PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS

Mr SMALL (Forrest) (18:58): As the member for Bonner was seeking to reassure the chamber that the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, has it all under control, she only needed to lean on the dispatch box the way he does when she talked about two million Australians having a so-called cheaper home battery—neglecting to mention somehow that the cost of that program has gone from $2.3 billion to more than $7 billion in borrowed money at the same time that the number of Australians in energy debt has risen to some 336,615 households.

That's 336,000 Australian households who cannot afford their power bills today. How did we get here? We got here because the Albanese government promised, no fewer than 97 times, to lower power bills in Australia by $275.

There have been lots of numbers and statistics here tonight from those opposite but not one mention of $275, because that was the promise that mattered to Australians. But, rather than seeing their power bills coming down under this government, we've seen them go up by 24 per cent in the last year alone. That's the real cost that matters to Australians.

It's what they get in their bill, not the wholesale cost that Chris Bowen likes to talk about. The fact is that Australians are paying $1,300 a year more for their power bills than the $275 cut they were promised by this government. And let's not forget the promise came from the Prime Minister himself.

When challenged by a journalist the very first time that the Labor Party announced this commitment to the Australian people, Mr Albanese replied: 'I don't think; I know. I know because we've done the modelling.' Well, that modelling has been thoroughly discredited by the fact that the power prices are through the roof. And for all of the talk, for all of the numbers and statistics that we hear from those opposite, we do not hear an apology for a core broken promise, and we do not hear a plan to lower power bills for Australians.

That's why some 336,000 Australian households right now can't afford their power bills, let alone stumping up for one of these so-called cheaper home batteries. There is no relief for those Aussies out there who are renting, who are locked out of the property market because the Albanese government has overseen an absolute explosion in migration at a time that housing construction has been limited in Australia.

There is no benefit in a battery program that has blown out from $2.3 billion to more than $7 billion already, and the way that Minister Bowen keeps fiddling with the pieces of the puzzle, as we're told, should actually cause Australians to lose sleep at night because that guarantees more billions of taxpayer dollars shovelled out the door for higher prices for those Australians left to carry the cost.

It is unthinkable that we can continue to do the same thing and expect a different result to what we've seen, and yet that's the plan from our energy minister here in Australia. The problem is that energy is everywhere in our economy. It's not just a household issue, but rather one that impacts our businesses as well, like those small and family owned businesses—cafes, the corner store and the like.

You walk into a cafe that is air-conditioned. That costs money. The lights cost money.

The heating elements in the coffee machine cost money. You're paying for that higher power price everywhere you go. Importantly, manufacturing businesses, who are huge users of energy in Australia, are the ones doing it perhaps hardest of all.

The answer from this government is that you might be able to get a cheaper home battery for your small manufacturing business. In my part of the world, where we've got alumina refineries that are some of the biggest energy consumers in Western Australia, no cheaper home battery is going to offset the explosion in power prices that we've seen in recent years. I note the crowing from those opposite about the reduction in emissions, completely neglecting the fact that emissions were down 26 per cent from 2005 levels by the time we left office in 2022.

So, for all of the billions of dollars that have been shovelled out the door in the last couple of years, we've seen emissions tick down, and that exposes the absolute hypocrisy of this government's energy program.