Colin Boyce (Flynn, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. How many private properties will be impacted by the construction of transmission lines affecting the power grid in central and southern Queensland under the Labor's energy policy?

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The honourable member asked me how many properties will be impacted by transmission projects in Queensland .We haven't announced any. We haven't done any deals with Queensland under Rewiring the Nation. The deals we've announced are with Tasmania and Victoria. So, the answer to the honourable member's question in that regard is, 'None'.

We will have discussions with the Queensland government, of course, because we understand that transmission is important. We understand that transmission is necessary to get renewable energy to where it's used. I know that I'm not the only person who thinks that. The former minister for energy brought down an instrument—he was very good at that, signing instruments; he ran a nice line in signing instruments; he did it very often! But this was actually a good one that he signed. This one wasn't hiding energy price rises. This one was facilitating transmission lines. And in that regulation he said, 'These projects'—that is, transmission projects throughout Australia—'will be critical to deliver low-cost, reliable and secure energy to consumers.' That's what he said in the regulation.

And he didn't stop there. He gave a big speech, a keynote speech. It wasn't any old speech, this one. It wasn't that long ago: 18 March 2022. He said:

The development of interconnectors and transmission is critical to bringing new generation capacity into the energy system, while shoring up reliability and affordability across state borders.

He went on to say—this is the best bit:

Thousands of kilometres of new transmission is likely to be needed to connect new generation, and deliver reliable and affordable energy across the national market.

I mean, what's changed between March and November? He's sitting on the other side of the chamber, is the only thing that's changed. If hypocrisy generated energy, the grid would be fine, thanks to the member for Hume. We need to get the transmission built to get energy to the grid. For Snowy 2.0, their signature policy, they forgot to connect to the grid. It's not plugged in. I don't know how they think the energy is going to get to the grid—carrier pigeons, maybe, taking the electrons to the national energy market.

We will fix their mess by building the transmission. We'll get on with the job of Rewiring the Nation. We've done more in six months than they did in 10 years, already delivering the Marinus Link funding deal, already delivering a deal with Victoria. And we will engage with other governments to deliver Rewiring the Nation, because that's what the nation needs.