Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to take note of answers given during question time today. I'm also going to speak, as did my colleague, on the question that Senator Duniam asked Senator Wong with regard to electricity prices.

We know that there's been a decade of denial and chaos in energy policy. We know there were 22 energy policies in the nine years of the previous government, and we know that none of those were really acted on. I was a bit surprised that this question actually came from Senator Duniam because Senator Duniam, as a Tasmanian senator, must be aware of the great announcement that Mr Bowen made last week with regard to the Marinus Link, which involves a cooperation between the Tasmanian Liberal Premier and the federal government. It's going to be great for Tasmania, which is a really important issue, and I'll come back to it in a minute.

To get back to the nine years of the previous government, we've taken the stand that we will deal responsibly with the mess that was left to us in the energy market—the mess we inherited from the other side. So we won't be doing things like the former energy minister, who I think is now the current shadow Treasurer, did. He not only knew that electricity prices were skyrocketing but he also ordered that that information be hidden from the Australian people before the election. I think that speaks volumes about the other side having not been honest with the Australian people. I want to clarify that the member for Hume actually amended the industry code for electricity retailers on 6 April, which was four days before the election was called, to delay the release of information of increases in the default market offered for New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia till after the election. He hid that. It's really well known everywhere that the previous government left Australia overexposed and underdone: overexposed to international fossil fuel markets; underdone on the cheapest form of new energy, firmed renewables.

Our plan, as I said, is to take a steady approach. We've already started working on that. Only last week Minister Bowen, in regard to us trying to get more renewables into the system, made some announcements, and I'll talk about a couple of those. Marinus Link: more than $2.5 billion will go into Marinus Link. There will be access to a concessional loan from Rewiring the Nation through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation for approximately 80 per cent of the project cost of Marinus Link, with the additional 20 per cent to be an equity investment shared equally, as I said, between the Commonwealth, the Tasmanian and, because Victoria is linked in, the Victorian parliaments. That will get this critical project off the ground.

This project will build two undersea transmission cables connecting Tasmania and Victoria. It will mean an estimated 1,400 jobs in my home state of Tasmania, 1,400 jobs in Victoria and up to $4.5 billion in positive net market benefits. Marinus Link is expected to cut at least 140 million tonnes of CO2 to 2050, the equivalent of taking approximately one million cars off the road. Yet we get sniping from that side, because there are a lot of sore losers on that side. We certainly see that in every question time: the interjections, the sniping—from not all of them, I'll admit. Certainly, from where I sit here in the second row, I can hear a lot of them, particularly in the front row and over in that area. I don't think they have yet come to accept that they are now the opposition. I think a number of them like to snipe away at anything, and this was another way of doing it.