Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Medicare) Share this | Hansard source

I remind the member for Grey that this is Science Week. The member for Bruce has a science degree, and I'm sure that he has brought a scientific contribution to this debate. It's interesting how members of the government never seem to take responsibility for anything when they are in government, particularly with respect to responsibilities that fall fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the federal government, yet when they were in opposition they blamed the federal government of the time for all the woes of this country. In particular, I can well recall how we were told, at the 2013 election, that the carbon tax was responsible for all the high energy prices that people were paying around the country and that, if elected, the coalition would abolish the carbon tax, and energy prices would fall. Well, the carbon tax has been abolished, but energy prices continue to rise—a $630 increase or thereabouts in household energy bills in the past year alone. Quite frankly, they are likely to continue to rise unless this government gets on top of and puts forward a rational energy policy. For industry, those costs have been even greater.

What we have, after five years of this government—I remind members it is five years—is uncertainty in our energy supply, no credible energy policy, no credible climate change policy and no credible gas supply policy for this country. In fact, as we come into this week of sitting, energy, under the government's National Energy Guarantee proposal, will be the critical subject of debate in the coming few days, yet we know, when we look carefully at that policy, that it is nothing but another bit of government spin. The only guarantee that I can see is in the name, 'National Energy Guarantee', because the claims of guaranteed lower prices, emissions reductions and new energy investments simply don't stack up. Where is the guarantee for those claims? Indeed, if it is there, why is the government not prepared to release the modelling that they have pinned their hopes on?

The people that are being asked to invest tens of millions of dollars into the future energy supplies of this country can see through the spin, and they will not be conned by it. Therefore, if the government does not put forward a rational policy, it simply won't work. We also know that if the government were to adopt a 45 per cent emissions target by 2030 then, according to modelling by RepuTex, energy prices would be another 25 per cent lower.

Respected commentator Alan Kohler said, of the National Energy Guarantee:

… the NEG is a stupendously complicated idea that isn't really designed to achieve anything at all—except political agreement. The emissions reduction part of the policy is so complex that nobody at all can figure out whether it will work.

I think that sums it up beautifully. The fact that the government were trying to get an agreement out of it when they couldn't even get agreement within their own party about this policy tells its own story.

Gas is important to this country. As the member for Bruce quite rightly points out, we are the world's leading gas exporter, or close to it—we certainly will be shortly, if we're not today—yet we do not have enough gas supply for our own industries and our own community. We do not even have it at a competitive world price.

What we need, going into the future, is not only reliable supplies but also reliable supplies at affordable prices. The government's track record on that has been absolutely woeful. In the first instance, they blamed the states for all the problems, as we heard from the member for Grey. The reality is that, when we are the world's largest exporter of gas, fracking should not be part of the concern at all. Whether that happens or not is not the critical issue here. The critical issue is that we have gas, but it is not being made available for our energy supplies at a competitive price.

Our industries know that, if prices go beyond $10 per gigajoule, they cannot compete with the rest of the world. Currently, the prices range anywhere from about $11 to $14 per gigajoule, when the ACCC says they should be down to $8. That's what we need to be trying to achieve, because that will mean that our industries remain very competitive.

One commentator after another has looked at the energy problems of this country and made it absolutely clear that the National Energy Guarantee is not the solution. It is simply more spin from a government that has lost control of its energy policy and, in doing so, has lost control of the economy of this country.

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