Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

If you visit my Parliament House office you will see a wide range of products made on the Northern Beaches. One of these is a red grill made by Roband, a leading commercial finance manufacturer in Cromer. Roband's energy costs have risen by more than 50 per cent over the past year. For any business, this is a massive cost. But, in a tightly competitive market, where made in Australia is competing against cheap, overseas imports, this is disastrous. Australia, which once boasted some of the cheapest energy, now has some of the most expensive energy. While debates around the existence of climate change are fading into history, the real and substantive issue around the family kitchen table is how to pay the quarterly energy bill or whether we can afford to put the heater or air conditioner on. The bottom line is that renewable energy can only flourish when the public have faith and trust in the market to deliver affordable and reliable energy.

The experience last summer in South Australia saw blackouts become the norm. While I am sure that this was of benefit to the Australian film industry, as many people headed to the cinema, that hardly counts as a long-term solution. This was not market failure; this was regulatory failure. In an advanced economy, keeping the lights on cannot be a question dependent on public pleas for moderation or on the shutting down of large energy users in industry.

Of course, chief among the policy failures has been the separatist, go-it-alone approach by various state governments who, by legislating their own renewable energy targets, have put politics and ideology ahead of families and lower prices. More detrimental than this are the economically damaging, reckless, unscientific and irrational moratoriums on gas development in Victoria, the Northern Territory, New South Wales and Queensland, which have driven up wholesale gas prices at a time when gas-powered generation is vital to the energy sector to provide synchronous, stable generation capacity as coal generation capacity declines. For the states which are floating on centuries' worth of gas to be shunting responsibility to Canberra, demanding export restrictions and price controls, clearly indicates the absurdity of any party that takes up this position on energy. Innovation and technological development is rapidly lowering the cost curve for new renewable plants. While mature technologies have plateaued, the cost of wind and solar photovoltaic generation has more than halved. The missing link that enables renewables to provide truly reliable, dispatchable power is storage technology which smooths variability.

Jay Weatherill can hold as many Hollywood-style press conferences as he likes to boast about a 100-megawatt lithium-ion battery—but the Turnbull government's Snowy Hydro 2.0 will produce, in one hour, 20 times that amount and can deliver it constantly for almost a week. As the largest pumped-hydro scheme in the Southern Hemisphere, it will create over 5,000 jobs during construction and will spur investment in new renewable technologies. This is why the Turnbull government's approach to energy stands in strong contrast to that of Labor and the Greens. Not only did Julia Gillard's carbon tax wreak havoc on our economy, but her state comrades with their ideological obsessions against natural gas and existing coal generation are creating a climate of malaise where investment has stalled.

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