James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Government Waste Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. South Australian Rick Wahlheim lost both his legs to diabetes and now relies on electricity powered devices, including his motorised wheelchair. His wife Lyn said that without power, they can't lift him out of bed. Their electricity bills have increased from around $900 to $1,400. Why are Australians paying the price for Labor's reckless energy policies?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question for the member for Sturt is: why did the member for Sturt vote against energy price relief? Not once but twice he voted against energy bill relief. I hope that the member for Sturt, whose electorate I was in just a few weeks ago, launching our education policy to take money off the debt of young Australians with HECS, has told his constituent and indeed all of his constituents that, firstly, they concealed a 20 per cent rise in their electricity bills. That was before the election, and, indeed, the member for Hume introduced a special regulation to make sure that that was hidden from the constituents in Sturt.

I hope that the member for Sturt has apologised to his constituent for voting against the energy bill relief scheme. I hope that the member for Sturt has told his constituent, as well, that when this government worked with state and territory governments to put caps on coal and gas prices, with support for rebates for households and businesses as part of that plan, he voted against it. He didn't want it. He regarded that as an intervention into the market that was unnecessary, even though that global spike in prices was having an impact. I know that Claire Clutterham will certainly be telling the member for Sturt's constituents that his party's policy is to invest unknown billions of their taxpayer dollars in publicly owned nuclear reactors sometime in the 2040s and, between time, there's no plan whatsoever to ensure security of energy supply.