Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Cormann) to a question without notice asked by Senator Di Natale today relating to the National Energy Guarantee.

We know the NEG is now a con. This is a con job. It's a dud, and this parliament should vote against it. We put forward a very clear motion yesterday, calling for the modelling that underpins the claim that there will be a $550 saving to electricity prices. It's coincidently exactly the same amount that consumers were promised after the repeal of the carbon price, which—surprise, surprise!—didn't happen. We wanted to see what modelling was used to justify that claim. And what came back? Absolutely nothing. It was a spreadsheet that a year 10 student could have cobbled together in their bedroom. That's what we've got to justify this claim.

Consumers know that the NEG will not bring down prices. People know that this is doing nothing to address our emissions. This is designed to solve a political problem; it is not designed to bring down prices and to bring down emissions. This is a policy designed to appease the climate deniers within the coalition party room. Well, we won't surrender to the climate deniers—we will not. We agree with the criticisms that were made of the policy earlier by opposition energy minister, Mark Butler. Indeed, we've just heard a very articulate critique of this policy from Senator Chisholm.

My message to the Labor Party is: vote against it. I've heard a lot of criticism of the policy, but I've not heard one member of the Labor Party come into this place and say, 'That's why we will not support it. That's why we're voting against it. That's why we will take a stand and make sure that this parliament isn't fooled twice.' Don't take our word for it; take the word of Oliver Yates, the former head of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. He made his views on this very, very clear. His view is that the only thing that this energy plan does is help coal companies to know that they don't have to reduce their pollution over the next 10 years.

We've now seen NEG-plus, which is a dud-plus. It gives an opportunity for the climate deniers within the coalition to purchase coal-fired power when the rest of the world is moving away from coal-fired power, knowing that it's going to increase emissions and that it's a much more expensive form of energy. This policy concentrates power within the hands of the three big gentailers—Origin, AGL and EnergyAustralia—who, in the large part, are responsible for the gouging that's going on of individuals. The big three are now being given more power by the Prime Minister. It seems that the Prime Minister's response, whenever he's in a spot of trouble, is to write a big cheque to his mates at the big end of town. He did it with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation grant. He walks into a room and hands Liberal Party donors half a billion dollars. Here we are, with a huge dilemma where energy prices are continuing to increase. The coalition government have overseen that increase, despite a promise to bring down energy prices. And what's their response? To hand more power to the big three—that is, to hand more power to the companies that are responsible for the price hikes that people are experiencing right now.

We know that we've got a mechanism which might actually mean that the states can't lift their level of ambition for that to be counted. We've got the potential for targets that will mean that the heavy lifting has to be done by the agriculture sector and by the transport sector. We know that the most efficient, low-hanging fruit here is in the energy sector. If we're going to bring down emissions through increasing renewable energy technology, through battery storage technology, through demand management and through energy efficiency, we know that we can do that, at least cost, through the electricity sector. We know it's good for consumers and it's good for emissions, and yet, what this does is say, 'We're going to cave in to the climate deniers. If we're going to meet our Paris targets, we're going to have to let the agricultural sector and transport sector do the heavy lifting.' Well, that's just not going to happen. If this deal gets over the line with these targets, we will effectively be pulling out of the Paris climate agreement. We'd be doing what Donald Trump did, but with a little less fanfare. This is a policy designed to appease the climate deniers in the coalition party room. It does nothing to bring down prices or bring down emissions. All it does is solve a political problem for the Prime Minister, while consumers will be dudded. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.