Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is always a pleasure to follow my great Tasmanian colleague Senator Polley and listen to her contributions to debate. I think that tonight, though, she was reading from the pages of her latest bestseller, Away with the Fairies, which you can find in your local Dymocks bookshop. I do not know that there was much fact. There was a lot of commentary and hyperpartisanship, which is something that I have even heard her own colleagues talk about in this debate and other debates—the need to remove the partisanship from this debate. The last 15 minutes of debate on this particular issue have been about nothing but how bad, in Senator Polley's eyes, the coalition government is for Tasmania, pensioners and workers, and how good Senator Polley and her colleagues on that side of the chamber are. I recommend that the 17 people listening to this debate across the country head on down to their local bookstores and see if they can pick up this fantastic fictional novel. Senator Polley tells me that she will be doing signings in her electorate office the week after next.

But I do welcome the opportunity to speak on this debate on the motion that has been moved by Senator Xenophon. It is an important topic, it is salient and it has been on the minds of many in this building and across the country for this week and much time leading up to now. The motion reads:

That the Senate notes Australia's energy crisis, its impact on consumers, businesses and the broader economy, and the need for urgent and effective responses.

The motion sums up everything about the debate we are having now and what we need to do. It is great that we are able to take the time in the Senate to actually talk about those particular issues, the impact on the groups that Senator Xenophon mentions and what needs to follow.

Listening to the contributions that have been made throughout the course of this debate, I come to it with the information that has been provided to me by the people I represent from the state of Tasmania. The biggest issue that they raise, which seems to be an undercurrent in every contribution on this debate, is the need for certainty—certainty around prices and supply in the case of businesses, particularly major industrials. That is the one key theme that keeps being brought up to me in my home state of Tasmania—one that I simply cannot ignore.

One issue that Senator Xenophon did raise in his contribution was around a particular source of power generation, and that was gas. That is something that we do not have a great deal of experience with in Tasmania, although, watching from the beautiful Apple Isle to see what is happening in other states across the country, I think the moratoria on further gas exploration are part of the problem. Where we have state governments who refuse to allow further exploration, it means that we do not have more to inject into our domestic market and it means prices go up. As has been pointed out by Senator Fawcett and others in this debate—although my friend Senator Polley would argue with this, and she did—the high price of gas has had an impact on overall power prices for businesses and households across the country.

So, again, the key point for me from Tasmania, and I think many who have spoken in this debate, and indeed many of those colleagues I have spoken to from my own party room, is about certainty. Certainty for investors—people who want to get into the energy market. They want to know what they are buying into and that what they invest in today is going to be a decent investment in a number of years' time because decent investments mean that people can provide a more stable and better yield on their product. They want to know that supply is stable and reliable and that it is not going to flicker on and off. Intermittency is something that we do not have to deal with. It is something we have heard talked about with regard to wind and solar—but not so the case with hydro in our great state of Tasmania. The most important thing for the average person on the street, the people who bowl into my main electoral office in Devonport in the north-west of Tasmania, is affordability. It is so incredibly important in trying to make the household budget work and, if you run a small business, in trying to make sure that the books balance at the end of the month.

I think enough has been said, in broad terms, about the Finkel report. We have had a week of discussion on this and I suspect, based on what I hear from my colleagues across the way, that they will want to keep talking about it for some time to come—fair enough; it is an important issue. I think it is a good opportunity to touch on the point that was made by Senator Brandis in his answers to questions over the last three days and that is around the trilemma that the nation faces with regard to energy policy: the need for reliability, affordability and to meet our international obligations. The one thing that seems to be lost on many in the opposition is the need for process around that. What we have had presented, as promised, was a report. A report was provided to the government by the Chief Scientist and that report was released publicly. As you would expect, following on from receipt of such a document, which is weighty in the concepts it canvasses and the issues it covers, there is a discussion. The point has been made by others in this debate that we come to this debate from different backgrounds representing different constituencies and with different preconceptions about how we think the issue ought to be dealt with. Once a discussion has been had, then the government has the opportunity to respond. They are the steps you take.

As I said in the contribution to the take note debate a day or two back, those opposite seemed aghast at the fact that we were having a discussion, that we were even canvassing various elements of the debate and various options on what some people think might work and what others think might not work. But I think that is an important part of what we have in this country: a healthy democracy, the right to speak your mind and the right to stand up for your constituents, and not just to be told what you are going to say and do. We on this side of the chamber are not a homogenous blob of mindless individuals but people who come to this debate with different backgrounds, experiences and views on what is right and what is the best way to go.

Senator Paterson, as I referred to before, has talked about the different communities we represent. In my state of Tasmania, particularly in the north-west, we have a much lower average household income in that part of the state than in many other parts of the country—so much more than people in eastern Sydney or downtown Melbourne or even parts of Hobart. People in the north-west of Tasmania, where my main electorate office is in the city of Devonport, struggle with the cost of power. Senator Polley's point about pensioners and people on fixed incomes who have been forced to turn the heater down or to hop into bed just to stay warm rather than get cold on a winter's night, the cost of power is a chief concern. That is what is driving my contributions to this debate and the debate more generally. It is about ensuring that whatever we do moving forward means that we do have affordable power for Australians and for Tasmanians alike, that no-one misses out and that everyone has the ability to purchase power and fund whatever activities they undertake. That impacts on families and also businesses. Businesses need to know how much they are going to be able to allocate towards power so that they do not get a shock power bill in a month's time, find that the books do not balance and have to add to their overdraft or similar. There was the case in Tasmania where a number of major industrials were reaching the end of long-term contracts that they had signed with the power generator Hydro Tasmania and prices were going to increase significantly. Thankfully, the Tasmanian government intervened and did what it could to restrain the cost of power, but it demonstrates the point that cost is very important in this debate.

As I said in some comments I provided to the Hobart Mercury newspaper yesterday—it was reported today; and Senator Fawcett touched on this point as well—the minute you start talking about something like affordability of electricity as a chief concern as opposed to some of the other elements of this debate, you are written off as a 'climate denier' or, as Senator Carr would like to say, a 'knuckle-dragger'. I think that is an insult to people who complain—