Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

Some might think I've been 'Laboring' the point, but this is the wrong bill for the wrong time. That said, what does this bill do? It changes the Public Service arrangement for the Australian Energy Regulator and the ACCC. When we were presented with the recommendation that we should do this, we looked at it and went, 'Well, what are our priorities?' Our priorities are focused on putting downward pressure on energy prices. So we thought, 'Okay. We can leave them shuffling the deckchairs while we make sure that we are putting downward pressure on energy prices.' And that was our focus because we wanted to make sure that that was our No. 1 priority.

We can understand that there does need to be some rearranging when it comes to the AER and the ACCC. We sat down with the department, the ACCC and the AER and made sure that there would be nothing in these changes that would lead to people's energy bills going up, because our No. 1 priority is to make sure that energy prices don't continue to go up. We sat down and sought guarantees that that would be the case, and we were given those guarantees. That's why we think that the minister's idea of shuffling the deckchairs is one that we should support.

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