Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last night, as I slid into bed with the electric blanket on 2, I thought about those people who are going to bed cold because they can't afford the luxury of power. Meanwhile, AGL has just announced that its financial year profits could exceed $1 billion. Its gains are my constituents' losses. In my electorate of Paterson, electricity bills have risen by up to 20 per cent. This is abhorrent. In Paterson, the median weekly income for an individual is 11 per cent less than the median average across the country. For families, it's 15 per cent less. Rising energy costs are stretching budgets to breaking point. People are going cold—and hungry, in many cases.

I am absolutely incensed that the Prime Minister's solution is to give the big energy chiefs a tap on the wrist, 'Naughty, naughty,' and say, 'Make sure you keep letting people know about their discounts.' It's simply not good enough. Their lack of transparency and shifting customers around are a small step in a ginormous marathon that's not being run. We know that the driving force behind price hikes is the absence of a national energy policy.

You've been in government for four years, and you've done diddly squat. We've lost one in three renewable energy jobs since you formed government. The Australian people are sick of waiting for this government to get its act together. Until then, we'll all pay the price. But here's a dollar; why don't you send everyone out a survey, and they'll tell you that?