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

The taxpayer. Thank you. The member for Nicholls is perfectly right. It is the taxpayer. The taxes of those who are earning not even necessarily great wages are going into paying for this fabulous $2.4 billion scheme for the actual home battery scheme.

What is the cost of net zero? Australians are paying somewhere between $120 billion and $140 billion. The figure is a bit washy—really difficult to know. The fact of the matter is that it's taxpayers who are paying the dollars.

The Capacity Investment Scheme alone is aiming to support $73 billion of investment by 2030: $52 billion in generation and $21 billion in storage. That's for the big ones that go mostly onto farm properties. I can tell you right now, for the people of Mallee, for farmers who are wearing this enormous cost by the Labor government to go for that ideological aim of net zero, it is happening out in our electorates. We're paying for it.

The Nationals believe in a much better energy policy which is cheaper, is better and is fairer. We're not planning on diving well and truly above OECD countries of our kind. We just want to match them in real terms—not the promises, not the ideological fanfare that is constantly made, but in real terms. And Australia is already punching well above its weight. There is no way it is justifiable for the Labor government to try to achieve their ideological aims by pursuing families who live in Australia.

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