Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

Two minutes isn't anywhere near long enough to highlight the Bowen blight on this country's energy sector. But I want to at least highlight this incredible revelation, finally brought to light, regarding the modelling that is underpinning this government's outrageous net zero strategy. As we found out last week, in a gracious concession, the CSIRO's chief energy economist, Paul Graham, acknowledged that the GenCost modelling, which is what this government has regularly used to defend its aggressive targets, isn't quite the shining renewable beacon the government has rallied—or, rather, hidden—behind. Imagine my surprise, or lack thereof, when we finally heard that all existing generation storage and transmission capacity up to 2030 is treated as a sunk cost in the modelling since they're not relevant to the new build costs in that year, being 2030. This is the same modelling that said we'd all be $275 better off on our energy bills. It's incredible. Basically, if we ignore the part of the equation where we spend billions of dollars transforming the grid by 2030, we find that renewables are actually the cheapest form of energy from 2031. Imagine that.

Nick Cater wrote in the Australian today:

The capital cost of the paraphernalia required to transform the grid by 2030 would not be $78 bn, but $1.5 trillion. That's a mere down payment on the final bill of $7 trillion to $9 trillion by 2060.

Wind turbines, solar panels and transmission lines are all apparently irrelevant hardware which are going to send us broke and cover roughly half the size of Victoria. Is this all going on farmers' lands or an Indigenous cultural heritage site? That's something for the government to consider or perhaps, at the very least, allow us to have an inquiry into. (Time expired)