia—with record disconnections—and that is the policy that the Labor Party wants to inflict on all of Australia. It is simply not good enough.

We have a very big job: we have to get the cost of energy down in this nation, and down substantially. Everything the Labor Party will do will push the price of electricity higher and higher and higher in this nation. We've seen the results in South Australia. That is what they want to copy.

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