MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Mr TEHAN (Wannon) (15:14): In January this year, the Prime Minister went to the Tomago aluminium smelter. There are 5,000 jobs that are dependent on this smelter. The Prime Minister looked people in the eye and he said, 'This is what a future made in Australia looks like.' Those 5,000 workers today want the Prime Minister back.
They want the Prime Minister there looking them in the eye again and saying, 'I am going to secure your future by reducing the price of electricity.' And what they want also is for the Prime Minister to say that the Minister for Climate Change and Energy has failed in his job and will be moved. They want some certainty, because everything that has happened under this minister has been all about energy prices going up.
They're up 39 per cent for households and businesses. Now, what have Tomago aluminium said? This is them quoted today: Finding competitively priced energy remains the central challenge, with electricity accounting for more than 40 per cent of … current operating costs.
So what hope do they have if you have a minister who is recklessly pursuing a renewables agenda which he knows is going to continue to drive energy costs up? There is no hope. And how do we know that that's what is going to occur?
We found it out today. He tried to hide the proof—tried to hide the evidence of what his department presented to him in the incoming minister's brief. If you want a sense of how he went about trying to hide it, here are a couple of pages.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): Member for Wannon, you know the rule about propping. Put them down! Thank you.
Mr TEHAN: On our side, we know that the minister is referred to as 'Blackout Bowen', as the shadow Treasurer said. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Excuse me, Member for Wannon; I'm not going to let you go down this path. You need to withdraw those comments.
Mr TEHAN: I withdraw, but there are people on our side who refer to him as 'Blackout Bowen'. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I will remind the member for Wannon that this is the Australian parliament. This is a chamber with certain standards.
What you say in your private business I cannot control, but in this chamber you are not going to do that. Mr TEHAN: I withdraw. What we see here now is a minister who is absolutely delighted to hide the truth from the Australian people.
Now, it would be something which we could all laugh about if it wasn't so serious. Not only today are people worried at Tomago, but what do you think they're thinking now at Boyne Island or at Bell Bay? I know that in my own electorate, where I have Portland Aluminium Smelter, they'll also be looking seriously at this and wondering, 'Well, is this truly what a future made in Australia looks like?' To give you a sense of how out of touch this minister is, it's not only when it comes to smelters in Australia that we're seeing this; it's even businesses tied to the very thing that he's been boasting about, and that is the renewable energy sector.
Last week in the Daily Telegraph we had a story about the owner of Genaspi Energy. They were awarded—and we can't get any transparency around this, remember—$2.6 billion from the capacity scheme. You would think that this must be hugely beneficial to Australia.
But he was asked where he is going to source all of his components from, and this was his response: he'd done nothing wrong. He said: 'What's the big deal? We are an Australian company.
The whole renewables sector is coming from China—solar panels and batteries. We are just going to the source instead of through a third party.' So this is a future made in Australia, according to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. It is a future that is, sadly, collapsing before our eyes.
What should the minister do? Well, it's pretty easy. The first thing he needs to do is drive energy prices down.
He could do that quite quickly—first, by simply stepping on the gas. Get more gas into the system and get it into the system immediately. The other thing he could do is work with the states and say, 'We're going to have to sweat our coal assets,' because that is the other way we are going to drive energy prices down.
They are two positive suggestions the minister could take up right here and now to drive prices down. And the third thing he could do is say that his target of 82 per cent renewable energy by 2030 is unrealistic, and everywhere else in the world where it's been tried it has driven prices through the roof. So you could say, 'We have to stop and we have to reset and we have to change that.' That would be three simple things the minister could step in here and do, and that would give people a sense that there is a future made in Australia, and at the moment there is deep, deep concern that there isn't.
Already, through question time today, I have had text messages from manufacturers in this country saying that they are terribly worried because they see that this, sadly, is the first nail in the coffin, and more are going to follow. We don't want that sort of future for our nation. We want a future that is bright.
We want a future where people have job security. We want a future where people know that energy prices are going to be affordable, where energy prices are going to secure jobs, where energy prices are going to drive manufacturing in this country. That is what we on this side want, and that is what we are going to keep fighting for.
Why are we going to keep fighting for it? It's because the jobs at those smelters, the jobs at those manufacturers and the jobs at the small businesses right across this nation are dependent on it. We're already seeing that the job market here in this country is softening, and our huge worry is that if the minister keeps up his reckless pursuit of driving energy prices through the roof then those jobs are going to continue to go.
Everyone in this parliament should agree that that is the last thing we want to see. The minister is going to respond to this. As I understand it, on Sky today he said that they're going to reduce electricity prices by $150.
It was going to be $275, so it's come back $125. But I look forward to him explaining exactly how he's going to do it. While you're explaining it, can you explain what happened to the 'commitment' where all of you looked the Australian people in the eye and said you were going to reduce power prices by $275?
If you had done that—and it was said 97 times—we wouldn't be in this situation now, and people would not be worried about a future made in Australia disappearing before their very eyes.