Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

LISTER (—) (): The government will work with the ministerial council, as we do on every other question. I make the point, Senator Duniam, that it has been a feature of this government that we are actually capable of working with state and territory colleagues. You might recall that, shortly after our being sworn in, very significant challenges arose in the electricity sector as a consequence of the neglect of your government towards the policy issues in the energy sector over a very long period of time. The lack of a settled climate policy and the lack of a settled energy policy led to very significant problems in terms of the energy sector. There were 22 policies. None of them landed in a decade. Industry was crying out for certainty. There were real material consequences in the physical infrastructure that supports Australian households, businesses and communities.

Our approach to that was to work collaboratively with the states and territories and the market bodies, through the ordinary processes, to resolve that. It is a feature of the way our government works. It wasn't a feature of the way the government you were part of worked, and that was a really big problem for the country and for the Australian people. We will work within the ministerial council in the way that we ordinarily would.