CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS

Mr HAMILTON (Groom) (10:19): I'm going to start by quoting from the CSIRO's GenCost report, on page 55: There is a clear trend that decreasing emissions increases 2050 electricity costs. I will repeat that: There is a clear trend that decreasing emissions increases 2050 electricity costs. This is from the CSIRO.

This is from the draft version of their GenCost report. It's a report that's regularly referred to by the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, though not that particular line. That line is often left out in quoting, but it's an important line because it could not be more definitive that lower emissions will come at a higher cost.

That's the CSIRO; that's not me. That's not an opinion. That's not the coal industry.

That is word for word, verbatim, in the CSIRO's own report, which came out in December. I think it was missed during the events at Bondi in December, which many of us will remember. This report didn't get covered at the time, but that line and that sentence is absolutely crucial to understanding Australia's future.

There was a time when we were told to trust the science. Particularly, the people who gave us that line were people who were very strong proponents of net zero and of the moral cause of reducing our emissions. The staple of the argument was that lower emissions and lower energy costs would come without a trade off.

That's what we were told. Australians were told that you could have both these things. You could have the morally good feeling and it would come at no cost to you.

I think it's fantastic to go back to that line, 'Trust the science.' Listen to the CSIRO: decreasing emissions will increase your 2050 electricity costs. This couldn't be clearer. This is a message that isn't just being delivered by the CSIRO.

We are watching the world slowly turn away from those days when we were blindly told to trust the science. Of course, the US has turned. I find it extraordinary to watch Tony Blair arguing with the UK leadership to drop their net zero policies.

They would only be following groups like the Net-Zero Banking Alliance or the major banks of the world who've walked away from this. The Net-Zero Insurance Alliance is much the same. We could look to our biggest trading partners, particularly China, who pay absolutely nothing more than lip service to it.

When we look ahead to what's in front of us in where costs are heading and why costs will continue to go up, we see it's storage and transmission. Sixty per cent of the energy cost rises will be due to storage and transmission costs. These are unavoidable components of the net zero plan.

Costs will go up. There is a trade off. We will pay more.