Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

There is a very simple test for this legislation, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Energy Price Relief Plan) Bill 2022: will Australians' bills in the coming months and years go up or down? That's the test. There is no other test. The energy minister himself has admitted that bills are going up. The Treasurer himself has admitted in his budget that they're going up by 56 per cent. We now learn that he thinks that they're going to go up even more. The Prime Minister himself, having committed 96 times before the election that he was going to—

An honourable member: Ninety-seven times.

Ninety-seven times—I stand corrected. I'll take that interjection. The Prime Minister said 97 times before the election that the $275 decrease in electricity prices was going to happen. Having said that all those times, he hasn't said it since being elected—not once. Those opposite are going to fail their own test.

This legislation fails every test of good government and good policy. It's been a shambolic process with shambolic legislation and will deliver shambolic outcomes. It defies the basic laws of economics. The process itself, as I said, has been shambolic. After promising not to waste a day in office—that's what they promised—over six months they've been floating a thought bubble on a daily basis. A new thought bubble even came out in the last two days from the Prime Minister, and he had to pull back from it. He was running around the press gallery, making sure that he was corrected on what he had said himself.

This is poorly thought through with no consultation and, sadly, we only received the legislation at 8.45 pm last night. This is a diabolical intervention in the gas market. It's one of the largest and most significant government interventions we've seen in a market in decades. We've seen it in other countries like Venezuela and elsewhere in this sort of time frame, but not here. They present the bill at 9.45 pm the night before, expecting the parliament to support it the very next day. The hypocrisy is astounding. I think it's important that this place here note what the Leader of the House had to say in 2019, when he was Manager of Opposition Business, about how this place should work:

There is a process that happens with legislation that I have to say does matter. It does matter that members have the opportunity to read legislation …

That came from those opposite. That's what they said. The Prime Minister had a lot to say about this sort of thing before the election as well. On 25 March, on Tasmania Talks, the Prime Minister said: 'I want proper processes. I want to consult people.' But, six months in, this is just another one of the long list of broken promises from those opposite.

So flawed is this bill that even government ministers are confused about it. Yesterday, in a press conference, the minister for energy made a bit of a blunder. In answer to a journalist, he said:

You don't have a Code and a cap at the same time, right.

But we know this is wrong. Do you know how we know this is wrong? Because the government was calling around the press gallery moments later to correct the minister. If even the ministers who are supposed to be responsible for this bill don't understand it, how can it possibly be a good piece of legislation?

The government's legislation will give unprecedented powers to control the Australian energy sector—the great confidence that we have in the Treasurer that he is going to be able to deliver the gas at a price that all Australians can afford, because he will be the Hugo Chavez of this government, delivering the gas for the Australian people. But it extends well beyond the 12-month price gap. It extends well beyond that. For years we can expect this. We've heard the industry experts say things like—this is Credit Suisse—'The damage has already started: nearly all gas contracting has shrivelled up in the last few days.' Supply matters, you know. Energy analyst Mark Samter—very highly respected—said this is 'the single worst piece of energy policy I have seen anywhere in the world in almost 20 years looking at global energy markets'. That was about this policy, from this minister. The reality is: this bill fails on every test of good policy and good government. (Time expired)

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