Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Fairfax for raising this very important matter of public importance, which is about the government's policies, or lack of policies, on the energy market.

I'll tell you what, I'm pleased you spoke about that. I tell you what, it's not going really well for you, is it? The simple fact of the matter is: power prices are going up. That's exactly what's happening. Power prices are going up. You can talk about it however you want. You can dress it up, you can do whatever you need to do, but power prices are going up. This is on the back of a promise from the Albanese Labor government that they were going to come down by $275. Yes, $275—that's not a slip of the tongue; that's a promise that was mentioned 97 times. We're used to Labor's porky pies. It's nothing new at all. Mortgages are going up; grocery prices are going up. But let me tell everyone in this place that grocery prices will continue to go up, because you've lost control of the energy market. Woolies, Coles—all the major retailers—have to have air conditioning and lights, and that requires energy. That's going to go up.

Government members interjecting—

I appreciate the interjection of '2025'. That is another fantastic thing about this place. I love being in this place, because everything is recorded. Let's focus in on that—'by 2025'. I'll bet a carton of beer and say there's no way in the world that power prices will be cheaper than they are now. And that's simply because of capex. The trajectory that the current government is on, taking us down this renewable energy path at all costs, simply won't work. You have solar, for example. When a generator develops a solar farm, the first thing they do is wipe out all the vegetation there—and we'll talk about that a bit later. Then you put the solar there and it contributes energy to the grid for about eight hours a day—unless clouds come over, and then it's less than that. It's unreliable and it's intermittent.

So then what happens when you can't use that? You need some energy, so you build a big wind tower. How do you do that? You wipe out all the vegetation on top of the hill, and then you put the wind tower up the top. But when the wind doesn't blow there's no energy again, so more capex is sitting there doing nothing.

Then you have to firm it in some way. The only way you can firm it is with gas, but no-one over on that side of the chamber wants to talk about gas or coal—certainly not coal. The Treasurer couldn't even mention coal, which contributes over $100 billion to the economy, in the budget speech. It's: 'Oh, no, we can't mention coal.' You aren't even brave enough to have the conversation about nuclear. You need to at least have the conversation about nuclear.

We have all this steel and all these mystical and magical things happening out in the environment, but, as we talked about, you got rid of all the vegetation. There's this very valuable thing called photosynthesis. Let me, as a farmer, tell you how that works. You start off with a plan, you have all the vegetation, you add some sunlight and some water, and the plants turn carbon dioxide into oxygen. But you've just wiped out all that vegetation to put the solar farm or the wind farm there. It simply does not make sense.

To back it up, we've got the ridiculous Queensland pumped hydro scheme next to Eungella Dam. It is absolutely crazy. To use a pumped hydro system, you need energy to pump the water up. There's no energy there. There's no transmission there. Then you need the transmission lines to go away from that. Again, you will be taking more vegetation out of the system. Here's a spoiler alert for everyone out there: you're going to make power prices much higher if you keep going down this track.

That's why I'm so pleased that you keep talking about how in 2025 we will see that reduction. I will wait for that reduction. I really look forward it to. You can't have transition without transmission. What's going to happen, folks, if we have a cold winter or a really hot summer? There are going to be blackouts everywhere, and we will be holding the Albanese Labor government to account for that.

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