Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Good question. What have we done? Do you know what we did? No. 1: we scrapped the carbon tax. That's what we did as No. 1. We reduced the RET. We reined in the networks. We put more gas into the domestic system. How about Snowy 2.0? The list just keeps going on. Do you know why we're doing that? Unlike those opposite, we actually care about the pensioner, we actually care about the small businesses and we care about the hard-working people who can't afford to put food on the table because they've been price gouged by state monopolies up there in Queensland. It is the federal government taking action. And, by the way, that's just action to date. That is why the scoreboard is looking good. But what we have now is a plan to just keep on going.

We now have a plan to ensure that we have more dispatchables coming into the system. We're going to have base load. How good is this? That's why they're silent, because not only did they have a poor track record; they didn't have a plan. The only plan you hear from those opposite is a 50 per cent renewable target. Woo hoo! Drive prices up. Are you serious? This is what we have. The party on the other side wants to jack up not just taxes but also electricity prices. Not only are we ensuring that we'll have dispatchables coming in but we will also ensure that there is a new default mechanism for price. Effectively, it's almost like a recommended retail price, if you like, with serious issues for anyone who breaks that. We're going to have a cop on the beat with the ACCC that they have not seen before, with serious teeth, including the possibility of having to divest those assets.

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