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

I thank the honourable member for his question. He's from New South Wales, and the wholesale price of electricity in New South Wales in May 2022 was $320 a megawatt hour. For this quarter it is $90 a megawatt hour. The retail increase that was hidden by then-minister Taylor in New South Wales was $227, or 14 per cent, for households and $1,130 for small businesses. I wonder whether the member for Hume cares to apologise for hiding that increase before the last election—for deliberately hiding it from the Australian people? I could print out the instrument he signed to change the law to hide the increase and distribute it to the caucus. I'd need a lot of paper—not 40 but 94—but I could do it. We could all hold it up—the instrument that the member for Hume signed to hide the increase in power prices before the 2022 election.

Seven coal-fired power stations in New South Wales, totalling 11.3 gigawatts, announced their closures under the former government, including Liddell, Mount Piper, Eraring, Bayswater and Vales Point B. Do you know how many gigawatts minister Taylor's UNGI scheme delivered for New South Wales? The member for Eden-Monaro is onto it—none! Zero gigawatts were delivered under the UNGI scheme. By contrast, 5.7 gigawatts of renewables, one gigawatt of large-scale storage and one gigawatt of firming gas have been added in New South Wales since May 2022. A further 5.4 gigawatts of renewables and 1.2 gigawatts of storage in New South Wales have been selected under our Capacity Investment Scheme. That's what delivery looks like for the people of New South Wales.

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