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

We acted by capping the price of coal and gas. That was controversial then and it's controversial now. The Leader of the Opposition today, just in question time earlier, claimed that capping the price of gas had forced prices up. Maybe the Leader of the Opposition should have gone to the University of Sydney to get an economics degree! Maybe we'd all be better off if that had happened, because he thinks that lower coal and gas prices lead to higher energy prices. But we've done that and it's had an impact. We've seen that impact in the draft Default Market Offer released earlier this year: 29 percentage points lower than it otherwise would have been. As Clare Savage, the Energy Regulator, has made clear, that is in large part due to the impact of the intervention by the Albanese government. That has saved up to $1,676 for a Victorian small business each year. It's saved up to $530 for a household, particularly South Australian households. Of course, we know we need to do more and tonight we will be doing more.

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