David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Deputy President, you have astutely noted that the answers were very broad and ranged far and wide. Particularly, they rebutted the fact that costs were a pressure coming out of this legislation. I'm merely pointing out this government's ill-thought-through ideological opposition, not only to this bill but to other bills, such as on energy, is actually making things worse.

I want to go to a point in an interview recorded last week and reported in the Australian, where the energy minister from Ontario in Canada had a question put to him about Minister Bowen's assertions that wind and solar are the cheapest. He said, 'Our government'—that is, the Canadian government—'moved on wind and solar in a big way, and it's created some serious problems for our systems operator.' That sounds like the statement from AEMO. He then said that they have gone in favour of nuclear power, because it's a more viable path to renewables, it's not emitting, and you're talking about a very small area of land. On price, he said they are producing power through their nuclear power stations for about 10c a kilowatt, whereas Australian households currently pay between 20c and 40c per kilowatt. So, we are seeing this industrial relations legislation, like industry policy, unnecessarily driving up prices, purely because of ideology.