Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Minister for Energy) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Forde for his question. It was great to spend time recently in his electorate in Queensland, talking to small businesses about the rip-offs that have been imposed on them by the big energy companies in Queensland—big energy companies that, incidentally, are owned by the Queensland Labor government. It turns out that Labor governments want higher electricity prices, and in the last year they ripped over $2 billion out of hardworking families and small businesses in Queensland.

The government has a strong plan for affordable, reliable energy for Australian families and hardworking small businesses. Our pressure on the big energy companies is delivering. We saw a couple of weeks ago AGL offering discounts of 10 per cent to its standing offer customers. That means 150,000 families and 27,000 small businesses will be better off. Just yesterday, EnergyAustralia announced discounts of 15 per cent on standing offers. That will be focused on concessional customers, which includes older customers, who don't have the ability to spend time negotiating with those companies every year.

We said we would deliver on lower electricity prices, and that is exactly what we're doing. On top of those initiatives, we'll bring forward big-stick legislation to the parliament that will hold the energy companies to account—legislation that those opposite are not supporting because they sit on the side of the big energy companies. We will underwrite 24/7 reliable supply in the market.

In contrast, those opposite want higher electricity prices. The member for Isaacs was outed yesterday. He was trying to hide carbon tax 2.0 when he said, 'I'm not going to rule it in or rule it out.' I heard this one live while I was sitting in the car, and almost drove off the road: the member for Shortland confirmed in an interview last Thursday that their policy is an implied carbon price—a sneaky hidden carbon price. The member for Port Adelaide, the shadow minister for energy himself, when asked by Leigh Sales on 7.30: 'Will Labor's policy include a carbon tax?' said:

It will cover all the other sectors of the economy apart from electricity.

Well that's agriculture, that's manufacturing, that's transport. They're the sectors that we will back, the sectors that we will support, because we believe in lower electricity prices. (Time expired)

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