Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Multicultural Engagement) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Albanese Labor Government to admit that power bills across Australia have increased significantly since coming to office, despite Prime Minister Albanese saying 97 times before the election that power bills would be reduced by $275 by 2025.

I'm very pleased my colleagues supported the discussion of this very important matter of urgency. In the weeks leading up to the next federal election, now is the time for the people of Australia to consider the promises that were made by the now Labor government before the last federal election. Now is the time for the Australian people to write the report card of the Albanese Labor government. Now is the time to consider the promises that were made before Australians voted and to look at the reality after three years of the Albanese Labor government.

Now Prime Minister Albanese promised 97 times to cut power bills. On 3 December 2021, he said that the Labor Party's plan:

… will cut power bills for families and businesses by $275 a year for homes by 2025, compared to today.

We're now in 2025, and what's the result? Power bills have gone up, not down. They've gone up.

Our Powering Australia Plan will create over 600,000 jobs. It will reduce energy prices in the national energy market for households by $275.

That was the Prime Minister at a doorstop on 4 December 2021.

I've got pages and pages of these quotes. No fewer than 17 times in December 2021, the now Prime Minister promised that power bills would decrease by, on average, $275. He promised it 17 times in December 2021. Then we go into January 2022. It was the same thing. I quote from a press conference on 3 January 2022:

… reducing energy prices by $275 for the average household.

That's what the now Prime Minister said on 3 January 2022. This is what he said on 7 January:

It'll cut average power bills for households by $275 by 2025.

At a doorstop on 7 January, he said:

… reducing power bills for households by $275 by 2025.

It goes on and on. Here's a great one; this one is one of my favourites. On 12 January 2021, this is what the Prime Minister said:

It would see—

that's the Labor Party's power plan—

640,000 jobs created and a reduction in power bills on average of $275 by 2025. It's a practical plan.

That's what the Prime Minister said at a doorstop on 12 January 2021.

Another 10 times in January, he said that power prices would go down by, on average, $275. And then there's more. In February and in March, there were more of these promises. In my home state of Queensland, at a rally on 3 April 2022—about three years ago—he said that the Albanese government would:

… lower household power bills by $275 a year by 2025.

That was the promise that the now Prime Minister made to the people of my home state of Queensland. What's the reality? Power prices have gone up. They haven't gone down; they've gone up, on average, by $1,000 for your average household. We've seen wholesale prices skyrocket by 83 per cent in the past year, with record highs in New South Wales and Queensland, proving that Labor's 2022 pre-election energy modelling was a complete and utter fantasy. Labor's energy approach has, in fact, come at five times the cost that Australians were initially promised. So where my office is located, in the federal electorate of Blair, households in Ipswich and the Somerset region are under financial stress. They are struggling to make ends meet.