PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Mr VENNING (Grey) (18:18): Thank you to the member for Groom for bringing this important motion before the House. It's quite telling that we're here talking about affordability and energy reliability on the same day that more than 600 workers were given their redundancy package at the Whyalla steelworks. Six hundred families and 600 jobs are gone, because energy prices in South Australia are way too high and are not reliable.
Before the last election, the Prime Minister told Australians that life would be cheaper under him. Four years on, it's worth testing that promise. Food is up 18 per cent, rent is up 24 per cent and skyrocketing, and electricity is up 40 per cent.
Under the last coalition government, power prices rose three-tenths of a per cent year on year. Under this government, that number is 8.8 per cent. That is 29 times the rate.
Instead of the promised cut of $275 a year, Australian households have spent an extra $23 billion on energy bills. We were told to trust the modelling. Well, here's a number the modelling never mentioned: more than 244,000 Australians are now on energy hardship programs.
Despite our nation's abundant resources, energy poverty in Australia is at its highest levels on record. If that is not a sign something has gone badly wrong with the Albanese Labor government's energy policy, then what is? At question time, we asked the minister about energy policy and we got a programmed response. 'Well, Member for Cooke, did you know there are 2,000 cheaper home batteries in your electorate?' That is the minister's response.
Yet, last week, the ABC reported that Labor's Cheaper Home Batteries Program is littered with fraud and misconduct. In four months, 95 tip-offs have landed with the regulator, and the reports are serious—mocked up installs, signatures being forged and unlicensed tradies delivering unsafe or broken systems. This is another example of a government program being rorted, and it's taxpayers who are paying for it.
Of the roughly 3,500 batteries that have been inspected, 62 per cent were found to be substandard. This program should be paused, audited and referred to the independent inquiry before another dodgy dangerous battery is installed. In South Australia, my state, we have a part-time energy grid dominated by wind and solar.
It works well when it's sunny and windy, but it does not work well when it is dark and calm. It is this unreliability and the price spikes that come with it that are crippling industries in the regions. As I said before, today, 600 workers in Whyalla lost their jobs because of this government's energy policy.
In June, South Australian wholesale prices went above $20,000 a megawatt-hour. To put that into perspective, it would cost $4.50 to boil a kettle of water. A grid that only works when the weather cooperates is not a grid that industry can plan around.
It is no shock that our heavy industries struggle to compete in the global market. Australian taxpayers are paying twofold—firstly, through the higher power bills and, secondly, through ongoing bailouts. That's $240 million for Nyrstar, $3.1 billion for Whyalla, $2.5 billion for Tomago—the list goes on.
If we as a nation utilised our resources and focused on lowering energy costs, we would have thriving industries, a diversified economy and a more prosperous nation. Energy-intensive industries are falling like dominoes, and, each time, the taxpayers are asked to catch them. There are two ways forward: bail these industries out forever, or give them the energy they can afford and rely on.
We cannot bail our way to a competitive economy. The coalition has a plan. We will scrap net zero and scrap Labor's carbon taxes, including the safeguard mechanism, which is sending industry offshore.
We will back any technology that delivers affordable and reliable energy. We will not pick winners and losers; we will let the market do its job and bring prices down.