Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

the energy crisis in Australia would be much, much worse than it is today. Indeed, Senator Williams is right: the lights probably wouldn't be on in here if the Greens had had their way. If the Greens had had their way, every single renewable energy target that was put forward would never have been enough. If the Greens had had their way, every single carbon tax proposal put forward would never have been enough. If the Greens had had their way, they, of course, would have taxed to closure every single coal-fired generator in the country by now. That would have been the policy proposition of the Australian Greens. Would we have had any dispatchable base load power today? No, we would not have had anything that the Australian energy market could have relied on if the Greens had had their way. So the very idea of Senator Di Natale coming in here, wanting to talk about energy affordability or energy reliability, is preposterous, because the Greens have been the ones who have gone on and on over the years, seeking harsher policies that would have simply driven prices up, driven affordability down, driven reliability down, driven energy generation out of business and ensured that we had nothing that was reliable, nothing that was dispatchable and nothing that was base load. All, of course—