Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I find myself in partial agreement with the member for Parramatta: we need to have a more sophisticated debate when it comes to renewable energy. We should start by being truthful about the actual cost to the Australian community of this transition. If renewable energy were this wonderful thing that was so much cheaper, we would not need any subsidies, we would not need the government coming in and having forced mandates and requiring compulsory things like the renewable energy target.

If we're going to have a sophisticated debate, let's start with how much the cost of subsidising renewable energy is adding to people's electricity bills at the moment. If we add up the cost of the feed-in tariffs for solar from the states and the cost of the large-scale renewable energy target, we come to a sum of $3 billion. That gets added directly to consumers' electricity bills to subsidise renewables. But that's only part of the additional cost; there are all the hidden subsidies that we don't see. There is the added cost to the network of hooking wind farms into the grid. This adds to the network costs and gets loaded into our electricity bills. This completely distorts the market and forces up the wholesale price, adding to consumers' bills.

If we're going to have a really sophisticated debate, we need to say what this cost is to our economy. What is the cost when we push the price of electricity higher and higher to subsidise renewables? How many jobs are being lost across the economy when businesses cannot afford to continue in Australia? What is the cost of our lack of competitiveness? What is the cost, when we have seen that South Australia now has the prize of the highest electricity prices in the world?

An opposition member: That's untrue. It's untrue.

How can South Australia manufacture anything competitively if they have the highest electricity prices in the world?

Opposition members interjecting—

We hear the members over there. They don't like to mention this fact. Do you know why, Madam Deputy Speaker? It is because their policy is to copy South Australia. You couldn't make this madness up. In South Australia we have seen the economic devastation that has been caused by pursuing these absurd renewable energy targets, and that is exactly what the Labor Party want to copy.

The other thing that we need to think about is the health effects on people who cannot afford their electricity bills. I know this is a controversial subject, but if we're going to have a sophisticated debate let's tell the truth about what's happening. We have excess winter mortality in this country. On an average winter day, you are 20 per cent more likely to die than you are on a summer day. It is cold weather that kills. Of that 20 per cent—those excess winter deaths—the World Health Organization estimates that 30 per cent are the result of people having inadequately heated homes. Because of the cost of subsidising renewables, we have seen more and more Australians having their electricity cut off.

An opposition member: No.

People in your electorate or in the member for Indi's electorate are having their electricity cut off. We have seen a doubling of the number of households having their electricity cut off over recent years simply because electricity prices have gone higher, and a substantial cause of that is this absurd nonsense of subsidising renewables when it's completely and utterly unnecessary. We hear about all these wonderful new technologies coming on stream, and that is fantastic, but why do we need to subsidise them? Why do we need to make it harder for the age pensioner or the hardworking family or the single mum to pay higher electricity prices just so they can subsidise renewables.

If we are going to have an honest or sophisticated debate, as the member for Parramatta talks about, we must start with the cost to our society. I respect the member for Indi; I understand she brings this motion to the House in good faith. But to bring it in here and talk about more subsidisation is completely and utterly the wrong direction to go in. Energy is the ultimate resource. It is what creates wealth. It is what transforms one substance to another. It affects households. It affects jobs. If we're going to have this debate, at least let's be honest about what the true cost of renewable energy is and the harm that it's doing to our business and our society.

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