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

I thank the member for Robertson for her question. She knows that this government has a balanced and sensible policy for reliable and affordable electricity, including in the member for Robertson's electorate. When I was recently in Gosford in her electorate, we met with Gary, who has a smash repair business. He told me he'd been doing everything he could to get electricity prices down, but he needed to get them down further. He told me that if he could do that he could employ more apprentices and pay them more. We're changing that—we're changing that so that Gary can employ more young Australians, like the 100,000 young Australians who have been employed in recent years under this government.

This government has already delivered on lower power prices. Thanks to pressure from our government, the big energy companies have been forced to provide a better deal to their customers. From 1 January, standing-offer customers will get a better deal from AGL, Energy Australia, Origin, Alinta, Red Energy, Lumo Energy and many others. They have heard the government's calls and we're getting discounts of up to 15 per cent on standing offers, especially to those customers, those Australians, who need it most.

As we said today, this week we will introduce our big-stick legislation. Those opposite opposed this legislation before they had even seen it—legislation that will hold the big energy companies to account.

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