Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a real pleasure to once again be speaking on a debate brought to us by the member for Fairfax—we obviously had the MPI last Thursday. It's good to be here again talking about these issues. I am grateful to the member for Fairfax for providing yet another opportunity to talk about how our government is taking responsible action when it comes to the energy future of this country, while those opposite spend their time living in some kind of fantasy land, because it seems that rather than using their time in opposition to reflect—to think about what they didn't do over the last decade, what should the future of this country be, how do they deal with the very real challenges our country is facing, to get up to speed with where the Australian people are, and where the experts are when it comes to energy, climate, renewables in this place—instead, what we have is the person, who the Liberals and The Nationals would have serve as their Minister for Energy and Climate Change, is often away talking about how great nuclear power is and is joined by many of his colleagues.

It does seem that for many of those opposite they do see nuclear power as their ticket back to government, but, I have to say, it doesn't seem like there are many other people out there who are with them on that ticket. In fact, I think it was the former Liberal minister for energy in New South Wales who said about nuclear power:

people talking about nuclear as an asset to our energy challenges right now are literally chasing unicorns.

It seems that that is what we are actually debating at the moment—starting down the path of wanting to introduce the most expensive and probably, for our country, the slowest form of energy to roll out in this country. That's what all the experts tell us. They tell us that this is not the option for our country. The option, as we move and as we transform, is a renewable one. That is certainly what our government is doing. Again, I note that one of the reasons that nuclear is not the option—and certainly the experts tell us this—is that we don't have an existing industry in this country. It's certainly not something that those opposite did anything about in their decade of denial and drift. I've lost count of how many energy policies they did actually bring forward in that decade. I don't think that they landed any of them, though, and that is why our country is in the position we are in, where we are behind on the transformation we should be making to a cleaner, greener renewable-powered future. But we are now in the situation where we have a government in office who 'get' it, who understand that that is our future and who are working as hard as we can, as fast as we can, to make that happen.

Those opposite know that they were wrong to vote against our government's Energy Price Relief Plan, which we put in place late last year. We do know that energy prices are a real concern. We do know that cost-of-living pressures are a very real thing for many people in our communities. As a government, we want to do all we can to support those people while also making sure that we don't do anything to add to the very real inflationary pressures Australia is facing—that we know countries around the world are facing at the moment—and while we face the issue of energy prices being affected by the war in Ukraine.

All the experts, again, have said that the work our government did last year, through our energy relief plan, has helped to keep prices lower than they otherwise would've been. The facts are these. The increases in default market offer prices are now up to $492 less for residential customers than they would have been without our government's intervention and up to $1,310 less for small businesses than they would've been otherwise. It seems that if those opposite had their way they would rip up this intervention that our government introduced. It seems like they would rather see unconstrained increases happen than step in to take the pressure off Australian households. They'd rather hitch their wagon to some kind of unicorn future with nuclear power than do the work here and now to get Australians' cheaper electricity.

Unlike those opposite, our government is not operating in a fantasy land. We are and we always will be upfront with the Australian people about the challenges and the opportunities we have. We know that Australian people get that. They don't want to be left in the dark. They don't want to live in a fantasy land. They want a government that understands that there is a genuine future for us, that there is a future where we are a renewable energy superpower. They want a government that is doing everything we can to harness the jobs, the opportunity and the future from that, and that is certainly what they are getting with the Albanese Labor government.

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