Tom French (Moore, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to address the claim that Australians have been betrayed through higher energy prices and cost-of-living pressures. It's a serious allegation, but it should be tested against facts, history and responsibility. The rhetoric is loud, but the history is inconvenient.

Let us start with energy. Wholesale electricity and gas prices did not suddenly become volatile because of a change of government. They were hit by a global energy shock following the war in Ukraine. They were strained by an ageing coal fleet reaching retirement. They were constrained by inadequate transmission. They were weakened by a decade of stalled reform and policy drift. Those structural reforms were not new; they were inherited—a bit like their wealth.

For nearly a decade, there was no settled national energy framework capable of attracting long-term capital from the so-called party of business. Announcements were made, schemes were floated, leaders were replaced, policies were rebadged and reannounced, and investors were left waiting. Energy systems are capital intensive and long dated. If you delay decisions for political convenience, you do not avoid costs. You compound them.

Member for Page, I strongly suggest you visit regional Western Australia and see those remote communities and those mine sites you love so much adding renewables because of the savings—in the mining industry. Energy systems do not respond to slogans. They respond to steel in the ground and capital committed—capital, concrete, copper.

Let us not forget another uncomfortable chapter, the great privatisation experiment. Across this country, Liberal governments have sold poles and wires, they've sold generation assets, and they promised efficiency, competition and lower prices. Australians got higher network costs, vertically integrated gentailers with significant market power and a regulatory maze that made genuine competition harder, not easier. You cannot sell the family silver, pocket the proceeds and then express shock when the new owners seek a commercial return. Once the assets are sold, governments lose direct leverage over pricing and planning. That is not ideology. This is corporate law.

What Australians saw much of the last decade was drift. What investors saw was risk. What households experienced was volatility. Since forming government, we have taken practical steps. First, we've delivered targeted energy bill relief to households and small businesses. That has directly reduced pressure and contributed to moderating inflation. Second, we've accelerated transmission investment and supported new generation and firming capacity so that reliability is maintained as ageing coal exits the system. Reliability is sustained by engineering and investment, not by a press conference. Third, we strengthened market oversights and competition settings to ensure Australians are not paying more than they should. Importantly, wholesale electricity prices have come down from the extraordinary peaks seen during the global energy shock. That stabilisation matters. Wholesale markets drive retail outcomes. Reduced volatility is not accidental; it reflects coordinated intervention and new supply entering the system.

On the broader cost-of-living question, context matters. Inflation surged across advanced economies. Europe, North America and Asia have all faced the same pressures: supply chain disruption, labour shortages and energy shocks.

The cost-of-living pressures Australians face are real, and no responsible government dismisses them. We have taken inflation seriously since day one. The responsible course in that environment is not to inflame demand or abandon fiscal discipline; it is to stabilise inflation, provide targeted relief, restore wage growth and maintain credibility. Inflation has moderated from its peak, real wages have returned to growth, and tax cuts have been delivered to every taxpayer. Cheaper medicines, expanded child care and energy rebates have reduced household pressure. That is not betrayal; that is disciplined management in difficult global conditions.

In 1964, Donald Horne wrote The Lucky Country. It is often quoted as praise, but it was not; it was a warning. He warned of a nation run by second-rate people—I'm looking at you guys over there—who relied on luck rather than leadership, of shopkeepers and ticket clippers content to take margin from the system rather than build new capability. For too long, energy policy resembled ticket-clipping economics, defending ageing assets, delaying reform, avoiding hard decisions and hoping the market sorts it out. Energy markets do not reward hope; they reward planning.

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