Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

If you were listening to the Liberals, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Energy Price Relief Plan) Bill 2022 is about shutting down the gas industry; it's about turning down jobs and turning down investment; this bill is economic vandalism. If you were to listen to the Labor Party, this bill is about ushering in a new clean energy revolution; it's the start of a bright, new day where everybody's bills are cheap, everyone's energy is clean and everyone's conscience is clear. In reality, it's neither of those.

I'll support it all the same because it's going to make it possible for people to feel less pain when they come to paying their bills. I say it makes it possible, because it can't be guaranteed, because this piece of legislation does not guarantee anything. It's half done. How will people get their bills subsidised? That's still to be determined. Which small businesses will get help with their bills? That's still to be determined. What's the definition of small business? That's still to be determined as well. How much money is every eligible household going to receive? To be determined.

Actually most of this bill isn't even a bill; it's just a shell designed to be filled in later, when we've got more information. What is in this bill is pretty slim. There's a $1.5 billion compensation fund from the Commonwealth which will go to subsidies for people's bills if they're on a payment like family tax benefit, JobSeeker or the DSP. But people are on payments, not households, and people in households don't have individual bills. You don't get billed separately if you've got the one connection, so what happens if one person in the house is on a pension and the rest of the household aren't? If the bill isn't in the name of the pensioner but they help pay the bills, do they get help? To be determined.

Everything here is to be determined. What's strange about it is that the one bit that the government are fixed on is the amount of compensation they're prepared to put on the table to help households—that is, $1.5 billion, matched by each of the states and territories. It's not $1.6 billion or $1.4 billion. It's $1.5 billion. That's the right amount apparently. A dollar more would be irresponsible. A dollar less would be cruel. We're never told why this amount is right, how the Commonwealth landed on this figure. Is it sufficient? Is there anything that suggests it meets the scale of the problem we're facing? If there is, we aren't being shown it. And while that amount is capped, it's not the only compensation that the Commonwealth will be on the hook to pay because of this bill.

Coal-fired power stations don't look like they're going to be compensated too. The cap on prices means that they're not allowed to pass on costs more than $125 per tonne of coal they burn. Some of them are paying more than that for the coal. Anyone paying more for their ingredients than what they're selling their product for won't be in business very long, so it's reasonable that there is compensation. I don't mind that. It's the only way to guarantee that these generators are going to keep generating, which is what we're really needing them to do. But what I don't understand is why nobody can tell us how much compensation they're going to be paid. I'm not against them being paid, but I don't like being asked to vote for something where the price tag comes once you agree to buy it. It's a subsidy no matter what the Greens or Labor Party say. It's a subsidy going to fossil-fuel generators. This bill won't write the cheque. What is does is make the promise that the cheque is in the mail. So why can't we know how much we're going to be on the hook for?

These coal generators are on long-term contracts. The government know what they're on. They know how much they're generating. Why isn't the coal compensation going to be capped like the compensation to households and small businesses? Why is there a cap on one and not the other? Nobody can tell us. Why are we being kept in the dark?

This isn't the only thing we're in the dark about either. In fact, we didn't see the bill until today. We were asked to come to Canberra with no notice to vote on a bill with no text. These are all reasons why this bill is pretty ordinary, and why this process is pretty sloppy, and yet Senator Lambie and I support it because we know the price that will be paid if we do nothing—and we know who will pay it.

Earlier this week I went to Murray Bridge in South Australia with some of my fellow senators. We were there for the Community Affairs References Committee inquiry into poverty in Australia. We heard firsthand from people living in poverty right now. We heard from those organisations that are helping them. Foodbank SA told us that in Murray Bridge there was a 21 per cent increase in people walking through the door in the last year. We also heard that rents went up by a couple of hundred dollars in the last year. People's wages aren't going up by the same amount, so people are having to cut back. People are showering once a week because they can't afford to pay their bills. The soaring cost of living means people are making difficult decisions about how to feed their children. People are making decisions about which meals they will be skipping, and they're living in their cars. They're not filling scripts for lifesaving medication. Some can't even afford Panadol.

We've heard stories like this for months now. People are struggling now. They have bills they can't afford now. I think about them and I think about what a 30 per cent increase in their bills next year means for them. I think about what they're supposed to cut to pay for that. I honestly do not know what we expect them to go without. What can they spare to lose? What do they have that we think is 'too much'? Murray Bridge is not unique. Poverty doesn't exist in a little bubble an hour's drive from Adelaide. People across Australia are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet.

We know the bill has flaws. It's incomplete. It's been rushed. It's not an ideal situation we are in right now. But, at the end of the day, Senator Lambie and I won't stand in the way of making life just that little bit easier for people who are doing it really tough right now. What I know is that, if you are struggling, every little bit counts. This bill isn't going to give enough relief from the rising energy costs, but it's something. We can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and that's why I am supporting this bill.