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

My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that today the government dumped its 11th signature energy policy since the last election? Can he also confirm that the government is now crab walking away from its plan to fund new coal-fired power stations and indemnify their operators at a cost to taxpayers of $17 billion per station? When does the government plan to announce its 12th energy policy?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Now we've got another member of the Labor Party coming up here and speaking rubbish. It doesn't make it true if you just come up and assert things. It doesn't make it true. We remain committed to our policies that are designed to ensure that there's reliable energy in the grid, that power prices come down and that Australians can have reliability so that their lights stay on—something the member from South Australia would find hard to deal with, given the Labor government in the South Australian parliament at the time ensured that the lights went off, because they were not focused on delivering reliable energy into the system. Our policies are designed to do that. We are now working through the states to ensure we have contracted, reliable energy going into the eastern states electricity market as a result of the reliability guarantee that our government championed and we have put in place.

We stand by our policies. We take on those big energy companies to ensure that they're doing the right thing by Australians, but the Labor Party are happy to roll over to them. Those in the Labor Party roll over on lots of things. They roll over on the energy companies. They roll over when it comes to banks when they blow mortgage brokers out of the water. We know they roll over when it comes to keeping Australians safe and secure. They rolled over when it came to protecting our borders. They rolled over to the Greens, the left wing of the Labor Party and others who would seek to undermine our borders. The Labor Party roll over any time anyone comes near them. That's why they cannot be trusted by the Australian people to make Australia stronger—because they are weak, and their weakness will infect this nation.