PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Mr HAMILTON (Groom) (12:50): I move: That this House: (1) notes that power prices are far too high under the Government, with electricity bills increasing by around 40 per cent and Australian households spending an extra $23 billion on energy bills over the past four years; (2) condemns the Government for turning its back on affordable and reliable energy, including coal and gas, and forcing consumers to pay for higher costs and unreliable energy policy; (3) recognises individuals, families, small businesses, farmers, manufacturers and miners need affordable and reliable energy to keep household budgets under control, remain competitive and support Australian jobs; (4) calls out the Government for making Australia more dependent on imported fuel, with around 90 per cent of transport fuel now brought in from overseas, placing the economy and national security at risk; (5) supports the Opposition's plan to deliver cheaper power and energy abundance by backing all technologies that can provide affordable and reliable energy, including coal, gas, hydro, nuclear, batteries and renewables in the right places; and (6) calls on the Government to adopt practical energy policies that lower power prices, strengthen fuel security, support Australian businesses and restore Australia's energy independence.
As I go door to door throughout Toowoomba, I hear the same thing from people over and over again: Australia is heading in the wrong direction. Inevitably they tell me that the cost of living is going up and up, and inevitably they bring it back to energy bills. Energy bills continue to push upwards, and if I ask them, 'What would you change about Australia,' they say the same thing. 'Can we get real on our conversation about energy?
Can we get real? Can we be honest?' This is a government that not that long ago came into power in 2022 on the promise of a $275 reduction in your power bills. This wasn't just a promise.
This wasn't something pie in the sky. This was baked in. The modelling was done.
This was an absolute promise from the Prime Minister and from the now Minister for Energy. This was what was absolutely going to happen. But, of course, nothing of the sort has happened.
Instead, what we've seen is prices rise by 40 per cent. For us to continue on the pathway we're going, to add in the poles and wires we're going to need to connect all the various renewable projects that are stumbling their way through ridiculous approval processes at the moment, we're going to see another 60 per cent on top of that price rise again. That's where we're headed.
Prices have gone up, they continue to go up, and yet we have a minister who will get on the news and try and deny it and try and tell us that things are going the right way. We ask, 'When are these energy prices coming down?' He says, 'Wholesale prices are coming down,' as if that is what people pay in their homes when I knock on their door. It's ridiculous, and it's so out of touch.
It's so out of touch of El Presidente—forgive me—the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. And as we have this conversation, how can we be in this situation in Australia? We are a country blessed with reserves of coal, gas and uranium.
We have some of the best mining engineers and technical specialists in the world come out of our wonderful education systems. We have some of the best miners. It's been my privilege in life to lead them into their daily work.
One of the most honourable professions is to go and extract those resources that used to drive our economy. We have the best in the world, and yet we're not allowed to use it. We're allowed to send it overseas for other countries to use.
And what happens when they use our resources? They get cheap energy, they make things. They take our manufacturing, our industrial base, from us.
It follows cheap energy. Isn't that extraordinary? Who would have thought that if you need to make things, then you need cheap energy to make it?
When we give away our cheap energy, other countries take our industrial base from us. What happens here? I've already said that our energy prices go up.
We're not allowed to use the resources that we have. We're not allowed to use our coal at full capacity. We talk it down.
We have states that didn't want to use gas. And as a country we can't bring ourselves to use uranium whilst we watch other countries that have far lower standards of living than us rocket up, speed up ahead of us, because they're using cheap energy. That's what drives economies.
That's what makes countries better. That's what drives their standard of living—cheap energy. Worse than that is that we put in place ridiculous policies, like the Safeguard Mechanism, that are purely designed to punish emitters and to push these people out of our local market.
And then we created the Capacity Investment Scheme, which underwrites the losses of renewable projects. So not only do we kill off and push out emitters; we make this pretend false economy where renewable energy is underwritten by the taxpayer and we don't get to know how much we are underwriting these renewable projects that are inevitably owned by foreign countries.
They come here and run at a loss, with taxpayers underwriting the money that shoots out overseas. We're currently at a time when we are subsidising electric vehicles made in China more than we were subsidising the Australian car industry. That should be shocking to Australians.
That should be absolutely shocking. We are throwing money at Chinese EV manufacturers at a rate we were not throwing it at the Australian car-manufacturing industry. If you want to go further, we now not just allow but encourage this.
We've set up a system whereby foreign companies can come here, buy our farms and shut them down. This is prime agricultural land in the member for Dawson's, the member for New England's and my own electorate shut down, and we're wondering why our economy is suffering. There is a better way.
Drop net zero. Walk away from it. Grow up.
Be a country that can realise we have these fantastic advantages. We should be using them. We should be them to using our full benefit.
When we do, we can return our standard of living. We can be a prosperous and strong nation again. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Wilkie ): Is the motion seconded?
Mr Willcox: I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.