Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to inform the House that in Woolbrook, where I went to school, tonight it will be around minus three. On Sunday it will be minus six. In Armidale, on the weather report, they are talking about it being minus eight. It is vitally important that people who live in those sorts of areas have the capacity to keep themselves warm. If you can't keep yourself warm, then you really do live in a country that doesn't reflect the standard of living we should have here in Australia.

To keep yourself warm, you must have affordable power. You must have the capacity to pay your power bill. Over and over again, we are receiving emails from people who are desperate to keep the power on. We hear from Central Queensland people who have basically had to go off the grid. They are no longer connected to electricity because they can't afford it.

In the next couple of days we'll be discussing a whole range of policy associated with the National Energy Guarantee. At the forefront of our minds—more than anything else, more than any international agreements—we must absolutely focus on the dignity of people who at this point in time are going through winter in a place where, as the Salvation Army has said, they go to bed late in the afternoon because that's the only place they can afford to stay warm.