Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

I think by 'poles and wires across New South Wales', the honourable member must be referring to HumeLink. HumeLink is the link necessary to connect Snowy 2.0, which the previous government forgot to plug into the grid, which they forgot to connect to the grid. When you have a project, a good project—admittedly it's running 18-months late, but it could be running on time or later; it wouldn't really matter if it's not connected to the grid, which is what the previous government failed to do.

But I always try to be fair about such matters. Credit where it's due: the former minister for energy did bring down a regulation to facilitate transmission, including specifically HumeLink. In that regulation, he said, 'Transmission is critical to deliver low-cost reliable and secure energy to consumers.'

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