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

It is the case, as this government has always recognised, that there are pressures on energy bills. That's why we've acted and intervened, with no support from those opposite—with the active opposition of those opposite. The Leader of the Opposition boasts in speeches to APPEA that he will rip up the intervention because he wants to see bills go higher. That's his declared position. That is the direct result of his policy declaration, just as it's the direct result of the deceit of the member for Hume, who hid from the Australian people the default market offer. They actually changed the law—signed a regulation to change the law of the land—so that these increases would be hidden from the Australian people before the last election. This is the direct result of their actions. The fact that Australia is so exposed to these international circumstances because we had four gigawatts of dispatchable power leave the grid and only one gigawatt come on is a direct result of their policy indolence over a decade.

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