Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

It is almost spooky when I can say, ‘Ditto,’ to Senator Bob Brown’s contribution, but Senator Xenophon has done a lot of good work in this area with Frontier Economics. They have credibility in this space in relation to modelling and I must say that there is a lot of credibility associated with their position. I gave the situation, as outlined by the IPART report, an airing yesterday evening. Unfortunately, the minister was not able to respond, simply dismissing the report as a draft. But, as I recall Senator Xenophon pointed out last night and again today, the draft report is usually pretty well a finalised report. The fact that that report has now made its way into the public arena is courtesy of either the independent IPART or the state government of New South Wales. If the state government is responsible for it being in the public arena there is only one real reason for that, and that is its concern about a higher price in electricity charges.

The fact that the government will not engage on this and provide us with the information and responses needed concerns me because I would have thought in simple terms it makes good sense to keep the price down and therefore reduce the need for compensation—in other words, lessen the churn within the economy of the dollars going around. It almost seems to me that one of the reasons the government might be baulking at this is that they would love to have this churn because they could then be handing out the cheques to people saying, ‘What good fellows we are, providing you with all this compensation.’ Whereas I think Senator Xenophon may well have, through Frontier Economics, a very neat solution: if you keep the prices down less compensation is needed and therefore there is less churn and it is more efficient in economic terms with the same environmental outcome.

So in brief, we are very attracted to Senator Xenophon—and I think he suspects that the terrible word ‘but’ is about to be used—but unfortunately the opposition at this stage, like Senator Brown, cannot see our way clear to support the amendments. I say to Senator Xenophon and to the Australian people that the opposition will continue to be very active in this space in ensuring that we have a very good policy to take to the next election. There are many people on this side of the chamber who would be seeking to further explore what Senator Xenophon has put to the Senate this afternoon.

Senator Xenophon is getting quite anxious to respond to something I have said; I am not quite sure what it is, but it might be an appropriate time for me to sit down and find out.