Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I'm astonished, really—I'm regularly astonished—by the line of argument of those opposite in relation to energy prices. The first thing that the people opposite should do in any discussion about energy prices is apologise—apologise to the Australian people, apologise to households and apologise to business—for two things. One is a decade of complete sclerosis, complete inactivity, complete failure on energy prices and complete failure on energy policy. Who can forget they had 23 different energy policy frameworks and didn't land a single one of them? That contributed to a decade of complete policy uncertainty and frozen investment. Billions of dollars worth of investment in Australian energy capability flooded offshore because the rabble over there, when they were on the government benches, couldn't land an energy policy—utter failure. The upward pressure that there is on household and business energy bills is a complete consequence of their failure.

The second thing—

we'll come to that in a minute—which Mr Morrison and Mr Taylor should apologise for, is the fact that, immediately prior to the election, the then minister, Mr Taylor, with his unknown colleague the secret minister—the then Prime Minister—were in possession of some knowledge about what was going to happen to wholesale energy prices that it was their responsibility in the normal course of events to communicate to businesses and households because that's what ministers do. And what did they choose to do? What did Mr Taylor choose to do? He decided to keep that information about price rises in the order of 18 per cent secret from the Australian people. Why did they do that? Because it didn't suit their political interests. With Mr Morrison and Mr Taylor—and Mr Turnbull, and Mr Abbott—their approach to energy was always about glib catchphrases. It was always about slogans. It was all about trying to find division. It was never, not at any point, about actually trying to encourage investment in Australian energy and in distribution. There was all this piffle from Mr Morrison about a gas led recovery. Nothing got built. Nothing got done. It was just a slogan, tested in focus groups, that led to no actual investment and no actual action.

We had Senator Scarr in here claiming that Labor's decision last year, in government, to intervene, to put downward pressure on gas prices and coal prices, has somehow led—he says it's economics 101. The thing about making that argument is that anybody who's spent time studying economics knows that, yes, there is indeed economics 101, but there's second year too and there's a third year after that, and nobody credible would make an argument to say that price controls today with investment horizons that far out are going to lead to supply constraints tomorrow. It's just a silly argument. It's a dishonest argument. It's an argument that's trying to scare people.

What do the people who actually have facts say about this? The Australian Energy Regulator says that energy prices, because of our intervention, are much lower than they otherwise would have been, by a factor of 10 or 20 per cent—much lower. But that doesn't suit the hyperpartisanship and nonsense that we're seeing from the other side on energy prices.