MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Mr TIM WILSON (Goldstein) (15:34): Australia needs to afford energy. It's quite simple. Australian industry needs to be able to afford energy so that it can go on to be able to build out the future industrial capacity to attract investments so we can build the jobs and economic opportunity so that Australians can get good paying jobs, afford to buy their own home and be able to afford a secure retirement.
Energy is the foundation of the economy, so it shouldn't really surprise anybody that when you have continuous price increases it gets harder to attract the investment to continue to go on and build the industrial capacity of our country. What we've had under this government, as it has continued to constrain the volume of energy supply, along with the decisions of so many state governments, is price rises.
Now, we don't oppose renewables at all as part of an industrial energy mix. It's a very important part of the industrial energy mix, but it's one part of our industrial energy mix. It is one of the strengths, whether it's the major hydroelectric investments that this side of parliament has advocated for and built in the past, the base-load energy that we have advocated and built in the past or building out the gas capacity for peaking that we have advocated and built in the past.
I remember the 2022 election and the delusions of the current minister for climate change and energy, when he said at Kurri Kurri, 'We couldn't possibly have gas being built there; it must be hydrogen.' He has backed down from that because, unfortunately for him, energy responds to physics. It does not simply back down to what he wants to do or to drive ideologically.
Energy operates on physics and economics, and that's the basis on which we make our decisions about how to build out the energy capacity. Base load has a role, gas and peaking have a role, and renewables have a role, but we understand they must be part of a mix. My great-grandfather was a chief engineer on the first Yallourn power station.
If you want to be able to have renewables, you need to have base load to back it in with other things like storage as part of a complex grid to attract the investment to go on and build out the jobs you need. But when you have a renewable-energy-only approach you won't get that investment approach. That's the path of dishonesty that this government is taking us down.
It's not one that is going to have a short-term impact; it is one that is going to sell out Australia's future. By Labor driving a solely renewable energy driven focus into the future, Australia's future is being sold out with it because of the Albanese government. Let's not pretend that somehow what they say is what they do.
Just like the Victorian government or the New South Wales government, they talk renewables, but what do they do? The Victorian government and the New South Wales government have secret contracts where they continue to subsidise coal. Let's look at the Albanese government, which did exactly the same thing.
They promised households $275 reductions in household bills, but then they gave coal and gas generators direct subsidies to pass onto households, because they couldn't deliver on their promise. They did it so successfully that they even got the teal members of parliament—who committed to running on a platform of trust and integrity in public office and who said they would abolish fossil fuel subsidies—to vote with the government for new fossil fuel subsidies, because they couldn't honour their promises around renewable energy.
The lectures that we are going to take from the government benches are net zero on energy. We need a policy process that is going to deliver the industrial capacity and the energy capacity we need for industrial capacity for this country. Labor's plan was that they would reduce emissions, reduce prices and reduce unreliability.
The reality has been very different; they have increased emissions, increased prices and increased unreliability. What we need is a clear plan that mobilises capital, brings prices down and addresses the issues of unreliability, and in the process, if we achieve that, we will build out the social licence to reduce emissions as well. That's the basis in which we achieve long-term, sustainable policy for energy, for emissions and to build Australia's clean industrial future.
If we do that, we'll drive the reindustrialisation of this country and create the economic opportunity that Australians so desperately want. If we do what Labor's policy achieves, we will continue to drive the madness of deindustrialisation.