Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

How is that going, Member for Page? How is that going? It's failing and failing miserably. And guess who's paying the price? Middle Australia. The same people who were ignored in the recent federal budget are the ones who'll be paying the price. These are everyday Australians who aren't recipients of government payments. In fact, they don't even want government in their lives. We're talking about the tradies who get up early every morning to make sure they're on site on time. We're talking about the bakers who are moulding dough before the sun even rises. We are talking about the cafe owners who get to the shop early to set up. This is middle Australia, people who don't ask for anything from government but for government to get out of their way so they can live their lives. But they won't get that from this Labor government because this government believes in big government.

Since coming to office, the Albanese government have inserted themselves at the centre of Australia's energy market. With their unprecedented market interventions, the government now call the shots. They are the ones picking the technologies because they think they know better than the engineers, than the economists on how the industry should run. They don't believe in a balance of technologies like the coalition does; they don't believe in having an all-of-the-above approach like we do. Rather, they pick their favourites. But they also know the technologies they wish to demonise, and those they wish to demonise they restrict supply, or they seek to turn supply off.

We know the result already from these massive interventions. We know that already we have gas at extraordinary prices throughout this country. We know that prices continue to rise for every single electricity user in this country. And we have our trading partners, some of our most important long-standing trading partners, now, for the first time, looking at Australia as a sovereign risk because Labor are demonising the very resources they rely on—and they are the same resources we rely on here for our own energy system.

But here is the thing: if you want to be 'big government' and insert yourself or put yourself at the centre of the energy market then you can't have it both ways. You can't then blame someone else when electricity prices go up. If you want to be at the centre, if you want to call the shots, then you have to cop it when the prices go up—and the prices are going up. When government empowers itself, especially with a very, very visible albeit incompetent hand in the market, it is to blame when prices go up.

Now, let's check out how they are delivering on that $275 promise. To date, instead of power prices coming down by $275, under this Labor government they have risen as high as $500 for average households. Think about this. You have power prices, Labor says they're going to reduce them by $275, but it goes up by $500. That means there's a $775 difference between what Labor had promised them they would pay and what they actually have to pay. That is the price of a broken promise.

But the thing is, that's only the broken promise as of today. The real problem now for those people of middle Australia, hard-working Australians, is when they woke up this morning, they found out that it's going to get even worse because the default market offer said on 1 July it's going to get even more expensive. For those in the DMO jurisdictions, we are looking at average prices going up by around 25 per cent. For some households, the price increase will be as high as $600 a year. For some households there is a difference of $800. When you are talking about what Labor had promised those households and what they'll have to pay, it's a difference of around $1,400. That is the cost of what Labor is doing here.

We can talk about numbers all we like, but there's a human story here. It's the human story that worries me most. We have 82,000 families in this country who are already on hardship programs. That's only going to get worse. If we think of last winter, we had stories of senior citizens who had to make a decision about whether or not they could turn the heating on or put food on the table. Will any of the Labor members who will speak today guarantee seniors that they will not have to make that tragic choice this winter? Behind these numbers lie the human stories of middle Australians that are struggling. The fact that this government did not have a single measure in its recent federal budget to assist middle Australia is a disgrace. These higher prices are on them. They have broken a promise and they are only making it harder for middle Australia.

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