Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) the Government has no plan to ensure replacement energy generation is built on time to replace the 20 gigawatt of baseload energy slated to withdraw from the National Electricity Market (NEM) by 2035, causing energy to become more expensive and less reliable;

(b) despite promising Australians it would reduce household electricity costs by $275 the Government has created energy chaos and has delivered consecutive price hikes including further increases of up to 33 per cent due from 1 July 2023;

(c) the closure of Liddell Power Station marks the start of a turbulent new era in Australia's energy market with 20 gigawatts of base load energy capacity (80 per cent of total baseload energy) to withdraw from the NEM by 2035;

(d) the Snowy 2.0 'mega battery' was commissioned by the former Government to support an orderly transition of the NEM, which is now under threat due to the current Government;

(e) the further delays to Snowy 2.0 will place further pressure on Australia's electricity market in coming years with 7.5 gigawats of baseload energy exiting the grid, before the 2 gigawatt Snowy 2.0 project is fully operational, from power stations including Liddell, Eraring, Yalloum and Vale Point B;

(f) the former Government actioned a comprehensive plan to enable a smooth powering down of the 2 gigawatt Liddell Power Station by extending its life, overseeing record investment in renewables and commissioning the 660 megawatt Kurri Kurri gas plant;

(g) since the Government came to office, there have been reports of massive blow-outs in both cost and the delivery timeframe for both the Snowy 2.0 and Kurri Kurri projects;

(h) the Government's uncommercial green hydrogen plan for Kurri Kurri has resulted in the project being delayed by at least a full year and has more than doubled the project's total cost; and

(i) the former Government worked with energy providers like AGL to extend the life of critical power stations to allow time for replacements to be built; and

(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) immediately reinstate a technology agnostic capacity mechanism;

(b) urgently work with Origin Energy to extend the life of the Eraring power station until replacement dispatchable capacity comes online;

(c) scrap its uncommercial green hydrogen plan for Kurri Kurri so it can start as a gas plant as soon as possible; and

(d) ensure Snowy 2.0 is operational as soon as possible.

We, in this parliament, all know that energy bills continue to rise. Many Australians believe that the soaring prices they see in their energy bill tells the whole story when it comes to problems with Australia's energy system under the Albanese Labor government. I stand today to put forward this motion to put to the House that in fact the soaring prices don't tell the entire story when it comes to Australia's energy system. Indeed, there's another problem, a problem that is looming and that, until it hits, many Australians won't even know about it. That is the problem of reliability.

Prices—yes, we know. The government had promised that $275 reduction in household power bills, and we know very well that promise has been broken. No-one seriously believes that Labor can deliver on that promise. We know, through the news only a few weeks ago, that the default market offer is only going to increase even further. Already Australians have been paying hundreds of dollars more than what Labor had promised since they came to office, and, come 1 July, they will pay hundreds more. This is hurting families. We absolutely know that. That is why we will continue to hold the government to account. But, that bill, which says how much your prices have gone up, doesn't tell the full story, because the full story is told by the likes of the market operator, the ACCC and key industry leaders that have expressed a concern about us having a shortfall of energy into the future. In other words, a lot of us have heard of the discussions that, especially in the last winter, we had senior citizens having to make a choice between heating and eating.

If, indeed, there is a full breakdown in reliability—not just price—senior citizens won't even have that choice. If, indeed, a shortfall comes to fruition and there are blackouts in our system, senior citizens, who maybe weigh up the choice of heating and eating, will not be able to turn on the stove to eat, to heat their spag bol or their soup, and they certainly won't be able to turn on their heater at home. Absolute blackouts are a genuine, present risk to our system at the moment.

Underlying this is Labor's suite of policies that will see an accelerated, premature closure of base-load power stations. Right now here in Canberra, part of the New South Wales NEM, you're probably looking at over 60 per cent of your electricity being supplied by coal-fired power stations. These are part of the base-load power system that we have in Australia at the moment. Eighty per cent—that's eight, zero; 80 per cent—of our base-load power will leave the grid by 2035—gone. Again, Australia is an island. We do not have cords connected elsewhere to import such electricity. If those base-load power stations are gone—entirely demolished and in many cases blown up—without a replacement there in time, we will have blackouts.

Those typically coal-fired base-load power stations are one thing. We already know, too, that this government is trying to kill off gas. The more you suffocate the supply of gas, the harder it gets. Then it comes to renewables. On the back of the coalition government, which delivered record investments in renewables, the first quarter of this year has seen no investment closures. No deals have been closed in the first quarter for any renewable generation project across the country. Renewable investment has nosedived under this government, regardless of their rhetoric. We are looking at a real problem if we have our base-load power stations, our gas and our renewables nosediving in this country, which is why they need to reinstate the capacity mechanism. They need to work with Origin on keeping Eraring up and running. And they need to make sure that they go to full gas— (Time expired)

Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against this private members' motion by the member for Fairfax. I do so as someone who actually lives in a coal region—who lives, works and has generations of family who have worked in coal and coal-fired power stations. The member for Fairfax would do well to get his facts right. It was the former Liberal government that spent 10 years putting their heads in the sand, attacking and blocking renewable energy and, indeed, every energy policy possible. They denied climate change even existed and refused to act on the urgent need for decarbonisation and diversification of our economy. After 22 attempts to land an energy policy in government, and failing every single time, going nuclear is now the only idea we get from those opposite.

In April, following the scheduled closure of the Liddell Power Station—and let's not forget: those opposite knew the closing dates of every single one of these coal-fired power stations while they were in government for 10 years and did nothing—the coalition rushed to the scene to announce their vision for the Hunter, with a proposal to go nuclear. That was their response. Indeed, they are proposing 80 small nuclear reactors around Australia, blind to the research that shows nuclear is too expensive, too inflexible and way too slow. The member for Fairfax is happy to spruik nuclear, but I am yet to meet anyone who wants a nuclear reactor next to their local school. Nuclear energy is not the future, so let's get real. Our community wants policy certainty and an investment in renewables, the cheapest and most reliable form of energy. Make no mistake: the former Liberal government abandoned the people of Newcastle and the Hunter, the regions that have powered Australia for generations, and all they had to say was, 'Nothing to see here.'

Well, those days are over. The Albanese Labor government has a considered, coordinated plan to transform our energy system and broaden our industrial base. The 2023-23 budget provides an additional $4 billion to position Australia as a renewable energy superpower, taking our total investment in this ambition to more than $40 billion. We know Australia's biggest opportunity for growth and prosperity is the global shift to clean energy. It's good for the environment, good for power bills and good for jobs. We want to ensure that no-one is left behind; that that carbon-intensive regions—like Newcastle and the Hunter, which have powered Australia for generations—will continue to power us for the future.

After a decade of inaction, we are getting on with the job. The Albanese Labor government are fixing the mess left behind by those opposite. We're establishing the Hydrogen Headstart initiative, a $2 billion budget measure to scale up large-scale green hydrogen in Australia. We're investing $1.9 billion in the Powering the Regions Fund to make sure traditional and new industries in regional Australia harness the economic opportunities of decarbonisation. We're putting $14.8 million into establishing the Powering Australia Industry Growth Centre to support local manufacturing of renewable energy technology. We're investing in offshore wind, including a proposed offshore wind zone for the Hunter region, an exciting opportunity for Newcastle to ensure large-scale, reliable and clean electricity for decades to come. We're investing a hundred million dollars to ensure hydrogen readiness at the port of Newcastle, supporting regions like ours to become a renewable energy superpower and meet our emissions reduction targets. We're investing $16 million to establish a new energy skills hub at the University of Newcastle. Our Powering Australia plan will deliver 82 per cent renewable energy by 2030, while our $20 billion Rewiring the Nation program will unlock investment in Australia's electricity grid and deliver more priority transition projects. This will grow and modernise our electricity grid and boost energy performance. We're legislating a national Net Zero Authority, we've got our energy price relief plan underway, we've made reforms to the safeguard mechanism to support industry and increase emissions efficiency while maintaining competitiveness in the global economy.

As the member for Newcastle, I know full well how important it is to be prepared as we move towards a decarbonised economy. The Albanese government have a considered, coordinated plan that will ensure Newcastle and the Hunter are poised to take full advantage of the new energy industries. We are going to do the job that was left to us.

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This motion, moved by the member for Fairfax, is reality mugging people back into common sense. People have been notified their bill, if they're a householder, will rise by 30 per cent. That's for most of my region. For some of my small businesses, industrial users, it's absolutely business destroying. That's particularly because a lot of their energy systems are gas based. Their electricity and their gas prices, in some cases, have gone up 300 per cent.

The problem is the plan. No-one using any rational engineering or economic analysis can, in truth, support it, but AEMO do. They are the architect of it. It is beyond belief that the regulator is encouraging the nation to commit economic harikari—no joke intended, because Kurri Kurri power plant is part of it—by, for instance, trying to build a power plant that runs on hydrogen when it was designed to run on gas.

Some of this plan is scary. Eighty per cent of our base-load power system is to be closed down—blown up—by 2035 without any equivalent replacement. We are going to have five times more rooftop solar. We're going to have nine times more wind farms. Part of the plan is that the number of batteries will increase 30 times, and that includes the virtual power plant. For listeners out there in Australia, the virtual power plant means your power plant—your Tesla or other electric car that's plugged into the grid. That's the power plant.

Part of this plan is to build 28,000 kilometres of new transmission and distribution. But this doesn't just include things like VNI West, which is 820 kilometres through hundreds of thousands of hectares of remnant native forestry or pristine agricultural land that won't be able to be utilised fully, or the HumeLink, which is another 45,000 hectares. These new grids are going to isolated assets that can't connect to the grid, but they are insisting on being paid a regulated asset based return—a fixed return—as though they were being utilised all the time. But because they are renewable producers, they're only going to be carrying current between 20 per cent, if they're solar farms, or 35 per cent, on average, of a year. For a lot of the time, they will not carry any electrons anywhere. But, already, half your bill is accounted for by transmission costs. Your transmission costs on your bill won't be going up by these latest numbers of 30 per cent, which is outrageous; they'll be going up multiples of times. With the transmission costs and the costs of all these grids, which in all estimates have gone up 425 per cent in cost, building all this stuff is going to bankrupt us.

The University of Melbourne, Princeton University and the University of Queensland have analysed this plan. They've copied what they did in America. In America, it was only going to take two states out of 50. But, for us to deploy all these solar farms and wind farms, it's going to use land equivalent to Victoria. The thing about this plan that's renewables dependant is that all the renewables that have been installed in Australia for the last 23 years—guess what—are just about at the end of their lives. Not only have we got to do all this extra stuff out to 2030 or 2050; you're also going to have to reinstall everything that's already been installed. It is never-ending building and consuming land. All these renewables are great when you can get them, but you can't build a grid and an industrial system on them. Once you get to about the level that we are, we are going exponentially to a very brittle grid because of poor frequency and voltage control. Without any physical inertia, because of the development of harmonic circuits, which is malignant to big machines working, we will have blackouts, even though there's electricity in the wires. It's an engineering disaster, an economic disaster, an environmental disaster and an agricultural disaster. The last thing in this plan is that all we need to do is reforest six million hectares of agricultural pasture land. (Time expired)

Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to rise to speak to the member for Fairfax's motion. There isn't a great deal of the member's motion that's grounded in the reality of energy policy as it has played out in this country over the last ten years. Allow me to run through a brief history lesson as to how we got to this current situation. First, I want to acknowledge that this government understands and is aware of the immense pressure that rising energy prices have on Australians—on families, on households and on businesses. In fact, thanks to the member for Fairfax, we've had plenty of opportunities to outline what the government is doing on energy prices. Just last week, on Thursday, in the House of Representatives, I spoke to a matter of public importance moved by the member for Fairfax on this very topic. I'll take the opportunity to once again outline the facts when it comes to energy policy in Australia.

We are currently dealing with the most significant shock to energy markets in 50 years due to Russia's prolonged attack on Ukraine. Those opposite know full well that the major cause of energy price increases is the illegal war in Ukraine. Why would events on the other side of the world impact us here in Australia? That's because our energy market is exposed to international prices. Arguably, as an energy-producing country, we should not be exposed to international prices. After 22 failed energy plans under those opposite, you would think that we would have an energy market that works for Australians. But they didn't address this issue.

The Australian people also remember that the former energy minister, the member for Hume, deliberately hid rising energy costs so that they were not released until after last year's election. We now know that the member for Hume actually amended the industry code for electricity retailers on 7 April last year. Is that a really big coincidence? That was three days before the election was called, and he deliberately hid energy price rises from Australian voters until after the election. It's really hard to contemplate how anyone thought this was a justifiable or ethical course of action. But those opposite and the truth are strangers when it comes to energy prices. In May 2019, they promised to deliver an average energy wholesale price of $70 per megawatt hour by the end of 2021. Instead, by the time of the election in May 2022, the price was $286.18. They promised a 25 per cent discount, but they delivered a 240 per cent increase over three years. And yet they propose motions like these.

I might find it easier to accept the concern of those opposite regarding higher energy prices if, when given the opportunity to support something that would ease the pressure of those higher prices on Australians, they had done something about them. They didn't do anything to establish a reliable and strategic energy policy and framework in their decade in government. Now they propose nuclear energy as the answer—the most expensive form of energy, which would take a decade and more to establish—but they did nothing about it either, when they were in government. Late last year, when this government recalled parliament to legislate to deliver urgent energy price relief, how did those opposite respond? They voted against energy price relief for Australians. Remarkable!

We can now see that the final default market offer, the DMO, confirms that the Albanese government has limited the worst of the energy price spikes while investing in a long-term plan to get cheaper, cleaner energy for all Australians. Set by the Australian Energy Regulator, the DMO is the price that electricity retailers can charge customers, including in my home state of South Australia, on standard offers from 1 July 2023. It also serves as a benchmark for all electricity offers. Due to the government's electricity price intervention in December last year, the DMO increase is up to 27 percentage points lower in South Australia than it would otherwise have been, according to the Australian Energy Regulator. The increases in DMO prices are up to $492 lower than they would have been without the government's intervention for residential customers and up to $1,310 lower than they would have been for small businesses.

We know people are doing it tough, but this government is doing everything it possibly can to help. Unlike those opposite, who, when given the opportunity, voted against energy price relief, the people of Boothby and the people of Australia aren't stupid. They won't forget that. We won't forget a wasted decade, and we don't have time to waste now.

Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand today to speak in support of this motion brought by the member for Fairfax. I thank him for bringing this motion that brings to this House's attention the failure of the Albanese Labor government, and especially Minister Bowen, to ensure that a plan is in place as we transition Australia through new technologies to a net zero emission economy and world. On this side, we are committed to net zero but to achieving it through principles of liberalism—using the market economy and encouraging and incentivising entrepreneurial innovations to enable us to successfully transition to new energy sources. This means, however, that we must put consumers at the centre. We must put Australian families, Australian individuals and Australian small businesses at the centre as we transition. Pragmatism must replace ideology. Policy should be informed by economics and engineering. Renewables and nuclear can play complementary roles in a hybrid system. These are the two main options for low-carbon energy.

I was formally an environmental lawyer. I have always been committed to Australia moving towards net zero. To that end, I have manufacturers within my electorate that manufacture solar panels, and I recently went out to the Western Sydney Green Hydrogen Hub at Horsley Park to see what they're doing out there in the way of new hydrogen.

We have two options for low-carbon energy. At the moment, the government has not put forward any plan to address and look at something—nuclear energy—that could potentially help us to address the current and future energy crisis.

Both nuclear and renewables generate energy that produce no green house gas emissions, reduce air pollution, diversify the energy supply and reduce dependence on imported and fossil fuels. Due to Australia's natural abundance of sunshine and wind, there's widespread political, institutional and corporate support to underwrite technologies, projects and investments in the renewable sector. This is appropriate, and it is something that I've always supported—that we transition and use renewables but in a far greater capacity than we have done in the past.

Nuclear technologies could potentially help us to address this energy crisis as well. However, due to the intractability of Labor and others in this place to even consider the potential that nuclear technologies could deliver to address our current and future energy needs, we are seeing a situation where the government has us trying to get off the boat before we are at the wharf.

I know that there is still concern throughout some parts of Australia about nuclear, particularly when there have been some disasters in other parts of the world. However, as I said in my first speech in this place, my 15-year-old self, who wore 'No nuclear' T-shirts and had photos and posters of Peter Garrett and Midnight Oil throughout my bedroom, would acknowledge now that the nuclear of the 21st century is very different to the nuclear of the past.

We owe it to the Australians that elected us into this place to address some of the biggest challenges that arise for us today, and that has to be to ensure that Australians—Australian families, Australian businesses—have access to affordable and reliable electricity. To do anything less than that is a travesty.

Ensuring our energy supply is also a very important part of our national defence and the entire security of our citizens. Therefore, I support this motion brought by the member for Fairfax. I thank him for his advocacy on various other ways and other technologies where we can look at addressing how we retain affordable and reliable energy for Australians as we transition to a net zero world using new technologies.

Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a real pleasure to once again be speaking on a debate brought to us by the member for Fairfax—we obviously had the MPI last Thursday. It's good to be here again talking about these issues. I am grateful to the member for Fairfax for providing yet another opportunity to talk about how our government is taking responsible action when it comes to the energy future of this country, while those opposite spend their time living in some kind of fantasy land, because it seems that rather than using their time in opposition to reflect—to think about what they didn't do over the last decade, what should the future of this country be, how do they deal with the very real challenges our country is facing, to get up to speed with where the Australian people are, and where the experts are when it comes to energy, climate, renewables in this place—instead, what we have is the person, who the Liberals and The Nationals would have serve as their Minister for Energy and Climate Change, is often away talking about how great nuclear power is and is joined by many of his colleagues.

It does seem that for many of those opposite they do see nuclear power as their ticket back to government, but, I have to say, it doesn't seem like there are many other people out there who are with them on that ticket. In fact, I think it was the former Liberal minister for energy in New South Wales who said about nuclear power:

people talking about nuclear as an asset to our energy challenges right now are literally chasing unicorns.

It seems that that is what we are actually debating at the moment—starting down the path of wanting to introduce the most expensive and probably, for our country, the slowest form of energy to roll out in this country. That's what all the experts tell us. They tell us that this is not the option for our country. The option, as we move and as we transform, is a renewable one. That is certainly what our government is doing. Again, I note that one of the reasons that nuclear is not the option—and certainly the experts tell us this—is that we don't have an existing industry in this country. It's certainly not something that those opposite did anything about in their decade of denial and drift. I've lost count of how many energy policies they did actually bring forward in that decade. I don't think that they landed any of them, though, and that is why our country is in the position we are in, where we are behind on the transformation we should be making to a cleaner, greener renewable-powered future. But we are now in the situation where we have a government in office who 'get' it, who understand that that is our future and who are working as hard as we can, as fast as we can, to make that happen.

Those opposite know that they were wrong to vote against our government's Energy Price Relief Plan, which we put in place late last year. We do know that energy prices are a real concern. We do know that cost-of-living pressures are a very real thing for many people in our communities. As a government, we want to do all we can to support those people while also making sure that we don't do anything to add to the very real inflationary pressures Australia is facing—that we know countries around the world are facing at the moment—and while we face the issue of energy prices being affected by the war in Ukraine.

All the experts, again, have said that the work our government did last year, through our energy relief plan, has helped to keep prices lower than they otherwise would've been. The facts are these. The increases in default market offer prices are now up to $492 less for residential customers than they would have been without our government's intervention and up to $1,310 less for small businesses than they would've been otherwise. It seems that if those opposite had their way they would rip up this intervention that our government introduced. It seems like they would rather see unconstrained increases happen than step in to take the pressure off Australian households. They'd rather hitch their wagon to some kind of unicorn future with nuclear power than do the work here and now to get Australians' cheaper electricity.

Unlike those opposite, our government is not operating in a fantasy land. We are and we always will be upfront with the Australian people about the challenges and the opportunities we have. We know that Australian people get that. They don't want to be left in the dark. They don't want to live in a fantasy land. They want a government that understands that there is a genuine future for us, that there is a future where we are a renewable energy superpower. They want a government that is doing everything we can to harness the jobs, the opportunity and the future from that, and that is certainly what they are getting with the Albanese Labor government.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Albanese Labor government is making a complete and utter mess of the energy transition that this nation is undertaking, and it is the Australian people who are going to pay as a consequence. There is no plan to their transition, and I support the shadow minister for climate change and energy, who's here with us today, in calling that out in this motion. They have no plan for energy. It's not only no plan for energy but also it's no plan with a broken promise, a clear and utter broken promise. Your power bill was meant to go down by $275. Now the Australian people will be lucky if their power bill doesn't go up by more than $1,000 under this government. It is a clear and utter breach of an election commitment, and they have no plan—no plan whatsoever—to fix it. We see what is happening with base-load power in this country. It is shutting down, and there is nothing to replace it with. That is what a transition is all about. There is nothing to replace it with, and worse, it is ideologically driven. It is not technology agnostic; it is ideologically driven. Do you know the worst thing about it?

And I get interjections from the other side. The worst thing about it is they want others to pay the cost for their ideologically driven approach. And people are paying the cost. As I've mentioned, they're paying the cost through their energy bills. But they're also paying the cost because industry are facing higher electricity costs and higher gas costs, and that means that their financial pressures are getting harder and harder. So we're seeing that it's not only households but businesses that are paying the costs. Not only that, it is also rural and regional Australia. I point you to my electorate, where now we are seeing wind companies coming in without even bothering to consult local communities and planning wind farms.

I hear an 'ohh' from the other side. Could you imagine having someone come in to your community and say to you, 'We are going to do this, and we don't care whether you like it or not'—trying to do it without a social licence? I get people shaking their heads, but could you imagine a city electorate where someone came in and said, 'Oh, we want to put a 30-storey building in your suburb.' How do you think that would go down? People would riot. We now have people coming in trying to do this.

It's not only the fact that there is no consultation with local communities; it's worse than that. There is no benefit that accrues to local communities. Moyne shire, in my electorate, probably hosts more wind farms than any other shire in the country. Do you know that not one household has benefited as a result of cheaper electricity, even though they probably host more wind farms than anywhere in the country? How is that fair? We have a wind farm at the moment where the consultation of the proposal has been so poor that we have local Indigenous leaders saying: 'Where is the consultation?' Why isn't the company coming to us and saying: 'Where is the social licence for what you're doing? How can we do it?' None of this is occurring. Not only that—not only are we seeing the wind projects going in and industrialising the landscape—there are transmission lines going in as well, which is making a bad situation worse. People in the cities can shake their heads, but just imagine if high-rise developments were going into your suburbs— (Time expired)

Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What we're experiencing today is yet another episode in what I would only describe as a cynical sloganeering effort. There are really two different types of slogans that we've experienced today. The first one we heard for quite a bit in the previous speech. We used to hear three-word slogans a decade ago from the opposition, and now it has been reduced to two words: 'no plan'. But the irony of this, and the immediate rebuttal of it, is in their own speech, whereby they say that there's no plan and then spend their entire speech trying to critique all the various things that we're doing in our plan. So I just want to get that one out of the way from the outset. Those opposite rail on with great outrage at all of the different things we're doing and say how terrible they are. You can't say that and at the same time say that there's no action and there's no plan.

But the second element—in fact, the more disturbing one, because it reflects where they're really coming from intellectually—comes from a quote from the Leader of the Opposition where he said, 'Just like Reagan, we will wind back government intervention.' That's what reflects where they're really coming from, because they oppose every step of the way all of the things that we're doing. They come into this parliament and say: 'Of course we support action on climate change. Of course we support everything we can do to support the transition and investment.' They say that time and time again, when they did nothing for a decade, and yet they vote against or carp about every single measure we put in place. If given the reins of power again, they really will wind back all of the things that we have done over the last year—things that were so overdue and things that are already making a difference.

One of the earlier speakers said no-one with an engineering background or who claims to be economically rational could support the things that the government is doing, things like setting long-term targets for investors, things like strengthening the safeguard mechanism or things like putting in place a capacity mechanism. I could line up almost every Nobel Prize winner in economics over the last 50 years talking about exactly these kinds of sensible, rational market interventions. I could talk about just about all the regulators of utilities, both in Australia and around the world, who, time and time again, stand up and support the kinds of policies that we are putting out.

In fact, it's the very opposite. When things like the safeguard mechanism come into the public for debate, it's the regulators, the economists, the public policy think tanks and, in fact, the business community that all line up and support those measures. When the safeguard mechanism was brought for debate in this place, each of us had any number of stakeholders from all of those realms. I could line up the economists. I could line up the regulators. One of my earliest jobs was working in an economic regulator of utility networks. I could line up all the people who could talk about externalities and the need for regulation and about the fact that you need to put in place the right regulatory mechanisms to encourage long-term investment.

I could talk about the fact that the Business Council of Australia, Australian Industry Group—all these groups' members, leaders, CEOs and directors are having to make long-term decisions based upon a world in which climate risk is rising. All of these people came out. They support setting long-term targets. They support strengthening the safeguard mechanism. They support the capacity mechanism. Those opposite claim, 'Nobody supports what they're doing, and we're going to want it back,' as if that's a panacea. Then, in an intellectually dishonest way, they conflate price rises that are clearly coming from the illegal and immoral war in Ukraine with things that this government is doing, which are in fact starting to solve a problem which had laid untested and unsolved for a long decade. Those opposite have in fact laid bare their true position. They will wind back all of those things that the government has done which are having such a positive impact. That's why what they're suggesting is so dangerous. Then, as earlier speakers have said, we did face a short-term spike as a result of the war in Ukraine, and this government put in place short-term price caps and compensation for households.

The Secretary to the Treasury said that the most significant element of the package is the Energy Price Relief Plan, which is projected to reduce headline inflation by three-quarters of a percentage point. Clare Savage, on multiple occasions, has said that it put a significant downward pressure on prices. Those opposite clearly give some kind of dishonest support to some of the elements of our package, but it's very clear they will unwind things which are working, which are necessary and which are long overdue.

Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

Sitting suspended from 13 : 28 to 16 : 00