Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is for the excellent Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction. Will the minister update the House on how the Morrison government is securing the affordable and reliable energy that Australian families and businesses rely on, and how this will assist our economic recovery from the pandemic?

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Member for Groom for his excellent question. He represents Toowoomba, a region with an extraordinary history in those great industries which are the backbone of this great country. It's our resources sector you see there, with leading-edge agriculture and leading-edge manufacturing like we see with Obadare, a business I was lucky enough to visit recently up in Toowoomba. They are reliant, like so many manufacturing businesses, whether in the member's electorate or right across Australia, on affordable, reliable energy.

We have seen recently around the world what happens when governments lose focus on customers in energy markets. In the UK, for example, we've seen how a reliance on imported gas combined with prolonged wind droughts have plunged that country into an energy crisis. Default energy prices have increased by 12 per cent, affecting up to 15 million households across the UK. We are determined to make sure that doesn't happen in Australia.

Critical to that is gas, much of which comes from the Surat Basin, near Toowoomba. Our manufacturing sector depends on gas. Over 40 per cent of the energy used in manufacturing comes from gas. Across our manufacturing sector, despite COVID, we are now seeing that 80,000 more Australians are working in manufacturing than before the beginning of COVID. We have more than a million people working in manufacturing in this country and they're reliant on affordable, reliable energy. The key to that is balance. We've seen 13.3 gigawatts of new renewable capacity come in in two years—each of those years seeing more than in the entire time Labor was in government. But that needs to be balanced with dispatchable capacity, and that's what national cabinet has agreed on in recent reforms.

We're also filling gaps that are emerging, like when the Liddell generator closes in the Hunter Valley. Energy Australia will replace that with Tallawarra, and for us it will be the Snowy Kurri Kurri gas generator. But that's not the end of it. We have the Kidston pump hydro project in Queensland, the Port Kembla gas generator and Snowy hydro, where just today we saw it launch its new precast factory in Cooma. There, 130,000 concrete segments are being produced locally for the tunnels, supporting 220 direct jobs and thousands of indirect jobs. We're getting on with the job of delivering affordable, reliable energy as we bring down our emissions.