Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Tonight in Woolbrook, where I grew up, it's going to be minus three. On Sunday it will be minus six. In Armidale it will be minus eight. I say this so that people can clearly understand why I have an absolute passion for affordable power. Without affordable power, people on the poorer side of town, on the edges, who can't afford their power bills, will be cold. They deal with it in a way that is quite simple and, when we think about it, quite disgraceful for our nation: they go to bed. They go to bed because that is the most affordable place to stay warm. As a nation we should not be idle bystanders tonight; we should be completely mindful of these people. Someone has to stand up for the dignity in these people's lives. Someone has to drive and be the iconoclast, if required, to state that the primary motivation for this parliament before anything else is to maintain the dignity of its people, the people of Australia, and that can't be maintained if we can't provide one of the basics of their standard of living—that is, affordable power.

As a good nation we should comply as best we can with international agreements by the letter and to the extent to which they were written, but in doing so we can't put aside other people. Other people cannot be the casualties of these agreements. In our upcoming consideration we must look at the NEG, our plan to comply with these agreements, through one prism alone: will this bring down power prices? Power prices cannot stay where they are. When people come to your office and you know they can't afford their $600 power bill then you have to accept that what they are telling you is the truth. Individuals are coming in with $1,500 power bills. These things are beyond the pale for people to be able to afford. If our total commitment is to zero emissions then we have put ourselves in an invidious position, because gas is one of the most expensive feedstocks in the pricing of power.

We have a huge renewable resource in New England, but one of the biggest arguments I have now is people arguing against wind towers. Everybody wants them, but they don't want to see them. They want them out of sight. In emails tonight people were very concerned about solar farms. This is making things rather interesting: people don't want wind towers, they don't want solar farms, they are worried about nuclear energy, and pumped hydro is actually a net energy user. Ultimately you go back to an obvious position: if we had affordable power in the past, and the capacity to keep dignity in the lives of people who tonight are going to be dealing with minus three in Woolbrook and about minus six in Armidale, we have to reinvest in the basic logic we had then.

I believe that we are a smart nation. We can do things better than we did in the past, and be more effective than we were in the past, but we can't be blind to still the major provider of power in Australia, which is coal, and also be blind to the fact that the vast majority of the increases in power that have been generated in the world has come from coal, and even more so in Asia. We should do it more effectively in a more environmentally sensitive way, but we can't just switch it off. If we decide that coal is such anathema that we can't mention it anymore, and we really want zero emissions, then we are going to head down one path—that is, nuclear energy. As an exporter of the product we would have to start looking at using it ourselves.

I say this because we are seeing a malaise. I just listened to the member for Longman's speech, and I congratulate her, but the vote for the Labor Party didn't get out of the 30s. The vote for the LNP didn't get out of the 20s. Stop thinking that there is no disconnect out there. The two major parties could not get above 70 per cent of the vote. Stop thinking that the people are not frustrated and not angry, that there is no pushback. We have to start listening to these people. If you don't start listening to them, they are going to start forgetting us. That prognosis is loud and clear—and should be before us in the next couple of days.

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