Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Hansard source

Labor promised Australians permanent energy bill relief, but, instead, they have been hit with yet another spike in the cost of living. Inflation has risen at its fastest pace in a year, now sitting at 2.8 per cent, driven by a jump in electricity bills of 13 per cent just in this year to July. Inflation is up, power bills are soaring, and interest-rate relief is now further away because of Labor's failures. This is the direct opposite of Labor's election promise of a $275 cut to power bills. Instead, families are paying thousands more. The Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026 enables government spending, but why would we pass such a bill without commenting on, firstly, the Albanese government's woeful record on spending in the energy portfolio and, secondly, Labor's brazen spin that their energy achievements are positive when clearly they are negative?

This is a government that, shortly, this month, in September 2025, wants to set an emissions reduction target for 2035. They might be preparing to admit that they cannot actually reach the 2030 target by setting a new 2035 target. Labor's current target is 82 per cent renewables in less than five years time. Current renewables billed are just at 43 per cent. To be clear, that is a gap of 39 per cent. Global energy consultancy Rystad estimates that Labor will only get, at best, to 60 per cent by 2030, not their commitment of 82 per cent. In fact, Rystad said 80 per cent will only be reached by 2037. So how on earth can Labor set a higher target for 2035 than the 82 per cent they have set for 2030 when 82 per cent renewables won't be reached until two years later, in 2037, at best?

Before I go on, I have to mention that, in my home state of Victoria, the Allan Labor government has an even more aggressive renewable energy target of 95 per cent by 2035 and has a 2045 net zero target, five years earlier than federal Labor's 2050 target for net zero. I must highlight that Spain had a 100 per cent renewable energy generation on 16 April this year. Twelve days later, its entire electricity grid collapsed in a 12-hour blackout. While Victorian Labor claim their renewables rollout is on track, Victoria Energy Policy Centre's Professor Bruce Mountain says achieving it will cost more than the Victorian government's $7.9 billion estimate—possibly as much as $28 billion.

I also highlight, as I will every time I speak on these matters, that the Victorian government said it will need up to 70 per cent of prime agricultural land if it cannot build offshore wind energy, and that objective is looking increasingly doubtful. Here's the rub: these targets, in the bullish race to net zero, are already resulting in mammoth cost blowouts, and these are being felt by (1) all energy bill customers and (2) farmers in my electorate of Mallee and across the nation. These farmers are being told, not asked, to bear the burden of the rollout of panels, turbines and transmission lines over their prime agricultural land. I say 'told, not asked' because the Victorian government, last Thursday, passed a bill imposing $8,000 fines for refusing to open the farm gate to allow Transmission Company Victoria, or TCV, to build hundreds of kilometres of the VNI West transmission line exclusively through my electorate of Mallee and $6,000 fines for farmers taking TCV signs off their own fences.

On the cost blowouts, let me take you through a few project examples. This is the federal government's Rewiring the Nation funding and other federal funding sources enabling this waste of precious taxpayer funds. VNI West itself was projected to have a $1.6 billion price tag in 2018, rising to $3.6 billion in 2024. Just one year on, it's been estimated to cost between $7 billion and $11.4 billion. Professor Mountain estimates that around 50 per cent of those cost blowouts will show up on our power bills. Looking further afield, the Central-West Orana Renewable Energy Zone in regional New South Wales was initially estimated to cost $650 million in 2020 but is now projected to cost $5.5 billion—a slight rise! A 2020 estimate of the CopperString project from Townsville to Mount Isa put the price tag at $1.8 billion, but it's now estimated to come in at $13.9 billion. A Queensland Labor project, the Pioneer-Burdekin Pumped Hydro project near Mackay, was initially estimated, in September 2022, to cost $12 billion. When the new LNP government cancelled it, in October 2024, the cost estimate was $36.8 billion.

Anyone who believes that renewables are the cheapest form of electricity and that they will bring down your power bills are off with Minister Bowen and the fairies. Every Australian taxpayer will absolutely feel these multibillion-dollar cost blowouts on their power bills. Make no mistake: they already are. And guess what? Everyday Aussies don't want to pay for net zero. In fact, when I recently surveyed my electorate of Mallee, collecting over 5,000 responses, almost 70 per cent said that they do not want to pay a single cent towards attaining net zero—not one cent. But they already are. This brings me to the wonderful, lucid comments of former Labor MP and Australian Council of Trade Unions leader, Jennie George. Her truth bombs are so critical and so damaging that I have to read some of them into Hansard. Labor luminary Jennie George said:

Labor's 2030 targets won't be met. It's an all too familiar story. Labor has set its modelling was "the most comprehensive ever done, for any policy, by any opposition in Australia's history since Federation". When reality struck, it was quietly abandoned just before the election.

This is still Ms George:

The promise of $275 by 2025, the $378 cut and 604,000 green jobs by 2030 disappeared, never to be aired again.

Ms George goes on to explain the broader cost of Labor's reckless race to net zero:

Labor refuses to disclose its whole-of-system costs for a transition held together by billions in taxpayer subsidies and relief packages. The secrecy is indefensible. The public's right to know should be defended by a Labor government promising transparency and accountability. The reason for this might lie in the eye-watering costs revealed in independent research.

Ms George goes on:

Take the Net Zero Australia report, a joint effort by three universities, chaired by Professor Robin Batterham. It found: "The modelled capital requirement $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion of commitments by 2030, and $7 trillion to $9 trillion by 2060 will not be met at the current rate; the gap is enormous."

Ms George proceeds to discuss the plight of another group of forgotten Australians—the workers; remember them? My mind goes back to the Australian Workers' Union's support of nuclear energy, but I digress. Ms George says:

Our metals smelters and Tomago aluminium smelter in NSW are now at risk; thousands of workers face an uncertain future. It makes no sense to provide taxpayer-funded bailout packages, while hitting them with a de facto carbon tax.

What wise words. On this note, I note the Prime Minister, in a far-from-dazzling performance at the Bush Summit in Ballarat on Friday, in response to a one-word-answer challenge regarding a question on coal, responded, 'Jobs.' Really? This is the man who told ABC radio in February 2020:

I don't think there's a place for coal-fired power plants in Australia, full stop.

But he had the hide to tell the Ballarat audience, regarding coal-fired power stations—and I quote from Friday:

… there hasn't been any regulations stopping that.

After the audience scoffed at that suggestion, the Prime Minister went on to say that the 'market determined it doesn't stack up'. The audience jeered the Prime Minister on that blatant spin, and rightly so. Somehow, the speechwriters thought he'd be safe talking BS—yes, he did actually use that word—to regional Australians. Victorian farmers called him out.

It is little wonder the farmers are protesting, when the bulldozers will be moving across their farms with the accelerator pedal down to reach Labor's political targets. We, on this side of the House, know that energy is the economy, and we take a technology-agnostic view on our energy mix. By contrast, Labor is taking away our key competitive advantage and jobs by taking a renewables-only zealotry approach.

We go back to Ms George, who summarised this perfectly by saying—and I paraphrase—'Labor's spin is like a burning wind turbine.' She also said:

The Clean Energy Council reported only 1.17GW of renewable energy generation reached financial close in the first six months of 2025. This is just a third of the 6-7GW required annually to meet the 82 per cent target. Already, Wood Mackenzie forecasts reaching only 58 per cent renewable energy generation by the end of the decade, and Rystad Energy estimates a substantial shortfall of about 18 per cent by 2030. The minister often reminds us "there's no transition without transmission". In his own words—

and I'm still quoting Ms George—

he concedes the impossibility of reaching the targets. Soon after Labor's election in 2022, five "urgently needed" transmission projects were identified: HumeLink, VNI West, Sydney Ring, New England REZ and Marinus Link.

Ms George goes on:

Three years on, not one of the projects is at construction stage. All are years late and billions over budget, and most won't be in operation by 2030. It's Snowy 2.0 on a grand scale. Be warned: a tsunami of transmission costs is still to hit our power bills. So much for the claim that renewables are the cheapest form of energy.

The newly minted Labor MPs might want to listen to the Labor elder's truth bombs. I repeat that a 'tsunami of transmission costs is still to hit'.

Those opposite can continue to parrot Minister Bowen and the Prime Minister, but understand this: it is at your peril. When the Prime Minister told the Ballarat audience renewables are the cheapest form of energy, he made himself a laughing stock. The lived reality for Australians is that power prices are up 30 per cent, or $1,300 more than Labor promised for 2025 to 2026. Even on the metric of greenhouse gas emissions, Labor are failing. Emissions have gone up, not down, under this government and are now only back at 28 per cent on 2005 levels, which, by the way, is the same as when we left office. Fascinatingly, when Australian emissions increased by 0.05 per cent last year over the same period, steel production fell by 12 per cent. Labor are shipping jobs offshore in the reckless and destructive pursuit of political targets that are not being attempted on this geographical scale anywhere else in the world.

While the Minister for Climate Change and Energy tries to cover his failures with clown-like antics and smirks and waves his hands about arguing, 'There is nothing to see here,' the facts are plain. The renewable energy and emissions targets he has set are not going to be met. Meanwhile, he continues to hide the enormous costs to taxpayers from the public under a shroud of rhetoric and obfuscation. It's little wonder public sentiment is shifting. A survey from the Bush Summit indicated that, a year ago, support for renewables was at 66 per cent. Now it is at 44 per cent, and, I assure you, support is plummeting fast. Momentum is turning. It is turning because Australians can see that their power bill prices are going up, not down.

See this speech in context