Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

We heard the previous members talk about wholesale energy costs. I'm not sure whether they just don't understand or they're intentionally misleading the Australian public, but wholesale energy costs in New South Wales are less than half the bill. They're 40 per cent. But do you know what, Deputy Speaker? Australians don't pay 40 per cent. They don't just pay the wholesale costs. It's great to hear wholesale costs are going down, but Australians pay the full cost. They pay 100 per cent of their bill.

Every time we hear the Minister for Climate Change and Energy talk about wholesale costs dropping, which he did three or four times today, it's less than 45 per cent of the total bill. What the pensioner pays in my electorate is 100 per cent of his bill. So I would ask the energy minister to start talking about total costs. Stop talking about the small part that's decreasing and actually talk about total cost, which we all know—which every person and every business in my electorate knows—continues to go up. It's time to either understand what a bill is made up of or stop misleading the Australian public.

This week, we were plunged into darkness in Parliament House. I would ask that this energy minister stops plunging the Australian economy into darkness, killing Australian industry and running our manufacturers off this shore, and starts doing his job.

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