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

I appreciate the question from the terrific member for Aston. From 1 July, every taxpayer in Australia will receive a tax cut, and from 1 July everybody who has an energy bill will receive an energy bill rebate under the Albanese government. In Victoria, that means 2.7 million households and 230,000 small businesses, which is good news for those businesses. It comes after the recent Victorian Default Offer, which was encouraging because it showed a six per cent reduction in energy prices. We know there's a lot more to do, but when you put the energy price reduction, the tax cuts and those encouraging default offers together, we are seeing real relief for Australians, who we recognise have been doing it very tough. Also, last night we had other reforms in the budget which facilitate work with the states to ensure that people who are entitled to a discount get it automatically and that people who want to change their provider can do so easily, with one-click switching of energy bills.

The honourable member asked me what approaches we have rejected and how they compare. There have been other approaches in the past. This is a month of anniversaries. May is a month of political anniversaries. It's been two years since the election of the Albanese government. It's also two years since the member for Hume changed the law to hide a 20 per cent price rise from the Australian people. He changed the law. Two years ago, today, prices were going up 20 per cent, but we just didn't know about it. We were meant to know on 1 May. The member for Hume changed a law, wrote a regulation, so we didn't find out until 25 May. That was two years ago, this month. We take a different approach. We take an approach of providing relief to Australians, not hiding the truth from Australians. We're not hiding big energy price rises from them, but, rather, dealing with what is before us, and dealing with the relief we can provide.

There have been other approaches as well. I was, perhaps—I have to say—a little unfair to the Leader of the Opposition yesterday. I said that he'd never released an energy policy, and he hasn't this term, but he did when he was running against the member for Wentworth for the prime ministership. He announced that he would take the GST off all energy bills if he was the prime minister, at the cost of $32 billion, which would apply to billionaires if he'd done that—if he took the GST off energy prices. We take a better approach. We take an approach of working with the states to provide real relief for the people doing it tough.

He has a chance tomorrow night to announce more policies. He can announce his nuclear policy, with the sites and the costings. He can announce how he will help Australians doing it tough. He can announce what his real plan for Australians is when it comes to energy relief, because two years into this term he has announced not a single policy—not a single energy policy and nothing about relief for families. The Leader of the Opposition has a chance tomorrow night to outline his alternative vision with the real cost of policies. We can't wait to see it. (Time expired)

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