Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have been looking forward to this debate. It is like Christmas has come early. What does it say about a government that has stopped governing, has stopped turning up to work, and whose only policy announcement for today is to criticise a Labor state government? It says everything about the shambles of a so-called government led by the current Prime Minister. It was best summarised by Laura Tingle on the weekend in the Financial Review, who wrote:

There aren't many occasions in the past 30 years when a government has so comprehensively lost its political and administrative bundle.

That says everything you need to know about this government.

Today, the member for Fairfax wants to point to energy policy as a matter on which this government has some authority. We know they've jumped from one position to the next. Depending on which day of the week or the weather for the day, we don't know what their position will be. What we haven't heard a lot about in today's energy debate is the abandoned so-called signature policy, the National Energy Guarantee. We know the Prime Minister has said through all the course of this year that that policy had a broader base of consensus than any other proposition he had seen in his 10 years in parliament. He and the Treasurer reminded households pretty much every day that delivering the National Energy Guarantee would result in a cut in their power bills of $550. I'm going to read a quote into the Hansard that was made about the National Energy Guarantee. It's this:

The National Energy Guarantee will lower electricity prices, make the system more reliable, encourage the right investment and reduce emissions without subsidies, taxes or trading schemes …

Who said that? Was it anyone in this chamber? It was. It was the member for Fairfax who made that comment. Bagging out his own policy is one thing; flip-flopping on his own government's policy is another.

But instead they've junked their signature policy—which, in their own words, would lower prices—to come up with this so-called big-stick policy. This has gone down so well that media reports today say:

The move has prompted the Australian Energy Council, Australian Industry Group, the Business Council of Australia and others to join together to appeal to the government to abandon its plans, which it says will "specifically discourage badly needed investment in the energy sector".

Time and time again we have made an offer to work with the government on the National Energy Guarantee because, in their own words, it's the best way to bring the government's energy crisis to an end.

The member for Fairfax draws the attention of the House to power prices under the Queensland government. He doesn't reference anything to do with his own government, because we know there is nothing for them to reference—no plan, no ideas; nothing that the government have provided in the last five years. If the government could stop ripping themselves apart for 10 seconds instead of talking about themselves, bagging each other out, doing doorstops against each other—former prime ministers, current prime ministers, ex prime ministers, future prime ministers, all bagging each other out—they might want to listen to what has happened in Queensland because, thanks to the Palaszczuk Labor government, we have the lowest prices in the country. Why is that? It is because Queenslanders own their electricity assets.

There's someone very quiet in this debate today in this chamber who has not said a peep. That's the member for Groom, trying to keep his head down, trying to keep out of this frame, because the member for Groom speaks with authority about assets in Queensland. He was a minister in the Newman government, which attempted to sell Queensland's essential assets. What happened to them? They were thrown out of office, rejected by the community, rejected outright. The largest swing against a sitting conservative government in the nation's history occurred under the member for Groom's watch because they had such great ideas when it came to policy! We know their only agenda was to cut, sack and sell. If the member for Fairfax, the member for Bowman and the member for Groom had had their way, Queensland's essential services and assets would have been sold off.

So we will not be taking any lectures from any members from the LNP in Queensland when it comes to lowering prices in Queensland, because, under the Palaszczuk Labor government, we have the lowest energy prices. Rather than attacking that government, I would take a lesson from the Palaszczuk government, listen to what that government is doing to deliver a—

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