Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Defence Industry. Will the minister update the House on why the government's commitment to providing reliable and affordable energy is creating certainty for the defence industry? What are the consequences for industry of following a different approach?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Robertson for her question. For the domestic defence industry to thrive, we need power prices coming down, not going up, and the National Energy Guarantee will do just that. The National Energy Guarantee, plus the other measures that the government has already introduced, will see energy prices coming down for households by $550 and, for businesses, the wholesale price coming down by 20 per cent.

This is really important for our defence projects and our defence industry, because, if you think about it, the government is the only customer in defence and defence industry. So, if we get prices coming down, it means that the taxpayer is getting better value for money for our expenditure, and future projects will be cheaper as a consequence of lower power prices. So this isn't some theoretical, ideological debate that Labor likes to conduct. For taxpayers, for the government, reducing power prices means more money for us to spend on other important priorities. For businesses in the manufacturing sector—like Marand in Melbourne, the ASC in Adelaide, Austal in Perth or Haulmark Trailers in Brisbane—it means their prices coming down and their costs coming down, because the amount they spend on power is reduced. So it's really critical to those industries, to the manufacturing sector, if we want them to thrive, have more investment and have more jobs.

This is something that's entirely lost on the Labor Party, because the Labor Party actually supports higher prices. They want higher prices. In fact, when the carbon tax was in place, they smiled every time prices went up. That was because when prices were going up because of the carbon tax it meant the carbon tax was doing its job. Every time prices went up, the carbon tax was doing its job. We scrapped the carbon tax, and prices came down. When we introduce the National Energy Guarantee, prices will come down again.

We have the evidence. The Prime Minister just quoted LEAN, the Labor Environment Action Network. They said at their conference:

High prices are not a market failure. They are proof of the market working well.

In other words, if prices are going up, as far as the Labor Party are concerned, that's exactly the outcome of their policy mix, and that's what will happen if they get elected.

The problem with the Labor Party is that they think Australia should be more like the Shire in The Hobbit. They think we should all be living like Bilbo Baggins in our turf houses, smoking our reed pipes, sitting in front of the fireplace, with the smoke curling out of the chimneys of our houses—no economy, no industry, no primary industries and partying all the time. Who's going to pay for it? The reality is only this side of the House can deliver lower power prices, jobs and growth in the economy.