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

():  After two years of Labor, Australians are feeling poorer and Australia, as a nation, is weaker. For nearly 110 weeks the Albanese Labor government has been in power and, on average, every single one of those weeks has seen over 600 additional households sign up for hardship arrangements with their energy retailer.

As of today, there has never been in Australia's history more Australians on hardship arrangements because of Labor's energy policy. Only a couple of weeks ago, I was at the Sunshine Coast Agricultural Show. I met a senior citizen who made it very clear to me that she no longer has hot meals at night because she is desperately nervous about not being able to turn on the heater at night. She has to make a trade-off. But, of course, that's Queensland. There are places right across Australia where we have senior citizens who can neither heat nor eat at night because they cannot afford it.

I was speaking to the Salvos in Maroochydore only a couple of weeks ago. They were explaining to me how they are seeing a completely different set of people coming in. It is not just those who have always been struggling in the lower socioeconomic bracket, but also middle Australia. More and more families are coming for help because they cannot afford to live. Up the hill in my area, in Mapleton, we have a multigenerational family running the IGA. They're going to have to close their doors because of energy prices.

All of these people have something else in common, and it's not just the fact that they are finding it hard to make ends meet. Every single one of them was looked in the eye by the now Prime Minister and promised a $275 reduction in their household power bills. They were made that promise 97 times. This was the same Prime Minister who said that his word is his bond, and yet he has let these people down. Still to this day that Prime Minister and the minister who sits at this table opposite me now have failed to show the courage to look the Australian people in the eye and say that that promise will be broken. Now it's his opportunity to stand in this chamber, after I speak today, and come clean. That promise of a $275 reduction in household power bills will never be met.

This is a minister whose own electorate is in the state of New South Wales. There are people in New South Wales who, in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, will be paying over $1,000 more for their electricity bills than this minister promised them. This is how bad it is. Over last year's and this year's budget, this government announced $6.5 billion in energy relief packages. No doubt the Labor backbench will get up and give their talking points about this. This is billions of dollars to mop up the failure of the minister who sits right here at this table. And guess what? He still can't achieve his $275 reduction in household power bills.

I gave this minister the benefit of the doubt over the first year or so in office. I thought to myself, 'I will give him the benefit of the doubt; he is unconsciously incompetent.' But he now knows full well what is happening, and he still will not come clean, which makes him consciously incompetent. That is a far worse situation, because he knows full well that the people to whom he told untruths are out there struggling to turn their lights on, keep the heating on and cook their meals at night. Yet he goes out still and promises them false prophecies of a world in which prices will come down. But no serious energy commentator agrees with his forecast—his prediction. This is why we have the problem we have.

We have had accusation after accusation from this government, calling on the opposition to release the costings of our energy policy. We have made it very clear; we shall do that in due course and well ahead of the next election. We say that from opposition. Here we have a government that has been in power for two years and still to this day cannot tell the Australian people the cost of its energy plan. The minister can now interject if he likes and tell us the cost of his energy plan. The cost? I welcome the interjection. If the minister does not wish—

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