Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. Labor's energy plan is off the rails. It's gone woke and it's sending companies broke. I firmly believe Labor's plan to reach net zero is unrealistic. It's a plan for higher prices, rolling blackouts and environmental damage. Labor's plan is just for higher household energy bills, and we see it. We see it in the bills that have gone up to $1,000 since they've entered office, and, with the new plan passed, we will see bills rise a further $300 more next financial year. And why? We now know Labor's plan, which it previously touted at $122 billion, will actually cost $642 billion.

This is a number that the government does not dispute, and there's still north in that figure of $642 billion. It excludes Snowy Hydro, Orana and a whole host of other projects. It excludes consumer energy costs such as batteries and solar. This is why Australians are paying a thousand dollars more and will pay, as I said, up to $300 more next financial year. Yet we watch them high-fiving over that $150 subsidy and talking about the relief they're wreaking for everyday Australians. We watched them high-fiving over these subsidies when we watched Whyalla Steelworks close, because businesses are going broke. And it's not just big businesses like Whyalla Steelworks; it's small and medium manufacturers, small boilermakers, machine workers and shop workers. This plan is not realistic and it's not fit-for-purpose; it's intermittent energy and higher prices.

Let's take onshore wind as an example. Onshore wind will need to increase to five gigawatts a year to meet their 2030 target. Is that realistic? Guess what—we have not produced more than one gigawatt a year to date. Do we think we can increase by 500 per cent the amount of offshore wind to meet their targets? Actually, offshore wind has been decreasing. Yet we're meant to believe this magic pudding plan that, somehow, it will increase by 500 per cent. Labor also assumes hydrogen power will become available in the 2040s. This is despite Origin and Twiggy Forrest walking away from it and no leading country in the world planning on hydrogen to be a significant part of their energy mix. Yet there it is in the AEMO step change and Labor's plan. We're banking on hydrogen. It also says gas should increase by 50 per cent. That's Labor's own plan. Yet they're not approving further gas. We are not approving it. This is why this will send this country broke. It's because we've gone woke.

Labor's plan also predates artificial intelligence. It predates blockchain and all these energy-intensive industries. That is why we've seen Google, Microsoft and Meta all investing in this sector. This is why we've heard evidence from the Minerals Council of Australia that it's negligent. This is why we heard from Dr Chris Greig from Princeton, who worked on Australia's and America's net zero plans and gave evidence. The Daily Telegraph called it 'not even close' in the article 'Leading scientist's scathing review of Australia's net zero progress'. This is someone who actually promotes net zero in both Australia and America.

Further, our continued prohibition stands in stark contrast to the rest of the world. Twenty-five countries in COP28, including the US and UK, pledged to triple global nuclear capacity, but not Australia. Embarrassingly, they actually announced that Australia would be part of this and would be sharing research with the US and UK. But, embarrassingly, our government trotted someone out there to say that we'd be withdrawing from an agreement where they would voluntarily share intel and research with us to help us decarbonise our grid and lower prices. We backed out of it—pathetic. Even the former chief scientist of South Australia gave evidence saying that we should be looking at nuclear, and she had no hope that we could get to a decarbonised grid or lower prices without nuclear. We heard expert after expert over these weeks. I'm new to parliament. I actually thought this would be an inquiry where we got together, we looked at it and we talked about it but, instead, what we had was an inquiry with a majority of Labor members who actually wrote a report. We proposed amendments, none of which were considered, none of which were debated, all of which were rejected in about 10 minutes. Therefore, we had no option left but to put together a dissenting report to try and help Australian businesses, to try and help Australian households, make ends meet. (Time expired)

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