Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We can all take a deep breath after Radioactive Man turned it right up, didn't he? He turned the reactor right up! I do admire those opposite because they're not burdened by self-doubt! They are not burdened by self-doubt—or history or a sense of policy or governance. None of those details bother them, and I think that must bring some sort of freedom when you come into this place and don't really have a sense of history; you're willing to say whatever you want.

So why don't we go down a trip down memory lane? Why don't we go for a journey? It's a beautiful day outside. I'm sure there are many Australians enjoying this MPI on their screens. I'm sure they are all thinking, 'Goodness, thank God that last speaker's over.' But why don't we go down energy lane? The previous government had a number of different energy policies. The first one was the NEG. We remember the NEG, the National Energy Guarantee. It was not the worst idea from those opposite; in fact, the former minister for energy, the former member for Kooyong, Josh Frydenberg, brought the National Energy Guarantee to the parliament. He did a few press conferences with the then leader. In fact, the then Labor opposition—proudly now the Labor government—was even willing to negotiate and come to the table, saying: 'You know what? An idea that brings industry together to guarantee supply while also looking at ways in which we can increase renewable energy into the national energy grid—you know, for a bunch of people over there that we don't usually expect good ideas from, that wasn't a bad one.'

There was one problem with the National Energy Guarantee. It wasn't the Labor Party; it was the Liberal Party's own party room that killed the National Energy Guarantee. In fact, the only thing the National Energy Guarantee guaranteed—it didn't guarantee any energy—was that Malcolm Turnbull was no longer was the Prime Minister. It took the National Energy Guarantee to topple a Liberal Prime Minister.

There were a few other brilliant ideas that came out of it. Of course there was our friend, the member for Hume, who was busy last term as the minister for energy. He was not much on energy policy, to be frank. That wasn't his focus. To be fair, he was pretty busy downloading documents from the City of Sydney website. He was very busy with his $14 million worth of travel that, apparently Clover Moore—remember that? I think he did a press conference as well, saying that they used $14 million. Where did they go—to the moon? Where do you think they went?

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