Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise on the Electricity Infrastructure Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. It's interesting that the government wants to ram these provisions through the House, given that the bill is still under review by a Senate committee. It tells us much about this government's agenda and what they want to do. I know in some brief conversation I had with the member for Spence in the lead-up to my remarks, I noted that once again we see the government waxing lyrical about its green energy plans. As usual, the promise of the government's programs and policies bears little resemblance to the actual delivery and the impact on the ground. But we're used to that now, and the Australian people are increasingly waking up to that reality.

What we find is that Labor refuses to tell Australians how much offshore wind will cost and how much they will have to pay on their power bills. In fact, we have no idea what Labor's grand green scheme of 82 per cent by 2030 is going to cost the Australian people because they refuse to even make an attempt to detail what the true cost will be. As the member for Forrest rightly pointed out, there is a multitude of holes in this policy big enough to drive a Mack truck through.

Now, in this case, Labor is changing the rules after the fact, which creates uncertainty for investors and raises the risk profile for energy projects in Australia. The government has completely ignored industry stakeholders on this bill, rushing through legislation that directly affects major investment decisions without proper consultation. Well, knock me down with a feather. This isn't the first time this government has done this. They have a track record over the past three years of ramming legislation through this place, with a fig leaf of consultation. But, when you actually scratch the surface, there has been no consultation, or maybe at best, to give them a little bit of credit—which they're probably not due, but I'll give them a little bit—they've made some attempt to speak with their favoured groups but not all affected stakeholders. That's their track record. They speak to their favourite groups and not the full range of impacted stakeholders. More importantly what we find in many of the consultation processes is that they get people to sign non-disclosure agreements so you can't even have an open and public debate about the proposals the government is putting forward.

I find that incredibly interesting, because I seem to remember—and the shadow minister at the table might correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure he won't—that this current government came to power in 2022 promising an era of openness, transparency and letting the sun shine in.

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