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

I thank Senator Duniam for his question and his strong interest in ensuring that energy policy across Australia is focused on ensuring that households and businesses can enjoy energy that is reliable and affordable. The Turnbull government knows and appreciates that, just as having lower taxes for Australian businesses helps to inspire economic growth, business growth, employment growth and wages growth, having more reliable, more affordable energy can help to inspire further economic growth, business growth, jobs growth and wages growth. And we do this because our track record demonstrates the fact that we have delivered more than 420,000 additional jobs across Australia as a result of sound policies to create confidence and spur on that investment.

We've seen some 17 consecutive months of jobs growth across Australia—the longest consecutive period of jobs growth on record. That is why we are determined to continue to deploy the types of policies that build confidence and build an incentive to invest in growing Australian businesses, invest in growing Australian jobs and therefore invest in creating wages growth. Already the Turnbull government has delivered a number of reforms in the way in which the retail energy market works to ensure that customers, whether they be households or businesses, get access to information so they can choose the lowest-cost option for their power generation, and to ensure that gas supply is secured, importantly, for businesses right across Australia, guaranteeing that those businesses can invest with certainty, knowing that the gas necessary for their operation is secure, and placing downward pressure on network costs, which can ensure that the gaming of the system ends and that we deliver the lowest possible cost regime for energy markets across Australia.