Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

Well, the spot price in Sydney is about $10 per gigajoule at the moment. Last week it was $12.40 per gigajoule. The AiG and Manufacturing Australia are talking about their members being quoted prices upwards of $22 per gigajoule, up from the historic price of $3 to $4. The minister well knows that is not parity pricing. That is scarcity pricing, because this government has mismanaged a serious supply crisis in the gas market, such that manufacturers operating overseas, in other countries, are able to purchase Australian gas at the moment at about half the price being quoted to manufacturers in Australia—an utterly outrageous outcome.

Last week the Prime Minister finally woke up and recognised a gas crisis. He called, as is his wont, a gas summit, to talk. He brought the gas companies to Sydney. Mind you, there were no manufacturers, no power generators, no state governments involved in this area—just the gas companies. True to form, he talked and he talked and he talked. Then he wagged his finger and 'Malsplained' what the problem was in the gas industry. The problem with this Prime Minister is all he could do was talk. He has this problem with the banks. He thinks if he goes to one of their birthday parties and gives them a stern talking to that they will change their behaviour. That is not how this mob works.

I will go to the communique coming out of the PMO about this summit. 'Gas producers guarantee Aust. supply: PM' is the heading. I thought that maybe there was something that came out of this summit, but the 'gas supply guarantee' is just that the gas will be available to meet peak demand periods in the NEM, such as during heatwaves. There is absolutely nothing for manufacturing, absolutely nothing for the power generation sector and absolutely nothing for all of those other days during the year other than heatwaves. Many have made the point—and did the day after—that more talk is not going to work. More talk is going to do nothing to relieve this very serious crisis. We need action. But we know that around this chamber and out in the community this government is not very good at action. They are very good at talk, particularly this Prime Minister, but not very good at action, particularly when it comes to energy policy. That is because this is a government paralysed by ideology and paralysed by their internal divisions as well as their fondness for sitting back in the cheap seats and blaming everyone else. They are taking no responsibility as the nation's government.

We know that it is not just in gas. You see this approach as well in the electricity sector, where there is a supply crisis emerging too. You ask: why is there a supply crisis? Essentially, it is for one reason. Three-quarters of our existing coal- and gas-fired generators are already operating beyond their design life. As we will see only next week, the Hazelwood power station—a 50-year-old power station—is closing.

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