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

We know exactly why because report after report has told us why, including the recent report from the Chief Scientist. The key driver is the policy paralysis in this building under this Prime Minister and his predecessor, the member for Warringah. Wholesale prices under this government have doubled. We saw the numbers in The Australian, the newspaper favoured by members opposite, in an article by David Crowe, who showed that even under the carbon tax—the dreaded carbon tax—wholesale prices were around $58 a megawatt hour and now they are $130. Of course under the carbon price mechanism there was the household assistance package—pensioners received increases and we tripled the tax-free threshold—which more than covered the impact in energy prices and other prices of the carbon price mechanism. In my state of South Australia, the impact of the carbon price mechanism was about 4.5 per cent. In New South Wales, they are dealing with 20 per cent power price increases, at the same time that wages are as flat as they have ever been. People are actually receiving real wage cuts under this government. And just to put the cherry on the top of the outrage, at the same time, this government is going to cut the pension by $365 a year for new pensioners—hundreds of thousands of pensioners into the future will have their pension cut by $365—at a time when we are seeing record power price increases.

As my friend the member for Grayndler has said time and time again, this government had a plan to get into government but no plan to govern. For four years we have had no energy policy in this country. The Finkel report has given us an opportunity to work across the aisle to put downward pressure on the power price increases that the member for Hughes is going to have to explain to his constituents in New South Wales over the coming weeks. But we still do not quite know whether this Prime Minister and the Minister for the Environment and Energy will be given permission by the member for Hughes and others in the coalition party room to do the right thing by the nation and actually start to put downward pressure on power prices in this country.

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