Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's great to be able to rise and speak on this motion that the member for Hughes has put forward. The member for Hughes has moved that this House recognise the need for households and small businesses to access affordable reliable energy. He notes that the government's National Energy Guarantee is recommended by the independent Energy Security Board, and that it involves no taxes, subsidies or trading schemes. It creates a level playing field that ensures all types of energy are part of Australia's mix, and it provides certainty for investors in new and existing power plants and reduces price volatility. Finally, it 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.

On that final note, that's an important point that the member for Hughes raises, because we saw the unreliability, the unaffordable situation that South Australia found itself in—a capital city within Australia with blackouts for a couple of days. What does that do to small and family businesses? Getting back to the point that the member for Hughes starts with: the fact that households need affordable energy. Yes, they do. But so do small and family businesses. I think of restaurants in my electorate of Petrie, like The Golden Ox, where Mr Nick Tzimas has told me that his bill keeps going up and up and up. The member for Parramatta didn't mention that under six years of Labor electricity prices doubled. I also think of manufacturers like Packer Leather in my electorate, employing over 120 people. They have got probably over $100,000 worth of renewable energy on their roof, and that cuts their bill by five per cent. I really worry for the future of manufacturing and jobs in this country if our electricity pricing continues to go up and up for those small and family businesses.

On this issue it's really important that we have bipartisan support in relation to the NEG. It looks like a lot of the states are signing up to it, which is really healthy. In relation to renewables and what Prime Minister Turnbull has done here, he is the first Prime Minister to actually mention that we need storage around renewables. There was nothing from the Labor Party about that when they were in office, and nothing from the South Australian government in relation to storage. It's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that has mentioned storage and has been there for it. When we look at things like Snowy Hydro, if I talk to people in my own electorate about Snowy Hydro, they will say, 'Well, that was a nation-building project.' When you talk about Snowy Hydro 2.0, they say, 'Woop-de-do. Who cares?' But the fact is that that is a plan to provide reliable energy as more coal closes and so forth, and it will have that project that our Prime Minister has put forward for decades to come. That's a good thing.

In relation to coal, in Queensland most of the generation is government owned, so the Queensland Labor Party owns the generation there. Ninety per cent of it is coal, and they too want to get to 50 per cent straightaway. The fact is that the NEG does provide stability and certainty. We need the opposition to get on board because we need to have the best interests of businesses and residents at heart, and we will. We have signed up to the Paris Agreement. We will meet those renewable goals, but we can do it in a timely manner without rushing to the 50 per cent that those opposite want to do. The fact is that I have solar on my roof, both in my home and in my family business. The member for Dickson has solar on his roof and in the family business as well, I'm pretty sure. It makes sense for businesses to have solar on their roof because they actually use it during the day when they're generating electricity, when the sun is up, between nine and five, for businesses to invest in it.

So I fully support what the member for Hughes is saying. We still have a lot of coal jobs in Australia, where our coal is cleaner than overseas. Our black coal is much cleaner than our brown coal. We can't just throw those workers out on the scrap heap by moving to the 50 per cent renewables that they want to. We are moving there steadily, smartly, with a plan. The NEG is worth supporting. We really need some bipartisan projects here, and I think that would be a good one to start with.

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