Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have a little bit of a 101 lesson for those opposite: energy prices going up has not happened just since the federal election. The role that federal government plays in setting leadership is a core responsibility of the federal government. Making sure that you've got the policy settings right, making sure that you're working with state governments and that you have a plan for how you're going to secure Australia's energy future long term are core roles of business. Yet what we saw from the previous government was utter chaos.

There was almost a decade of utter chaos that created the situation that we're in today. We inherited the absolute mess that the Australian energy market and the Australian energy industry are in. Not only did they not deliver one kilowatt of the one billion kilowatts of new generation that they said they would implement over the period—not only did we not see one new kilowatt—we also saw delays on a lot of projects. How proud the former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was to say that he would build his signature policy, Snowy Hydro 2.0! It is running 18 months late. Still it is failing to deliver. The previous government also, right before the election, went to the extent of hiding from the Australian people, particularly in the states of New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia. They delayed the release date of the increase to the default market. How more dishonest can you get than that?

A decade ago they were ranting about energy prices. They got elected to government and then destroyed confidence. They destroyed confidence to invest in the transition that was required. The rest of the world is decarbonising. The rest of the world is transitioning. But what the previous government did was destroy the infrastructure that the former Labor government had put in place, and that is what has caused people to lose their jobs. That is what has put a shake in the confidence of people investing in the energy industry. That is what has caused the chaos and the high prices that we have seen.

So what has our government been doing since it was elected? We have started to clean up the mess of those opposite. We know, like the rest of the world knows, that renewable energy is the cleanest, cheapest energy that we have going. That is why we are re-engineering. We are powering Australia through our plan to make sure that we have a grid that is modern and works. We will help get the renewable energy that is generated around Australia into our cities.

My electorate will benefit. Just north of me we have been waiting for the KerangLink to be built. It is north of us, around Central and Northern Victoria. It is a great source of possible renewable energy. This link will help power Melbourne.

What's happening in Tasmania? The state which has smashed 100 per cent renewable energy will actually help to power the mainland. I'm sure that's something that they are quite proud of. Our government is partnering with the Victorian government and the Tasmanian government to help generate the cleaner, greener renewable energy that will help power our major cities. What we are also doing, at a local level, is helping communities power themselves by investing in community batteries that will allow 400 community-scale batteries for up to a thousand Australian households to share clean energy. It's a smart plan. It complements our plan to rewire, reengineer the grid to get ourselves to be a power sharing grid. It's smart. People in my electorate—in one of my towns, in Maldon—are really looking forward to the opportunity. For those with solar power who have excess they can share it with their neighbours. It's a smart policy.

Rewiring the Nation, as I have talked about, will deliver the two major projects of $6 billion in Victoria and Tasmania alone. This is the smart, forward thinking that our government has introduced. It's the partnerships with the states that have been lacking. To make sure we get energy prices down we need a comprehensive strategic plan that has leadership, that's willing to work with states—not fight against them for political reasons—that's hoping to achieve what Australians need. If you want to help businesses and households get their energy bills down we need leadership, not what we have from those opposite, which is more and more rhetoric.

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