Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) | Hansard source

I was just saying that, to be fair to the member for Fairfax, he put out a little more policy on the weekend. We already knew that they would have a government owned instrumentality and that they were going to call it the 'independent nuclear authority'. But he also released on the weekend details that there's going to be a second agency, a government business enterprise, to own these nuclear power plants. How would you convince the Australian people that introducing the most expensive form of energy was going to lead to lower bills? He announced the name. It's going to be called 'affordable energy Australia', in keeping with the previous government's approach. It had the National Energy Guarantee, which didn't guarantee anything. It had the Climate Solutions Fund, which didn't fund any solutions. And they had the Underwriting New Generation Investment program, which didn't deliver a dollar or an electron or anything.

The fact of the matter is that no amount of spin, no amount of Utopia-style naming an agency 'affordable energy', when you're going to introduce the most expensive form of energy will lead to lower bills. We know that experts differ on whether they will increase bills by $200 or $1,000. That's what the experts say: between $200 and $1,000 worth of increases from their expensive nuclear energy policy. This sort of spin won't reduce energy prices. What reduces energy prices is real relief today, and that's what the Albanese government is delivering. What reduces energy prices are concrete, detailed plans like what we saw from AEMO last week. That's what reduces energy prices, not expensive reactors in 20 years time, not spin and not fake government organisations but real energy bill relief. (Time expired)

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