STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

Mr LLEW O'BRIEN (Wide Bay) (13:30): I'll start with the obvious—that is, climate change is real, and, with eight billion people on Earth, we have an effect on the environment. That's the reality. But I'll tell you what is not real: Labor's promise of a $275 electricity price reduction by 2025.

What also isn't real is this fantasy that Australia is about to become a green hydrogen superpower and the idea that adding more expensive intermittent wind and solar—the actual cause of electricity prices going up—will somehow create an electricity nirvana of jobs and prosperity. I suspect the Minister for Climate Change and Energy has been watching too much Harry Potter.

He seems to think that if we just run harder at the wall of economics and physics we're going to have a platform 9¾ moment, where belief will overcome reality and we'll be transported to a magical world where electricity is free and the $1.3 trillion cost of his electricity system will be paid for by Gringotts bank, not the Australian taxpayer and energy consumer, and, if we sprint hard enough, manufacturing jobs will magically come back from China.

The energy minister calls others deniers, but he is the denier.