Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

What a shameful and disgraceful performance by the minister. A man who's come in to this place with probably more raps than Andrew Peacock. A man who looked pretty doing the job—you look pretty doing the job—but failed to deliver. Sadly, the member for Hume is repeating that standard. The truth is, this government's energy policy is an abject fiasco. In the great month of August, can anyone guess how many energy policies this government had in 14 days? One, two, three—four energy policies in 14 days. We had NEG 1, NEG 2 and NEG 3 without an emissions reduction policy, and then the big stick. Four in 14 days. You wouldn't see that out of a Third World military junta, but we've seen that out of this shameful LNP government, a government that has abandoned any pretence of policymaking. That would be fine if it just reflected on them—if it didn't impact on anyone in the rest of the world or the rest of Australia—but it's having a market impact already.

In the two months since they junked the NEG, wholesale prices in the NEM went up by 122 per cent. Their abandonment of energy policy more than doubled wholesale energy prices in two months. The 2019 future price rose by 20 per cent in that same period. Consumers right now are paying the price for this government's abject failure on energy policy. Don't just take our word for it; take the words of the BCA—no friend of Labor—who labelled the coalition's policies ad hoc and extreme. By contrast, we've got a reasoned policy, a policy that reaches across the aisle to try and reach a bipartisan settlement on this energy crisis. Our policy around the NEG will have a market impact. It will provide investment certainty that will lead to lower power prices. Don't take our word for it. Who supports the NEG-plus policy? The BCA, AIG, the Energy Council, ACCI, BlueScope, the Energy Users Association, APPEA, the member for Curtin, the Clean Energy Council, Energy Networks Australia, the Smart Energy Council and Solar Citizens.

Who supports their policy? Maybe Alan Jones, maybe Andrew Bolt. But no-one who lives on this planet or in reality supports their policy, because it's a dog of a policy. It is a policy that puts prices up, removes certainty and ignores the basic, fundamental truth of our energy sector, which is that 75 per cent of our existing power stations are operating beyond their planned plant life. They're getting awfully old and they're getting awfully unreliable. In my home region of the Hunter, all four coal-fired power stations have use-by dates completely unrelated to government policy. Liddell will close in 2022; Eraring in 2032; Bayswater in 2035; and Vales Point, people think, around 2029—that is, 25 per cent of Australia's total electricity production will close in the next 17 years.

Only Labor has a plan to deal with it. Only Labor has a plan that will replace it with cheaper and more reliable power. The Australian Energy Market Operator has found that, of the replacement options for those power stations, the cheapest is renewable energy. Origin Energy, which has investments across the whole spectrum, has said that not only is renewable energy cheaper than new coal-fired power but it is cheaper than running existing coal-fired power stations. It was a watershed moment when they made that statement a few weeks ago.

Our policy provides a plan for the sector, will reduce power prices and will create up to 71,000 new jobs in our economy, according to independent experts. Ours is a reasonable plan. It is a plan that is honest with the people of Australia that change is coming and we must adapt. Those on the other side will be condemned by history not only because they are they lying to workers and communities but because they're lying to future generations who will pay the price for their abandonment of any pretence of taking action on climate change, investing in the energy sector to drive lower prices or making the sector more reliable. History will damn them. I say it's not too late to change. Bring on the NEG. Support it. Have one more chance at redemption.

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