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

I acknowledge the minister, who's in the Federation Chamber with us here today. The minister has just raised a few points. Firstly, he spoke about electricity. What was interesting though was that he is celebrating the fact that a report has come out where the operator thinks there may not be blackouts this winter. It goes to the precarious nature of our electricity grid that we have the minister of this country coming into the chamber and celebrating the fact that, in what is a developed country, the lights might stay on. That's how bad this has become.

We do know, though, that only two weeks ago the operator put out a different report, saying that there is a heightened risk of blackouts this coming summer. The minister was silent about the operator's view in that regard. The minister continues to do this. He will deflect and cherrypick data in the hope of telling a good story. He suggests that everything is going swimmingly well with regard to supply. But we know that all major energy experts in this country are calling out the problem we have with a lack of supply, which not only risks the lights going out but is, of course, driving prices up. He talks about wanting the coalition to release its energy policy, but I note that the Labor Party released its Powering Australia plan in the December before the election, giving the Australian public very little time to consider it. By the way, the modelling there suggested a $275 reduction in household power bills, which I'll come to shortly.

Lastly, there is the vehicle efficiency standard, to which the minister just referred. Again, it totally missed the opportunity to get the balance right between price, choice and emissions reduction, and that is why we have seen Australians very concerned about the inevitable increase in the purchase price of vehicles. This is something, again, that the minister has failed to furnish modelling on to suggest otherwise. The only modelling he has furnished suggests electricity prices will continue to come down for those who do rightly opt for the choice, if they wish, to have EVs. That's the only modelling that has suggested that electricity prices are going down.

We've now had two years of the Albanese Labor government, and the dangerous state of the climate and energy agenda suggests things are only going from bad to worse. A $275 reduction in household power bills was promised by the Labor Party ahead of the last election. We now know, because the regulator has revealed the prices of electricity for next year, that some households will be paying up to $1,000 more than what Labor had promised them. To this day, this minister in the chamber has refused to acknowledge what was an untruth, and he continues to perpetrate and peddle a false prophecy of those prices coming down.

Secondly, they promised a reliable grid, more stability. But what we saw—again, the operator suggests we might have blackouts as soon as this summer—only two weeks ago, was an extension of the largest coal-fired power station in New South Wales. Why? It's because this minister's policy has not delivered and the reliability of the grid is in great danger.

Thirdly, we have renewables—82 per cent renewables by 2030. Even the most fervent supporters of renewables suggest that that is running at less than half the electric vehicles target, which is 89 per cent of all new sales of vehicles by 2030 being electric vehicles. His own department suggests that it will be 29 per cent. Social licence—we have 92 per cent of people in regional communities saying that they are not happy with the community consultation under this government for the rollout of transmission lines and renewables. There's the 43 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030. Nobody, other than the minister himself, thinks that this is a possibility.

On every single KPI that this minister and this government have set for themselves—every single one—they are failing, which leads to a very simple question that I wish to put to the minister today: given the government has failed to deliver on any of its climate energy targets, will the minister stop pursuing an all-eggs-in-one-basket renewables-only approach and instead embrace a technology-agnostic approach, one that seeks to have a balanced energy mix, which is what we are seeing with peer nations across the world who are doing it successfully?

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