David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) congratulates the Australian Government for its sensible and pragmatic approach to ensuring energy security and affordability in Australia;

(2) acknowledges that balancing our energy supply through the use of clean-fired coal, renewable energy sources and liquefied gas will be key to the Australian Government's approach;

(3) notes that:

(a) Queensland is home to a number of coal-fired stations and is advancing a number of renewable energy projects, placing it in a prime position to become an energy hub; and

(b) the coal industry directly employs over 44,000 people and pays over $5.7 billion in wages and salaries; and

(4) condemns the Federal Opposition and Queensland Government for their reckless and unrealistic renewable energy targets of 50 per cent, which only serve to threaten energy security and jobs, as well as drastically escalate the cost of electricity for individuals, businesses and industry as a whole.

I am proud to be part of a government that is approaching energy policy in such a sensible and pragmatic way, because getting this mix right is so important. It is so important to business, households and the jobs that employ Australians, particularly in the coal sector. Forty-four thousand Australians are employed in the coal sector in Australia today, which is $5.7 billion worth of wages.

Getting that balance right for households is important. I sat in the community of Warwick in only the last couple of weeks and talked to pensioners about the rising cost of electricity, about how that was impacting on the decisions they make as we go into winter about how much they will use heating in their own houses. It will also affect small businesses. I was out in Eulo, a little community west of Cunnamulla, in September last year. They are now making the decision not to open their general store in summer because of the rising cost of electricity. In Meandarra, another little community just south of Chinchilla, the local cafe owner is in the same predicament because of the rising cost of electricity. Getting a sensible and pragmatic policy setting in place that will ensure that we responsibly move on meeting our international targets with respect to renewable energy is imperative.

It has to be a sensible one. We have seen what has happened in South Australia. In fact, Business SA came out only last week in an inquiry on the policies that have been put in place in South Australia that have contributed to the increase in unemployment to 7.3 per cent and the $450 million that was lost in the South Australian economy during that blackout because of the ideology of the South Australian government in not understanding the pragmatic impacts that not getting those settings right will have on each and every one of us within our communities.

I am fortunate enough to live in an electorate that is an energy hub. We have three coal-fired power stations in my electorate at Tarong, at Millmerran and at Kogan Creek. To put it in perspective, in Queensland alone 70 per cent of our energy supply comes from coal, 18 per cent comes from gas and only 4.4 per cent comes from renewable energy. So, if we go down the path the Palaszczuk Labor government wants to in Queensland to a 50 per cent Renewable Energy Target by 2030, we will need to see a 45 per cent increase in renewable energy output by 2030. That is not a responsible way to treat energy and electricity prices for the consumers across Queensland—or the nation, as we are seeing other state governments come in.

To put it into perspective: if you look at wind energy, it is around $140 a megawatt hour. Solar is about $100, gas is $80, and coal is $40. So we have that seismic shift in the generation of our energy sources. You are going to put considerable strain on local economies, on small businesses, pensioners and households that are struggling to keep themselves to keep themselves alive in a competitive world. We are putting too much pressure on small businesses, particularly those in regional and rural Australia that are the heart and soul of my communities that employ nearly everybody. I do not have big corporates in my electorate; I am fortunate that I have small businesses that are passionate about their communities and what they are doing.

Making sure that we have a sensible and pragmatic approach to get this setting right is imperative. It is also beholden to on our state governments, and particularly the Palaszczuk Labor government, to ensure that the cost of generation is one piece of the puzzle of electricity costs. We cannot let state governments off the hook on this, particularly in Queensland, where government-owned corporations are controlling the distribution of electricity across the state. The dividends they are taking out of these companies at the expense of each and every one of us are something every state government needs to understand and needs to start to wean themselves off. Effectively it is a tax by stealth on each of us by these state governments which have become beholden on those dividends to keep them afloat. They need to structurally adjust the way in which they do that because it is not the everyday Australians who should be bearing the tax of a state government or the distribution arm of this policy.

Getting this setting right is so imperative for the future of this nation and for the states. I am proud to say that in my electorate we do have renewable energy—wind, solar, gas and geothermal. We are in an energy hub, but we need to progress that in a pragmatic and sensible way which will take this nation forward and which will pull the economic levers to give wealth to each and every one of us.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I saw this motion, I did not know whether to laugh or to cry. Catastrophic energy policy from this government has seen electricity prices double on their watch. Their dismantling of the carbon price in the scheme put in place by Labor has strangled investment in the energy industry and resulted in a spike in prices which consumers will have to live with for many years to come. It is very clear where the blame for this lies—at those ideologues who run this government and who do not respect market signals. They can be in climate-change denial at the same time as they see prices double as a consequence of removing a rational market in energy.

So energy prices have doubled. What this motion really says is: 'We have a government which is applauding its own incompetence.' It is just simply breathtaking that they could ignore it. The member for Maranoa talked about pensioners in Warwick, a town I know well. I bet he did not tell them that electricity prices were doubling as a consequence of the ideological decisions taken by those opposite. Every step they have taken in four years has not been about ensuring energy security or affordability; it has been the opposite—energy insecurity and unaffordability.

The pricing scheme put in place by the last Labor government was going to drive the investment we needed to keep prices down. The absence of that investment is what has doubled prices. Of course, our scheme put in place way back then was no different to the scheme that had been originally proposed by John Howard and then supported by the current Prime Minister right through to December 2009—until the coalition was taken over by Tea Party extremists with the backing of the Murdoch press and powerful and vested interests in the energy industry who sought to undermine sound policy. Now, of course, the same people who did that—the Business Council of Australia and all their mates—are back imploring this government to put some form of an emissions trading scheme back in. Do not laugh. The Business Council of Australia—the people who run parts of this government—are now asking them to restore a scheme which they destroyed. The irony of businesses now calling for some form of energy intensity scheme, not unlike what Labor had put in place, is absolutely extraordinary.

The campaign of lies that they built to destroy that scheme has come back to bite them on the bum, and what has come out of that is a doubling of electricity prices. So we have had a lost decade that we could not afford on climate and energy policy in this country, and we should never forget the charlatans and opportunists who did that and produced this spike in electricity prices that is hitting the living standards of low-income people right across our country. The responsibility lies with those opposite and nobody else.

A recent report from Melbourne's climate and energy college found that prices have doubled—I repeat 'doubled'. The cost of energy has increased from roughly $65 per megawatt hour under the Labor government's carbon-trading scheme to $134 a megawatt hour today. This is absolutely stunning. Of course, Queensland has been one of the states worst hit by this price hike, so it is laughable that the member for Maranoa comes in here to highlight the Liberals' incompetence in his home state and in his own electorate, because, by eliminating the carbon-trading scheme, the coalition removed the price signals that were needed to drive the necessary investment in gas and in renewable energy to secure our economic and environmental future.

Prior to the abolition of the carbon price we had a huge spike of investment in renewable energy. Now, as I said before, organisations as diverse as the Business Council of Australia are coming back and complaining about a lack of stability and clarity in government policy. They should be ashamed to even appear in public to argue for a carbon price after all of the heat that they constructed. They conspired with the Liberals opposite to get rid of the price on carbon in the first place. They should be ashamed of their actions and so should those opposite. (Time expired)

Michelle Landry (Capricornia, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Central Queensland has the ability to produce the power we need, but where is the will from Labor? Here are the facts. Queensland and the people of Capricornia need secure jobs. The price of electricity is hurting families and it is hurting business. Central Queensland has the capacity to produce high-energy, low-emission coal-fired power and liquid natural gas and is leading the way in renewable energy production. It is a simple equation with an obvious solution, but both the federal opposition and the Queensland state Labor government do not seem willing or able to do the maths.

The Queensland Labor government is denying Capricornia vital jobs and business competitiveness by labelling a clean coal-fired power station as not rational. As Australian businesses and families endure rising electricity costs and shortages, the Palaszczuk government is again blocking the solution that would also provide much-needed jobs for Central Queensland.

Business is doing it tough. Without investment in vital infrastructure to drive down the cost of doing business, Australian companies simply cannot remain competitive. If they cannot be competitive, they cannot afford to grow and hire more people. It is that simple. Local businesses are already struggling with rising prices and will turn to less environmentally-friendly options, like diesel, if more economically sustainable options are not provided.

I do not think the city Greens comprehend the repercussions to both industry and the environment if business cannot afford to operate. Labor is literally fuelling the fire by continuing to side with the Greens. It is irresponsible for the economy, it does nothing for the environment and it is creating a business environment that is unsustainable. But at least they can sleep in their air-conditioned comfort with their distorted belief that they are somehow helping. It is easy to talk about six per cent carbon emission variations whilst sitting in the comfort of a luxury air-conditioned apartment in a well-lit suburban street with access to all the electric-powered mod cons. It is not so easy to do the same when you live in regional Queensland, where jobs are few and far between, public transport is virtually nonexistent and the costs of doing business are on the rise. We know that renewables will be the way of the future, but we are not there yet.

As I have said before, the investors in clean coal today will be the investors in renewables in the future. Until we are there, we need to ensure we are delivering affordable power to Australians. Adani itself owns the second-biggest solar farm in the world in Tamil Nadu. They are hoping to invest in similar projects in Queensland. Whitsunday Solar Farm and Hamilton Solar Farm are both expected to be operational by the start of 2018, adding a combined 165 megawatts of renewable energy to the national electricity grid. That is enough to power an estimated 87,000 homes. The projects will lead to 300 jobs during construction. This is a great start, but, as business like Dobinsons Springs in Rockhampton have raised with me, the current cost of storage makes solar unaffordable for operations requiring power 24/7. When operations ramp up, such companies need reliable power, and solar is not able to provide this, especially when it has been cloudy for a few days. It would cost the company millions of dollars to purchase adequate storage.

In April, the coalition government released a framework for a new Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism to ensure a secure and adequate supply of gas. The ADGSM is a critical part of the Turnbull government's gas market security plan, aimed at making sure adequate and reasonably priced gas is delivered to Australian homes and businesses. It is time Labor stopped the hypocrisy and got behind such responsible measures.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I first read this motion I seriously thought it was a joke. I thought it was a topic of conversation for the next open mic night at the Canberra comedy club—the hide of those opposite! The member for Maranoa moved a motion that 'congratulates the Australian government for its sensible and pragmatic approach to ensuring energy security and affordability in Australia'—are you kidding me? This is the government that has presided over the most horrendous increase in electricity prices in this country that is affecting households and businesses to the nth degree. Yet here they are, congratulating themselves for sending electricity prices through the roof. It says everything about just how out of touch this Turnbull government is.

We all know that electricity and gas prices are increasing dramatically in Australia, and Australian consumers are worse off because of the policies of this Turnbull government. In TheAustralian Financial Review on 6 March, it was reported that hardware manufacturer Alchin Long Group, based in Western Sydney, faced a doubling of their electricity price contract with Origin Energy. It had gone from $53.30 per megawatt hour to $109.70 per megawatt hour. That is the reality for businesses in Australia and for small businesses trying to make ends meet and trying to compete with international imports. That is the reality. That is what the government's policies have done to small businesses in Australia when it comes to energy costs.

Now let's look at households. An ANU study by Ben Phillips in February of this year, based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics Household Expenditure Survey, showed that over the last 10 years, despite falls in electricity use by households, electricity prices increased by 108 per cent. Guess what the worst state for those increases was? It was none other than Queensland, the state which the member who moved this motion comes from.

This government knows electricity prices are a big issue. They know it because they put in place an energy supplement for pensioners when they negotiated their corporate tax reduction in Australia. So they realise that energy prices are a big issue and are affecting households. Why is it that prices have increased so much in recent years? There is a simple reason for it, and that is that this government has no plan to transition our economy from dirty coal-fired power to cleaner renewable energy in the future, and, over time, reduce costs for consumers. They have this ideological addiction to coal that they cannot drag themselves away from. It is costing households and businesses and holding back our nation's economic development. By removing a price on carbon emissions, by reducing the Renewable Energy Target, and by attempting to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and ARENA, they have created investment uncertainty within the private sector in Australia. And guess what! Because of that approach, because of their policies, the private sector is not investing in new base-load energy development in Australia.

It is up to the private sector to bring on new investment, and the reason for that is that the Liberals privatised all the systems in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales. They said, 'No, we'll just get rid of it. We will sell it off. It will be right. It won't affect prices at all.' And guess what! The companies in the private sector that bought those investments are not investing in new technology, because of the uncertainty, so prices have gone through the roof. Prices have gone through the roof because we are not getting this new investment coming on. They are saying, 'Let's invest in more coal-fired power stations.' How nuts can you get? How crazy can you get, to suggest that someone in the private sector would want to invest in a coal-fired power station? It is like saying, 'Let's invest in steam trains. I've got a good idea: let's get a new transport policy and we'll invest in steam trains. That is the way to go—that is talking about the future.' That is what those opposite are coming in here and advocating—that the private sector invest in coal-fired electricity. They are absolutely nuts. What we need to be doing is putting in place policies that transition to clean energy, so that there is a reason for the private sector to invest in clean energy, to grow our economy and to invest in new jobs.

George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What we have just heard absolutely defies logic. While Japan, Indonesia, China and even European nations are building hundreds of state-of-the-art coal-fired power stations, we have the opposition sitting here saying that it is yesterday's technology. What a joke. When mankind harnessed the energy of fire it revolutionised the way humans live their lives. We did not shift to that technology—fire—because there was a tax on the cold or because of a ban on raw meat. Successive technologies have driven economies since before the word 'economy' was even invented. Each wave of technology introduced greater efficiencies, more prosperity, more leisure time, and, unfortunately, more time to indulge in non-productive ideologically driven pursuits such as environmental activism.

Yet, here we are in the 21st century, being told by inner-city greenies that North Queenslanders should be prevented from having such a modern economy—prevented from having jobs. The link between affordable energy and jobs is undeniable. South Australia's peak business group, Business SA, is confirmed that power prices and blackouts were having an effect on business insurance expenses and, as Business SA executive Anthony Penney told a parliamentary inquiry on Friday, they were 'unfortunately having an impact on employment as well'.

There was a report in The Weekend Australian saying that industry lost $450 million in the wake of the statewide blackout in September, when a storm downed transmission lines that caused a trip in wind farm power generation and overloaded the Victorian connector. Mr Penney told the parliamentary inquiry:

If you look at today's future energy prices, we're still almost 30 per cent higher than the eastern states. Businesses constantly tell us it's affordability that's the No 1 issue followed by reliability. Businesses are looking to how to better manage their staffing levels due to overall costs.

No doubt impressed with the damage inflicted on South Australia's economy by a reckless pursuit of renewable non-base-load energy, and the dumping of coal-fired power, the Queensland Labor government wants to follow suit, setting a 50 per cent renewable energy target.

Affordable energy is essential to maintaining, much less growing, any economy. This fact was recognised in a North and Northwest Queenslandsustainable resource feasibility studies report, commissioned, I might say, by the Gillard Labor government. That report was on base load power in North Queensland and the Dalrymple agricultural scheme. The key finding in that report commissioned by Labor was that a major coal-fired power station would put strong downward pressure on electricity prices, with a potential $836 million social cost-benefit gain. The report found that such a coal-fired power station would be commercially viable if it were built at the mouth of a coalmine in the Galilee Basin—the same Galilee Basin that people like the previous speaker secretly oppose, even though their leader says something different.

In March 2014, the Australian Energy Market Operator reported that there would be a breach of the reliability standard in Queensland by 2020-21—there would not be enough generation capacity to actually meet demand. Building extra capacity in the system is an imperative, and if we are to learn anything from South Australia it is that the extra capacity cannot come at the expense of reliability and affordability. Coal is reliable and it is affordable. New clean coal technology means that an ultrasupercritical generator can use a pulverised coal combustion system, operating at higher temperature and pressure, to generate reliable supply with up to 50 per cent fewer emissions than conventional coal-fired generators.

Using the new technology to meet increasing demand and to replace older high-emission technology would seem like an obvious choice for anyone that wants to reduce overall emissions, but the hopes and dreams that the ideologues discuss over their double-decaf soy lattes is not a reduction of emissions. The real goal for them, their endgame, is an end to fossil fuels, an end to big business and an end to capitalism and democracy. These things they hate most—business, capitalism and the efficient use of resources—have underpinned the great economies of the world, all the economies where lifestyle, human achievement and development have excelled.

In North Queensland, we are blessed with resources—one of the resources being coal, in both the Bowen Basin and the Galilee Basin. The industry employs 44,000 people and it pays more than $5.7 billion in wages. Even greater benefit is gained through indirect employment and taxes and royalties paid to state and federal governments. Despite the fact that we are blessed with such resources, we do not use the coal ourselves where we could get cheaper energy and more jobs as an outcome.

David Feeney (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Justice) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Since the Abbott-Turnbull government abolished the carbon price, there has been a national policy vacuum created by their inaction. As a result of that negligence, wholesale electricity prices across Australia have doubled. In fact, the only ones congratulating the Turnbull government on their energy policy are the Turnbull government. The recent budget saw this government proudly announce a number of policies that they have lauded as an energy security package. However, like the rest of the measures in this year's budget, this so-called package is an admission of failure, a signed confession, without actually fixing the problem. As Tony Wood, the Director of the Energy Program of the Grattan Institute has said:

The budget does little more on energy than endorse the government's deal with Senator Nick Xenophon on corporate tax cuts …

Tinkering with investment in gas pipelines without addressing the issue of domestic market exposure to price rises from the international market is just not enough. Labor has been warning for years about the problems in our gas market. The gas market in this country is broken. I urge the government to adopt a permanent national interest test for the gas market so that Australian businesses and households are at the front of the queue. If the Turnbull government were really serious about energy security in this country, they would also swallow their partisan pride and join Labor in supporting and adopting an emissions intensity scheme, an idea that we know many in the coalition would support but is banned because of the activities of the hard Right inside the Liberal's parliamentary party. This act would put downward pressure on power prices and send the signal that investors are crying out for to renew our ageing electricity infrastructure. Emissions intensity schemes are supported by a vast majority of industry and experts from across the political spectrum, including the Climate Change Authority, BHP and the New South Wales Young Nationals.

While the Turnbull government is proposing, but not guaranteeing, $110 million for a solar project in Port Augusta, they are threatening to throw $1 billion at the Adani Carmichael mine in Queensland. This is a true indication of this government's priorities. If this government were indeed serious about jobs then they could have supported the Australian car industry for half the price and produced 40 times more jobs than the Galilee Basin is projected to do, even on the most generous of assessments. This is not really about jobs. This is nothing more than a national party boondoggle, and it is doing nothing for our industry or our environment. The big four banks have now ruled out funding, or withdrawn funding from, the Queensland coal project, and that speaks to the fact that this project struggles to stack up financially.

There continue to be very deep environmental concerns. Only today the government has had to quietly axe a number of environmental conditions protecting vulnerable turtle species just to keep this project on track. This is despite the minister promising some of the strictest environmental conditions in Australian history—nothing more than rhetoric, and rhetoric that has not been lived up to with deeds from this government. It is easy to meet environmental standards when you just scrap the inconvenient ones, but that does not make it right. It casts yet another shadow over this Adani project and this government's energy security policy.

Protecting and creating jobs is important. It is crucial for our communities and crucial for our country. That is why Labor wants to see an orderly transition from fossil fuels accompanied by support for workers, rather than having to react to the decisions of multinationals made on the other side of the world, as we saw at Hazelwood. It is also why I am shocked that those opposite can talk about jobs and growth while at the same time facilitating the loss of over 3,000 jobs in the renewable sector. They are setting this country up to be a technology taker, not a technology maker. In the future, when renewable energy has come to dominate energy markets around the world, this coalition would have us still relying on an energy sector that is running out of lifespan.

There is nothing sensible or pragmatic about the Turnbull government's energy policy because they do not have an energy policy. 'Pragmatic' must mean more than just a lack of progress. It must mean acknowledging realities, building this country's future, and making the big decisions that need to be made to secure our renewable energy industries and the jobs and growth that will flow from that investment.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, from the Labor member's contribution to this debate, I think I have heard everything. Their proposition that they put forward is that if we put a tax on the lowest cost electricity generators, it will somehow make the problem better. With such illogical, irrational, zealotry thinking, I fear for the future of my country.

We have had in this nation a doubling of electricity prices over the last 10 years. But what the members of the Labor Party fail to mention is that almost all of that increase came under their watch. It was the coalition that removed the carbon tax and was able to stabilise electricity prices in this nation. But that has caught up with us. The renewable energy target, having been set by the Labor Party at 20 per cent, has caught up with us, because we have very large increases in electricity prices coming through. Delta Energy has said that the electricity prices coming through this year are $1 billion for South Australia, $2.8 billion for Victoria, $4 billion for New South Wales, and $2 billion for Queensland. Why is that happening? They state these increases are a direct consequence of the closure of the baseload coal-fired power stations. They go on to say that by governments mandating and subsiding renewables, by law, and by the media and the education sector creating a renewables obsession as a populist cause, no rational business would ever invest in baseload coal generation. The mess created by the renewable energy target, and dictated by Labor and the Greens, is the reason we are facing this catastrophic increase in electricity prices in Australia.

We had the member for Kingsford Smith in here talking about coal-fired power plants being something of the past. I have got some news for the member for Kingsford Smith: he may care to look at a paper recently released by no less than Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, two of the most anti-coal organisations on the planet. They list that, in all active developments around the world, there is 842,000 megawatts of coal-fired electricity generating capacity under active construction. That is the equivalent of over 500 Hazelwood power stations. So, where we have closed down one Hazelwood power station, around the world there are more than 500 under active development—and the member for Kingsford Smith comes in here and says, 'Coal-fired power is a thing of the past.' Such stupidity puts the future prosperity of our nation at risk.

If you want to see the future of your 50 per cent renewable energy target, just look at the unmitigated disaster that is occurring in South Australia. It is the highest renewable energy target for electricity in the nation and—surprise, surprise!—South Australia also has the highest unemployment. Last month's unemployment figures have come out. Everywhere around the nation was either stable or saw unemployment fall except for the unmitigated disaster in South Australia. And what are the South Australians having to do? They are spending another $500 million of money they do not have to install diesel generators and a few batteries that will be completely useless. When they buy those batteries, I hope they get a free set of steak knives! Energy is the most important thing that we have in our nation for our competitive advantage.

There was a paper published back in 2004, and I will quote from it. It says:

Australia enjoys some of the lowest stationary energy prices in the developed world. These prices have been an important factor in Australia's national prosperity, underpinning energy-intensive industry and providing cheap reliable energy to businesses and households.

We have surrendered that. We have surrendered our national competitive advantage. This has flowed through to higher cost to consumers, higher cost to businesses and fewer jobs, and the Renewable Energy Target is to blame. I call on members on the Labor Party side to think about the nation. Put the nation first before your ideological obsession. (Time expired)

Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This motion is ostensibly about energy security. But, in reality, it is about a government that is stuck in the past with its head in the sand. The policies of this government, in destroying emissions reduction laws and policies, together with complete inaction in delivering any positive policies in this area itself, have led us to the energy security crisis that we are currently facing in the eastern states of Australia.

Let's be clear, this problem does not exist in Western Australia, where the forward-thinking Labor state government introduced a gas reservation policy a decade ago, securing gas supply and, therefore, electricity supply in Western Australia. It is amazing what a difference having clear policies and a plan can make. It is a pity we do not have any such thing from this government. The lack of clarity from this government on renewable energy targets has led to a chronic underinvestment in energy generation due to uncertainty.

It is an interesting fact that, when it comes to the oil and gas companies of the world, they all include a market price on carbon in their projections and forecasts, because they know that which the government denies: something has to give. When it comes to energy security, this government is all puff and cluck—as was very well exemplified by the previous speaker.

Mr Turnbull conducted round tables with gas producers with no binding outcomes. Then he announced changes guaranteeing domestic gas supplies in emergency situations. That is a good start, but it does nothing to provide the security and certainty that many businesses around Australia require so they know how much gas they can get and at what price they can get it in order to plan and run their businesses—and we are talking about some of Australia's major employment hubs being under threat here.

This motion seeks to congratulate the Turnbull government:

… for its sensible and pragmatic approach to ensuring energy security and affordability in Australia;

You have to congratulate the member for Maranoa for moving such a motion without even a sense of irony. Alas, the joke is being played out on the Australian people. Energy security not only at peak emergency times but also long term at a sustainable cost is vitally important to the ongoing operation of many businesses—like the Portland aluminium smelter in Victoria. I think everyone in this parliament knows that; you should know that. And thousands of jobs depend on it.

To bring this back home a bit, I will talk about the great workers at the Huntly and Willowdale bauxite mines, and at the Pinjarra, Wagerup and Kwinana alumina refineries. These are thousands more workers who are not talked about enough. Many of them come from my electorate of Burt, as well as from the seats they are situated in—Canning and Brand. In order to have an aluminium smelter you need alumina, and that comes from the refineries in Pinjarra, Wagerup and Kwinana. If there is no smelter, there is no need for the alumina refineries. It is the case that some of these refineries may be able to stay working, in order to export alumina overseas, but why put any of these jobs at risk? That brings us to the mine sites, which would be affected if there was a reduction in throughput at the refineries. You can export bauxite, but, again, why would we put any of these jobs at risk? So, despite all the efforts in securing energy in Western Australia to support the bauxite and alumina operations that we have, the ineptitude of this federal government is putting WA jobs at risk by not being able to secure energy supplies in eastern Australia.

This is but an example of the issues that are writ large across the nation. Where do these issues come from? Despite an abundance of gas around the east coast of Australia, as well as on land, we have a situation where there is no energy security in the Australian energy market. The causes are multiple and complex, but one point is abundantly clear: the lack of action by this government over the four years. It is like they woke up in 2017 and suddenly realised there is a crisis. Now we have this Hollowmen type motion: 'Clean coal, aren't we working on that? Yeah, but not with a straight face; it's a fantastic distraction for us.' What a farce this government has become—a parody of a parody.

Debate interrupted.