Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Cormann) and the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia (Senator Canavan) to questions without notice asked by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (Senator Wong) and Senator Marshall today relating to the National Energy Guarantee.

Like a couple arguing in the food court, this spat about energy has now become extremely embarrassing for everybody else around them. It's awkward enough watching the Prime Minister abandon the principles that he was willing to stand by when he lost the Liberal leadership the first time around, but it is truly tragic that, despite the fact that he has capitulated on all fronts, given up everything and lost the last shred of credibility he may have been clinging to, he still can't keep this party room together. He emerged out of the party room meeting and he was claiming victory, but it is possible that he spoke too soon, because, shortly after that, it seems we saw backbencher after backbencher ringing Sky News just to make sure that, in the constant news coverage, everybody understood who'd be crossing the floor. People wanted to know about their heroic plans, and so Mr Abbott, Mr Christensen, Mr Gee, Mr Hastie, Mr Kelly, Mr Andrews, Mr Joyce, Senator O'Sullivan, Senator Abetz and Mr Pasin were all on the front page of the paper, indicating: 'Our intention is, in fact, not to support the NEG. In fact, so much so that we are not going to vote for it.'

This is a group of people who are split on policy, split on the personalities and almost congenitally unable to craft an energy policy. We are now five years into a government and we are still waiting for a coherent energy policy that can resolve the crisis that this government has placed us in as a nation. A lot of it, of course, is driven by Mr Abbott. It has produced some hilarious moments, including this, reported in the paper, when the Prime Minister asked Mr Abbott:

"Could you please do me the courtesy of allowing me to finish my sentence?"

Colleagues of Mr Abbott said he responded: "I would have, if you had allowed me the courtesy of finishing my term."

So it's obviously quite a little bit personal. Mr Abbott has then gone on to describe, in other remarks, Mr Turnbull's ideas as 'merchant banker gobbledegook'. He has also criticised Mr Frydenberg. He said that, in John Howard's time, a submission of the kind that Mr Frydenberg presented would have had to go back to the drawing board.

But it's not just confined to Mr Abbott. We've had frontbenchers as well. Mr Dutton was asked by Ray Hadley on 2GB: 'Is the NEG suboptimal?' What did the Minister for Home Affairs say? A ringing endorsement? He said, 'Well, it's a policy that the government's got.' That's just the kind of back-up you want, isn't it? When you're out there prosecuting a policy case, one of your front-line guys says, 'Well, it's a policy the government's got.' Thank you very much, Mr Dutton. The Australian is now reporting that other frontbenchers, including the Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Pitt, are, in fact, considering resigning their places because of their opposition to the NEG.

But, of course, there are new policy ideas continuing to swirl around as this very sophisticated debate unfolds. Apparently, Mr Joyce has made a demand for price controls. I thought it would have been obvious to everybody that that was inconsistent with Liberal values, but it took the Treasurer to point that out to Mr Joyce. We now understand that the member for Dawson has issued an entire list of demands to the Prime Minister in a meeting. The demands include the creation of a new clean coal fund, a cut in the NEG's emissions reduction target from 26 per cent to 17 per cent and changes that would allow the competition watchdog to keep AGL's Liddell coal fired power plant operating in New South Wales beyond its planned 2022 closure date. Apparently this was all very, very cordial. He was called into the Prime Minister's office. The Prime Minister 'wanted to know ideas that we have that could improve the NEG or deliver price reductions, and so I put a list to him'.

The people on the other side today would have you believe that this is all just business as usual. Well, nobody else believes that. It is a very, very public demonstration of the total dysfunction on that side of politics in relation to energy policy that has seen five years of utter paralysis. During the five years, the investment community went on strike in relation to energy, unable to invest because of a complete lack of certainty about what the policy settings are likely to be and how the energy market will work, and it is consumers who are paying the price with higher and higher prices. It has been a disaster.

Senator McKenzie, very helpfully during the last hour, pointed out that it is team work that makes the dream work. A pithy observation? I would put it to Senator McKenzie and, indeed, to everyone over there that we are not in a dream; we are in a horrible nightmare and you need to sort it out.