Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Hume for the question, even though I am a little bit surprised at the way it was framed. Will we end the uncertainty? We ended the uncertainty with the election of an Albanese government. We ended a decade of energy policy uncertainty. How many times did you try and land a policy? Twenty-two and counting. You didn't land any of them. You didn't. Everywhere we went, the private sector was saying: 'Can you provide certainty? We want investment certainty. We want to understand the approach that government policy will take so that we can make investment decisions.' And Senator Hume asks me about the uncertainty.

I will tell you what we have done since coming to government. Minister Bowen left the swearing-in ceremony to deal with the fact that the lights were going to go out. We then uncovered a 20 per cent increase in the price of electricity that Mr Angus Taylor had taken the unprecedented step of covering up and hiding before the election so it didn't become an election issue. Guess what? They were told that electricity prices were going to go up and they weren't honest with the Australian people. What we have done is put in the budget the information we have about the increase in energy prices. What the Australian people have is a government that's working hard to look at what options are available for us to deal with it.