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

I appreciate the question. I'm not entirely sure what it is, though. He asked me why I won't answer a question and then he didn't ask a question. But I'm happy to say we believe energy prices are too high and we believe governments should take action to reduce them, and that's what we're doing. When you are dealing with higher energy prices, you can have a policy of introducing more of the cheapest, most reliable form of energy available, which is renewables, or you can have a $600 billion plan, which is the most expensive form of energy available and which is what the honourable member and his friends took to the Australian people at the last election—and they appear to be going down that road again.

If you think energy prices are too high, as we do, then you take action to deal with it. You can take action through energy bill rebates, which we've done three times. You can take action through supporting renewable energy, which we are doing and which has seen wholesale prices fall 44 per cent in the last quarter of last year. You can take action to ensure that as much of that as possible flows through to retail prices, which we're doing with things like solar sharer, which sees three hours of free power in the middle of the day to those Australians whom we're able to provide it to, which we support and those opposite oppose. So you have a choice: take action to help Australian families or have policies which will make the situation worse, which is what the National Party and their coalition partners, the Liberal Party, are proposing.

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