Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

People in the Berowra electorate are hurting. The ABS CPI data revealed last week that in the 12 months to January electricity costs have surged an extraordinary 32.2 per cent. That means families in suburbs like Waitara, Asquith, Normanhurst, Glenhaven—indeed, right across the electorate—are opening their bills at the kitchen table and wondering how they're going to make ends meet. My electorate is still waiting for the government to deliver on its broken promise of a $275 reduction in their power bills. They are still waiting. This gets raised time and time again with me as I'm out and about in the electorate. By failing to lower prices, this flailing government has broken its most basic promise to the Australian people.

This summer too many in my community have had to choose whether to put the air conditioner on or to put food on the table. Katherina from Beecroft has showed me copies of her power bills. In the November quarter in 2024, she paid $940 in electricity. In the same period one year later it was $1,189. That's an increase of $249 in a single quarter, and if you extrapolate this it is basically an increase of $1,000 a year. Families were promised a $275 reduction and instead they got $1,000-a-year increase. This is the Albanese government's legacy.

I've seen power bills for a small business in Thornleigh. In January 2025, they paid $312 for power; in January 2026, they paid $604—nearly double. That's affecting the viability of businesses across the electorate. How is this the new normal under Labor? What troubles people the most is not just the size of the increase, but the sense that all of this was avoidable. Australia is not a country that is short of energy. We're blessed with resources. We've got the capacity, the expertise and the workforce to power our own economy reliably and affordably, and yet households and businesses are paying more and getting less certainty. Right now, too many Australians feel they are part of an experiment. They are being asked to carry the cost of decisions that haven't delivered on the promised outcomes. It's not good enough for families, and it's not good enough for the small businesses that I represent.

Under the coalition, Australia outpaced much of the developed world, cutting emissions by 28 per cent on 2005 levels while growing the economy. But emissions reductions have flatlined since we were in government, despite more than $75 billion in spending, but prices have surged. Energy policy has to be about cost and reliability. This government has dropped the ball. Energy should be a comparative advantage for Australia. We are a resource-rich nation. We export energy to the world, yet increasingly Australians are paying the world-leading prices for a basic necessity. It's not a failure of geography; it's a failure of policy. We need to ask a basic question: how did the country that exports vast coal and gas, that has vast renewable potential, that has world-class engineers and operators end up in the position where families are rationing power. Until the government is prepared to admit that its approach has consequences, real consequences, for families and businesses, the pressure on my community and communities like mine will continue to mount.

A new Canstar survey has provided some alarming data following the expiry of Labor's temporary energy rebates. It reported that, of 3,000 respondents surveyed, 72 per cent had seen an increase in their power bills since the end of the rebate, 18 per cent are now struggling to pay their bill and 12 per cent have had to sacrifice to pay the bill. They've had to sacrifice what? School excursions, family outings, insurance cover and even basic groceries. These figures are post Labor's spendathon to artificially push down prices. Billions of dollars were borrowed and splashed around to mask the underlying problems. Those rebates didn't fix supply. They didn't strengthen reliability. They simply delayed the pain, and now households are feeling it in full.

Those failures on energy are reflective of a much broader failure of Labor's economic policy across the board. This is a government on track to rack up $1 trillion of debt. The result is Australians pay. Labor's spending drives up inflation. The input costs for everything go up. The consumer ends up footing the bill. When Labor spends, you pay. When Labor spends, Australians pay. Under Labor and the reckless Treasurer, inflation is higher than in any other major advanced economy. It's higher than in the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, Italy, France and Japan. High inflation means higher power bills. It means higher prices for Australians. That's why people are paying higher prices in energy across my electorate. It's why interest rates have gone up again. It's why, under Labor, we've experienced the largest decline in living standards in the developed world. The people of Berowra have kept their side of the bargain. They've worked hard, they've paid their taxes and they've trusted what they were told. They deserve a government that does the same. All Australians do.

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