Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thought I might get another question on infrastructure. I thought I might, but not quite. Instead, I get a question from a coalition that announced 22 different energy policies and did not land a single one. Not one. Unlike us, who put out modelling by RepuTex in 2021. Not Labor Party modelling: independent modelling from Australia's leading energy economists in 2021.

What we did, of course, was to continue to fulfil our commitment to the Rewiring the Nation program. It was there in the budget. The rewiring the nation program, as the minister for energy has pointed out, is based on the Australian Energy Market Operator's integrated systems plan of making sure that transmission was fit for purpose in the 21st century. We have been upfront about the challenges which are there, the challenges which have been created by two major issues. One, of course, is the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has had an impact on global energy prices. Apparently that has skipped the attention of the coalition. The second is the fact that we inherited such a failed position of four gigawatts of energy leaving the system but only one gigawatt going back in. It wasn't just the Liberal Party who committed to a 25 per cent reduction in the wholesale electricity price by the end of 2021 during the 2019 campaign. The National Party did the same thing.

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