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

Transparency—honestly? The only thing that is transparent about the Productivity Commission Amendment (Electricity Reporting) Bill 2023 is that you can see straight through it. Last May, the member for Hume, the joker who now pretends to be the opposition Treasury spokesperson, changed the law in order to obscure from Australians in the lead-up to the election the massive price hikes for electricity that they knew were coming down the line and that they were required to disclose. He fiddled the books to make sure that in the lead-up to the election Australians didn't get to see the consequence of a decade of policy failure from the Liberal and National parties, from Mr Morrison, Mr Turnbull and Mr Abbott. It is the law of diminishing returns right there, really. A consequence of a decade of complete failure was rising electricity prices, and what was the response of Mr Taylor, who presided over much of this energy sector catastrophe? He fiddled the books and hid it from people.

I know it is poor old Senator Duniam's job. He knows that what they are saying and doing now is indefensible. I know that most of the show over there understand that what they did in government was indefensible and that what is going on now is just blowing so much smoke in an effort to try and distract ordinary Australians from the utter catastrophe that they left the Australian energy market in and that the government is now dealing with.

I was pleased that Senator Duniam said some things about the budget, and there are some measures in the budget that go to some of these questions. It is a responsible, carefully balanced budget. It is a budget that puts downward pressure on inflation in the economy, particularly in terms of household and business energy prices. It is a budget that provides carefully targeted cost-of-living relief without putting upward pressure on inflation, something that the last government singularly failed to do. And, when we look at what is the biggest opportunity to reindustrialise the Australian economy after a decade of abject failure in industry policy, this budget, with its opportunity to rebuild investment in manufacturing and jobs, really builds on the government's ambition of making Australia a renewable energy superpower.

What is the response of the other side to the budget? It's two things really. There's a negative Nigel approach over there. If there's a sensible measure in the budget, they say the sky is falling in. They catastrophise about these issues. They talk Australia down. They diminish and underestimate the capacity of the Australian people. They are always talking the country down. They are always talking down the capacity of the Australian people and Australian institutions to work together to deal with these questions, claiming that measures that are patently deflationary are inflationary. They say it over and over again, in the hope that our putting downward pressure on inflation—