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

Thank you, Senator Scarr, for giving me the opportunity to talk about how we are delivering on our commitments to the Australian people. This is a government that, over the last six months, has got to work, from day 1, delivering on all its commitments—including in relation to our Powering Australia plan, which has significant investments to fix the energy mess we inherited after 10 years of denial, delay and dysfunction.

I'm not going to stop explaining to the people of Australia the situation that we inherited—rising inflation, rising interest rates, a budget riddled with debt and deficit, pork barrelling and all the dodgy deals that have gone on. We have started unwinding all of that and responding to that. In the budget, we had significant commitments to getting our Powering Australia plan on the ground. Let's not forget—nine years, 22 failed energy policies. None of them worked. We saw a three-gigawatt decline in dispatchable power; that is under your record. We've got Snowy 2.0 running late. Not one energy policy landed.

In the six months that we've been in charge, we have been investing in our Powering Australia plan. We've had Minister King deliver the supply we need. We've had Minister Bowen, the Treasurer and others dealing with the gas crisis, with the energy increases we've got. And we stand by the fact that renewables are the cheapest form of energy, that they are the cheapest form of power, and that increasing our investment in renewables will decrease energy prices.