Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question. We certainly acknowledge the pressure associated with increases of prices that is being placed on household budgets and, in this case, businesses. As I said earlier, our core business, the No. 1 priority for the government, is about easing the cost of living. And that also goes to the question of reducing energy prices. One of the real differences now compared to when I first entered parliament in 2007 is that cheap energy in this country is renewable energy and that the way in which we get energy prices down is improving our energy grid and having policy certainty which allows people to invest in renewable energy and have that renewable energy be able to be received by the grid. But the problem is that we've had a lost decade when it comes to energy policy. Those opposite had 22 different energy policies. They failed to have a situation where there was policy certainty and that's why we have not seen the investment in renewable energy that we should have seen. On this side of the House, we have done more in the last 15 weeks of this government than those opposite did in the last 10 years. Their inaction on energy has been absolutely shameful, but the height of that shame was what we saw from the shadow Treasurer, the former Minister for Energy, when he sought to change the law in order to mean that he did not have to tell the Australian people—

See this speech in context