Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll echo those words. AGL are complete economic crooks in deciding not to release Liddell, which they ascribed a value of zero to just a number of years ago. They are producing 1,600 megawatts of power. Clearly, not taking the quarter of the billion dollars that they were offered simply reflects they'd rather take no money and push power prices up by more than that instead. It's because they don't care about the customers; they care about their bottom line. They don't want to release a power station back to the Australian grid. It's an absolute disgrace. To every person in Redland City, if you are connected to AGL, I say to you: make a phone call now to iSelect, disconnect from AGL and send AGL a very clear signal. There are plenty of power providers looking out for the Australian people, rather than looking out for themselves like AGL.

On a more local note, Leslie Harrison Dam is already effectively a white elephant as far as water supply in Redlands goes. The image of state Labor MPs disgraceful. We have an MP who's the member for handbags, hampers and handshakes turning up justifying a nine per cent increase—so $88 over three years—to be added to the bulk water price for a city that actually looked after itself and provided for its water needs in the first place. To have that expropriated by state Labor government and now to have customers shoved with these kind of price increases is a complete disgrace. If you play with water in my electorate, you will pay. Redlands will not forget that. Albeit the election is a couple of years away, don't mess with our water.