Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Last night on Four Cornersthe Prime Minister's former energy adviser Danny Price referred to an emissions intensity scheme, which is Labor's policy, and said:

If an Emissions Intensity Scheme had been put in place customers would have been seeing a price reduction in absolute terms.

Instead, wholesale power prices have doubled since the election of this government, and Mr Price predicts prices will rise further by around 30 to 40 per cent. When will the Prime Minister stand up to the hard Right of his party and put in place a policy that provides price relief to households and Australian business?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member, fresh from South Australia, that triumph of energy policy, where you have got 100 per cent of your electricity from wind farms one minute and then zero—no storage, no planning, no engineering, no economics, just ideology. The reality is that the Labor governments failed to develop our gas resources on the east coast of Australia and in particular in the state of Victoria, where you have in many respects the largest demand for gas for industry and the largest resource and yet a government that is determined not to allow access. There are 40 years of gas under the ground in Victoria, and politics stops it coming out.

The reality is this: the gas price scandal—and that is what it is—is one that has been created by Labor governments, by a reckless lack of planning and awareness and by the calculations of people like the gentleman the honourable member referred to that you will find were all based on $4-a-gigajoule gas, which, regrettably, is very much a matter of the past. We are tackling that problem. We are sorting it out. It took a long time for the Labor Party to create this gas crisis, but we are sorting it out with our export regulation, with our determination to get more exploration and with our commitment to ensure that there is more transportation and more affordable, more reliable, more plentiful supplies of gas right across Australia, but especially here on the east coast, where so many jobs depend on it.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the member for Port Adelaide seeking to table a document?

Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, thank you, Mr Speaker, a document titled 'Wholesale power prices have doubled since the carbon tax was axed', a newspaper report of 9 March 2017—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, the member just has to ask leave to table a document.

Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to table that document.

Leave not granted.