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

For those opposite, the only policies that count are the ones where they don't trust Australians to make choices. They bribe them to take a vaccine. That's their solution. But in my electorate 99 per cent are double dosed. They didn't need a bribe. They make the right choices when the technology comes to parity, and that's central to our approach. It is a technology-led approach.

That means technology, not taxes. That means expanding choice, not imposing mandates. We are not going to tell Australians what kind of car to drive. We are not telling Australians what kind of food to eat. We are not telling Australians what kind of energy to use. They will use low-emissions technologies as those technologies come to parity, exactly as we are seeing with solar right now. If you look at the uptake of solar around the world, you see it's a marvellous example of technology-led change. In the 30 years up to the early 2000s worldwide, we saw a total of one gigawatt of solar capacity installed around the world. Meanwhile, costs were coming down at 10 per cent a year every year, year on year. From 2001 through to last year the world installed 850 gigawatts of solar capacity, as the cost came down to parity with alternatives. That's how technology works. It is not a straight line; it is explosive growth as the technology works.

As we look across our technology focus, whether it's hydrogen, energy storage, low-emission steel, low-emission aluminium, carbon capture and storage—those opposite hate that one—or soil carbon, which they have no interest in either because that's good for farmers, we see those costs are coming down rapidly. As they continue to we'll see uptake, just as we've seen solar uptake right across the world in recent years.

At the same time we have focused on affordable, reliable energy for all Australians. At the end of the day Australians want to see emissions coming down but they don't want to see costs added to their electricity bills and they don't want to see jobs lost in those regional industries, those backbone industries of this great nation. We've seen 10 consecutive quarters of year-on-year CPI reductions in the price of electricity. We saw 19 months in a row of wholesale price reductions. As we see energy crises around the world, Australia is making sure that we get balance in our grid. We are making sure that there is a balance across technologies that delivers that affordable, reliable energy.

It is true that we as a government have had to make investment in great projects like Snowy 2, the great Snowy Mountains scheme. We're extending its reach into Snowy 2. The Snowy scheme is one of the great engineering projects in Australia's history. Snowy 2 is building on that wonderful legacy in the member for Eden-Monaro's electorate. I'm sure she supports that project and the very great progress that was made at Polo Flat just yesterday. Polo Flat, an industrial area, was right at the centre of the original Snowy scheme.

Those opposite lecture us constantly on this. The truth of the matter is that they have failed in taking their policies to the Australian people time and time again, but they're sticking with it. For the sixth time last night in the Senate and then today in the Reps they voted against the technology led approach. They're voting against a technology led approach because theirs is a tax led approach. They voted against $192 million of ARENA investment in electric vehicle charging and industrial energy efficiency. They voted against it. I know that on their side there is a lot of dissension on this, but the member for McMahon is on a rampage. He has a campaign for ideological purity. He wants to make sure that there's no investment in carbon capture and storage, soil carbon and industrial energy efficiency. Those things are not good enough for him. He is as pure as the driven snow. He really wants to do the one thing he has always wanted—to impose a tax on Australians.

That's absolutely right—he salivates over the prospect of another tax. Retirees, houses and cars, but the one he really wants is energy. That tool is in the toolkit. He's whipping it out. He's going to whack us all with the same old tax, as he has always wanted to. You only have to look at what his colleague Senator Gallagher said on the weekend to know that that's true. When she was asked explicitly by David Speers if a carbon tax was an option for Labor, she said, 'We are looking at everything.'

Yesterday when asked, 'Are there any climate policy settings that you will rule out Labor either adopting or supporting?' the Leader of the Opposition, no less—Each-way Albo—said, 'We'll examine anything that's put forward.' Each-way Albo has never seen a fence he doesn't want to sit on. I'll tell you what: he'll get off the fence and go for the tax. That's where he always ends up. He will end up saying one thing in Melbourne and another thing in Gladstone and a different thing in Balmain to what he says in Balranald. That's how he works. We will always focus on the interests of all Australians and on the interests of the great industries that have been the backbone of this great nation throughout our history, and that history is what this great country is all about.

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