Phillip Thompson (Herbert, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

The people of Townsville, in my electorate of Herbert, are doing it tough, with cost-of-living pressures that have continued to rise. I support targeted, appropriate cost-of-living relief, but this policy and this bit of legislation, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Energy Price Relief Pain) Bill 2022, have everything mashed in together. Six months into this new government's first term, the lack of action on issues that affect the money in people's bank accounts, their grocery shop, their fuel bill and their power bill is having an impact on their everyday life.

The very fact that we are here today on an unscheduled sitting of parliament to solve such an important problem is an example of this government's chaotic approach. There have been weeks and weeks of parliamentary sittings since the election, and days when we ran out of things to debate, and suddenly we're back here, on a whim, to sort out a problem that has been developing for months. I don't have any problem with travelling to Canberra to debate important issues. That's what we're elected to do. And, as has been said this morning, the opposition absolutely supports targeted and temporary cost-of-living relief. We always have. But it's this chaotic, knee-jerk, thought-bubble approach that needs to stop.

This unprecedented market intervention is going to mean long-term pain for the people of Australia. Power prices are to increase. The Australian Energy Regulator released its State of the energy market report for 2022 in September this year, three months ago now. The report noted that wholesale electricity prices across much of the NEM remained relatively low and rose rapidly, to record highs, in all regions in May, June and July 2022. We've seen this government be asleep at the wheel. This issue is not a new one, and this solution that we're debating today is rushed and not considered. The legislation was only provided to the opposition at 8.45 last night. But the Labor Party already had support from the Greens, who had not seen the legislation—sight-unseen support from the Greens—because that's their coalition, the Labor and the Greens government.

As the Reserve Bank governor, the Secretary of Treasury, energy market experts and others have made clear, the answer to Labor's energy crisis is more supply. Getting more gas into Australia's domestic market will reduce electricity prices and inflation. Instead, we have a situation where we're talking about not just short-term price caps, which will give long-term powers to control the Australian energy sector; the government says the bill aims to create an overarching framework to enable the government to regulate the gas market. It delegates powers to the executive, including public servants, to apparently enable regulation of most aspects of the gas market—for example, wholesale and retail activities, domestic sales and exports, and both the prices and the amount, timing and location of gas to be supplied and other contract terms. These powers would be relied upon to introduce a yet to be developed mandatory gas industry code of conduct.

This is a move that has been labelled reckless, free market intervention and destructive legislation, with the stakeholders saying that the only thing this policy will achieve, if implemented, is less Australian gas production in 2023 and beyond. That sounds a lot like less supply to the market, not more. And the criticism doesn't stop there. Another expert has stated: 'We are concerned that the interventions—

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