Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The price the honourable member should be focused on is the high price families in South Australia are paying because of the reckless and incompetent management of the electricity system in that state, where the Energy Market Operator has to intervene weekend after weekend to keep the grid going in South Australia, at enormous cost to Australian families. As John Pierce also said at the Press Club this morning:

I think it would be very hard to actually identify and say 'this is a carbon price'—there isn't one.

There you have it, from John Pierce.

Turning to interesting utterances on energy, my attention was drawn to this extraordinary rant from the Leader of the Opposition this morning. It was just a jumble of inconsistencies. He said, 'We're not interested in trashing the renewable energy industry in this country.' This is the renewable energy industry that he says is already cheaper than coal and gas. So, presumably the fact that they're already cheaper means that taxpayers and consumers have to subsidise them to make them even cheaper. That's very interesting. Then he said, 'What we're interested in is lower prices.' Lower prices for whom? Not for Australian families. He wants to put a $66 billion tax on Australian families to 2050. He wants us to cut our emissions by twice as much as we undertook in Paris to do. Why would any nation do that? Why would you unilaterally cut your emissions by more than you'd agreed to in concert with others? He was asked again and again. He's had this proposal for years. Has he done any modelling on it? None at all. He has no idea what it will cost. Has anybody credible proposed it? No, they haven't.

Mr Bowen interjecting—

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