Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services. Will the minister update the House on the work the government is doing for our small business sector to ensure they have access to affordable and reliable energy? How does our National Energy Guarantee help hardworking small businesses in Brisbane and around the country to grow and create jobs?

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party, Minister for Revenue and Financial Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Brisbane. He is a very hardworking member and he advocates and supports the more than 30,000 small and medium-sized businesses in his electorate so very well. Like the member for Brisbane, we know on this side of the House that small and medium-sized businesses are absolutely critical to our economy. Ninety-seven per cent of all businesses in this country are, in fact, small and medium-sized enterprises. It is critical that we get the framework right for them. Already we have cut taxes for those small and medium-sized enterprises because we know of their importance in creating jobs. But we also know that small businesses are impacted by other costs. We know that they are impacted by high energy prices. More of them are telling us about the inability to access affordable and reliable energy supply. In fact, the member for Brisbane has been talking to so many of the small businesses in his electorate.

Ms Plibersek interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Sydney is on her fifth warning.

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party, Minister for Revenue and Financial Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He said to the Green Beacon Brewing Co., who employ more than 30 people in their microbrewery and restaurant, that he understands that they are very concerned about rising energy costs in their brewing and their hospitality businesses. We must ensure, on this side of the House, that we keep the lights on and that they have access to an affordable energy supply, and we are going to do that through the National Energy Guarantee.

Under our National Energy Guarantee, we will have a reliability guarantee to make sure that we have the right amount of energy available as needed in each state, encouraging investment in new and existing supply. It will work in tandem with our emissions guarantee and it will ensure that we are able to keep pace with our international commitments. Under our National Energy Guarantee, we will see affordable and reliable energy for small and medium-sized businesses without subsidies, without taxes, without an emissions trading scheme and certainly without any new carbon taxes. We want to make sure that electricity bills will be lower than forecast, lower than they would have been under a clean energy target. This, of course, is very good news for small businesses. It builds on our existing energy policy, including making sure that we can deliver more gas for Australians before it's shipped offshore, building Snowy 2.0 to stabilise the system and stopping network companies gaming the system. We have already seen disastrous consequences of getting energy policy wrong. We have seen that in South Australia and we have seen the Queensland government following suit. On this side of the House, we will stand with small and medium-sized businesses and we will make sure they get access to affordable and reliable energy.