Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question, and I welcome all the members back to parliament for the 2023 sittings. very much, Mr Speaker. I'm pleased that the Leader of the Opposition has raised this issue as the first question. And I'm surprised that he hasn't yet raised his views that he held previously, where he actually committed to:

I believe we should have a Royal Commission into the electricity companies as well as fuel companies.

He went on to say:

There's something that stinks about these electricity companies and fuel companies and if we can get to the bottom of it I think we can get a better outcome for consumers.

You would expect that, given the senior position that the Leader of the Opposition held at that time in 2018, something might have happened. In 2019, nothing happened. In 2020, 2021, 2022, they had 22 different policies announced and none of them delivered. It was just like when the Leader of the Opposition was out there campaigning for a royal commission into electricity companies as well as fuel companies: nothing happened. But, of course, when it comes to energy, we did have a debate here in December. We brought the parliament back, and we brought it back to have a debate over whether we would take action—

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