George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I am bound to say—through you, Mr President—that is a very welcome sentiment coming from Senator Carr. That is a very welcome sentiment indeed, and I am delighted—slightly surprised but delighted—to have heard it coming from you, Senator Carr.

The government wants to thank Dr Alan Finkel for his very fine work in seeking to come to terms with what the Prime Minister has described as a wicked problem. What we have to do is address what some people have taken to calling the trilemma of affordable energy prices and electricity prices, reliability of supply and meeting Australia's international obligations, particularly the very ambitious international obligation we assumed at the Paris climate change conference—one of the highest, most ambitious per capita emissions reduction targets in the world, which would see Australia's emissions fall by 26 to 28 per cent off 2005 levels by 2030. But, as well as that, we need to ensure that we do not have a repeat of the fiasco that we saw last year, for example, in South Australia, where poorly considered policy and overreliance on one element of supply—that is, the renewable sector—without sufficient backup or redundancy in the system allowed that state to go into blackout.

So what we are going to do is going to study Dr Finkel's report very carefully. I can tell you, Mr President, that we, this morning in our government party room, had a very impressive presentation from the minister for energy, Mr Frydenberg, in relation to the Finkel report and the options and policy choices that he has presented. The government will be making decisions. It will be making those decisions in the near future, and we look to the Labor Party's support when we do. (Time expired)