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

I will repeat that word for those opposite who cannot hear it—inflationary.

The new reforms agreed with the Greens are going to be inflationary and risk jobs by hindering investment and restricting offset use across all of Australia's heavy industry.

How about APIA? Chief executive, Samantha McCulloch, said:

New gas supply investment needs policy and regulatory certainty but instead, the Labor-Greens deal creates additional barriers to investment, further diminishing the investment environment and adding to the growing list of regulatory challenges facing the sector …

Then how about Australian Pipelines and Gas Association, whose CEO said '… there are questions over whether the flow-on effects of any additional restrictions on gas supply will be borne by Australian households and businesses who are already facing major increases to energy bills due to the transition.'

So what we have here today is apparently Labor's centrepiece for decarbonising the Australian economy. They have their own minister claiming this is as big a move as the entire de-industrialisation or, let's say, the industrial revolution. So the minister thinks this is as big as the industrial revolution. You would think that the Labor Party may have done one thing—some economic modelling. What we've found out and confirmed in the Senate over the last 24 hours is that this government has not done any economic modelling on the impact of this policy on jobs, on regional communities, on manufacturing. There is no economic modelling from Treasury, no economic modelling from the department. What does this mean? What we are voting on today is a policy they have not researched. They've done no modelling on it. It will be paid for by Australians. Prices will go up. Investment will go down. Emissions will go offshore and they'll multiply. It's a disgrace, and it's not the pathway to decarbonising the Australian economy. (Time expired.)

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