Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

We are a government that is committed to providing cost-of-living relief for Australian families, particularly when it comes to their power bills. We took urgent action to shield Australian families and businesses from the worst of the energy price spikes. Our energy relief plan is providing targeted energy bill relief and, very importantly, investing in cleaner, cheaper energy for the future. Meanwhile, those in opposition, the Liberals and the Nationals, voted to make power bills higher for families. They had an opportunity to assist Australian families, but they voted against it.

The reality is that we are currently dealing with the most significant shock to energy markets in 50 years, due to Russia's prolonged attack on Ukraine. We know that global energy market disruptions have become more pronounced and are persisting longer than anticipated, and so are our domestic energy market challenges, which have all been made worse by ageing electricity assets and the decade of inaction and indecision by those opposite when they were in government. This is why our action as a government has been so incredibly important. We know, and the final default market offer confirms, that the Albanese government has limited the worst of the energy price spikes while investing in a long-term plan to get cheaper, cleaner energy to all Australians.

The fact is our government has taken action to take that sting out of power prices and invest in the cheapest form of energy, renewables, because that's what the country voted for. One of the many reasons they voted against the previous government was its consistent inaction on climate change. But we are delivering on our commitment to take action because we are really focused on transforming Australia's economy to a low carbon economy. We are taking action to ensure Australia is positioned to become a renewable energy superpower. Of course, in our recent budget we had critical investments to save Australians money on their energy bills and invest in nation-building new industries. For too long our country was left behind the rest of the world because of the inaction of those in the opposition.

In addition to targeted household rebates to provide energy bill relief, our recent budget is funding a plan to ensure households and communities can take advantage of the savings from smarter energy use and ensures that our nation is really prepared to capitalise on the global boom in clean energy investment. We're doing that through a whole range of measures. Targeted power bill relief is so important to families who are dealing with cost-of-living pressures at the moment. It was part of a huge cost-of-living suite that we put forward in the budget. This is something that they failed to do.

None of these investments, in terms of our long-term prospects for transitioning our economy, were done by them. They took no action when it came to climate change. They failed to do it the whole time they were in government. Let's have a little bit of a look at their record. Shall we run through some of their record? It's quite a lengthy one. They voted down $1.5 billion in direct bill relief for those Australians who needed it most. They voted against price caps. There have been so many. We know the member for Hume hid the price rises before the election and then misled Australians about it, and all of us here remember—

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