Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Here we have it. Here we have living proof that this is a rushed policy on offshore wind. It isn't a policy that's sustainable. It isn't a policy that does anything. It is a policy that has got it wrong, so we have to go back and fix up what is already wrong with it. We haven't even built one!

Yesterday in question time was like the episode of Seinfeld about the reservation policy. This government knows how to take the reservation, but it doesn't know how to hold it. 'This is what we're doing in policy. We know how to put out the guidelines, but we don't know how to build it.' We heard about housing yesterday: 'We know how to fund it. We don't know how to build it.' We heard about doctors: 'We know how to fund them. We don't know how to get them.'

This is where offshore wind is. They've got this great idea: 'Let's go and build something that's never been built, a floating offshore wind farm on an industrial scale off the coast of New South Wales.' Then we find out the minister doesn't know he's got powers he's meant to have. He did not know the powers he's meant to have in regulation and the way they issue these things. So they come back, and he says, 'We've got to fix it up and we've got to make it retrospective. We've got to go retrospective on what we can do and how we can give these grants, how we can give these leases, so that we don't have to go through consultation for the people that did it a different way and we don't have to go through community consultation. We don't have to go and talk to the people; we just make it retrospective.' It's like the opposite of a superpower: the ability to not know what powers you've got. And this is this minister, rushing headlong into an unsustainable way.

There is a sustainable way to do renewables, and that's why we have renewables in our plan, but it has to be done better. Throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks is a plan for a farce. That's why we'll have blackouts. The superman who is doing this is 'Blackout man', not 'Renewables man'.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senators, pursuant to order, the time for consideration of this bill has expired. I will now put the question before the chair and put the questions on the remaining stages of the bill. I first deal with the second reading amendment circulated by the opposition. The question is that the opposition amendment on sheet 3332 to be agreed to.

Opposition's circulated amendment—

Omit all words after "That:, substitute "the Senate notes that:

(a) the bill is specifically designed to make electricity more expensive for Australian families;

(b) Australian families have already seen their electricity prices increase by $1,000 under the Albanese Government;

(c) Prime Minister Albanese told Australians 97 times before the election that their electricity bills would fall by $275 a year, but has instead delivered price increases; and

(d) a Labor-Greens minority government would introduce super-charged nature positive laws to make electricity even more expensive".

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question now is that this bill now be read a second time.