Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

We're delighted to have a debate about energy policy and energy prices because of the 150 members of parliament there is not a man or woman who is more culpable for the diabolical state in our energy markets, in our generating system, in this place than the member for Hume. So ashamed is he of his diabolical record that he has now scurried from the chamber. There is not a man or woman in this place who is more culpable for the diabolical state of our energy market in Australia than this guy here: 22 failed energy policies. All of them can collectively take responsibility for the 22 failed energy policies of the last nine years. But the person who has got his grubby fingers over every single one of them is the member for Hume. He personally did his very best to white-ant and pull apart the energy policies and then the prime ministerships of those people who'd put those policies together. There is nobody in this parliament who has more personal responsibility for today's state of rising energy prices than the member for Hume. It's the member for Hume who should be writing to all Australians and saying: 'I am sorry for my diabolical record as the previous energy minister of this country.'

How do we know this? From the fact that, on his very watch, we had nine years of energy policy chaos. What was the result? Well, the result was a capital strike, with four gigawatts of baseload energy transmission withdrawn from the system—four gigawatts withdrawn from the system. And how much went back in? One gigawatt. So, on his watch, we saw three gigawatts of energy generation withdrawn from the system. If you want to know why power bills are going up in 2022, look at the woeful track record of this bloke over here. He's like the guy who mugs you on the way to the shops and then complains that you haven't come home with the shopping. It's all on him and on every single one of them.

We used to hear a lot—those who've been in this place for a while remember hearing—the member for Hume, when he was the energy minister, bragging about his 'big stick' legislation. Remember his big stick legislation? Waving it around in the air, bragging to us that he had legislated a big stick. Well, he doesn't talk about it much today, does he? Neither do his mates down there. They don't talk much about the big stick anymore. They promised the big stick legislation was going to deliver a 25 per cent reduction in energy prices. We all remember that. 'I'm going to wave around my big stick and threaten the energy companies: "If you don't lower your prices, I'm going to wave my big stick at you."' Twenty-five per cent was promised. What was delivered? A 240 per cent increase! This guy thought he was a student of Teddy Roosevelt—we all remember that one: the bloke who was going to 'speak softly and carry a big stick'—except he got it the wrong way around. Our bloke spoke stickly and carried a big soft! A 240 per cent increase in energy prices—and they have the gall to come in here today and complain about the impact of rising energy prices on Australian households! Well, we are not going to have a bar of it.

To add insult to injury, on 6 April, one month before the election, when he was due to sign off on and release and expose to Australians what the default market offer was going to be for wholesale prices throughout the country, did he sign off and did he release those prices? No, he did not. He signed an instrument which guaranteed that those prices would not be released to the Australian people until after the election. And why did he do that? Why on earth would he want to hide the truth from the Australian people before the election about the cost of energy prices? The reason was: he knew that energy prices were about to go up by 20 per cent. And what Australians are seeing in their energy bills today is the direct result of this bloke's policy. Every single cent of increase in electricity prices and gas prices is on his head. There is not another person in parliament who is more culpable, more responsible, for energy price increases in this country today than the member for Hume—not another person.

But it does not have to be this way. It's why we, as one of our very first acts when we came in to government, was to ensure that we created stability and certainty for energy policies in this country. How did we do it? We legislated our carbon emissions targets and we sent a very clear message to energy markets and investors in this country that we believed in the science and we were going to be partners in the energy transition, giving certainty—not a different policy every six months, which is what they had seen from the legacy of this mob over there. We've legislated, providing investment certainty, and it is flowing. The big investors are lining up. They're hungry for the projects because they know that there is a future in renewable energy.

Gone are the fruitless arguments that they're still having over there about whether we should be moving to a clean energy future and generating more energy in our network through renewable energies. We legislated for climate change and carbon emissions, but we also legislated to kickstart wind energy, and, in particular, offshore wind energy, in this country. We know there is enormous potential and jobs capacity, particularly in offshore wind energy generation, in this country. We don't have to have the chaos that we've seen over the last eight years which has seen power prices go up and up and up. There is an alternative, and the alternative is the policies offered by the Albanese Labor government.

They often talk about the impact of jobs in regional Australia. That is the reason why our plan specifically identifies regional Australia as the site for renewable energy generation. We know that there are jobs in it: jobs in the building of it, jobs in the maintenance of it and jobs in the transmission.

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