Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

The minister's own department's website—they know. I don't know if they've told the minister, but they know the truth. This government, although it was elected with the promise of delivering a cut in power prices, has abandoned it, and the minister's own department knows it. That's why you do not find that $275 promise on the department's website, but the Labor Party's fine with still promoting it. That's the game they play. That's what they do.

Can we go back to the most comprehensive economic modelling ever done since Federation? I almost said 'muddling'. It would have been an interesting pun. The $275 in the spreadsheet that was done for the modelling—listen, Labor guys, who are trying to ignore it because it's really important for you to know this, colleagues—drives an assumption of 306,000 jobs. For those on the Labor benches, who do not know their own policy: in addition to making other promises, they had promised 604,000 new jobs as a result of their climate change policy. Of those, 306,000 jobs—in other words, well over half of the jobs that they have promised through their climate change policy—are predicated on the cheap power prices that they have now abandoned.

So they've abandoned the power prices, and they've cut, by over half, the number of jobs they claimed that that would deliver. This is despite the Prime Minister standing here in this sitting period, saying, 'Oh, we stand by the modelling.' The Prime Minister stands by the modelling, but can he confirm that he will deliver on the promise of a $275 cut in power prices? He can't answer it. He abandoned the promise. He abandoned the promise of power prices, and he is abandoning the promise of jobs. They go hand in hand, based on the very modelling that the Labor Party claims is the most comprehensive in the history of our nation.

One of the reasons that prices are skyrocketing at the moment, and they have been since this government was elected, is the lack of gas being poured into the Australian market.

As soon as the minister was appointed to his role, we in the opposition, in the coalition, were very clear in saying: 'Power prices are going up. You need more gas in the system. Please, minister, call an emergency meeting of gas CEOs. Get them around the table and put pressure on them. If need be, threaten to use the gas trigger, otherwise known as the ADGSM.' Guess what he did: absolutely nothing. Instead of calling a meeting with gas CEOs, do you know who he wanted to meet with? Other politicians around the country. A great, big, fat lot of good that did, didn't it—a whole bunch of politicians coming in a room, from states and territories, umming and ah-ing. Guess what tangible activity came out of that: nothing, not one thing. It took two months until, only days ago, the ACCC tabled a report that said, 'Guess what: you need to pour more gas into the market.' Two months it took until the new resources minister said: 'You know what? Maybe we should start threatening to use that gas trigger after all.' It took two months of absolute inaction.

This is why the Australian people, unfortunately, can have no confidence that the Labor government will deliver on its $275 promise, because its inaction in the domestic market will make it absolutely impossible. This is the first broken promise of the Albanese Labor government.

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