Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence Industry and Support) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The Chief Operating Officer of Snowy Hydro has said that new coal-fired power stations would mean that Snowy 2.0 is not viable. Which does the Prime Minister support, Snowy 2.0 or new coal-fired power stations, because you can't have both?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. I wonder how he feels about his leaders denigrating the Snowy Hydro 2.0 project. It's going to provide thousands of jobs in his electorate. The Leader of the Opposition described it as a vanity project, and sought to make fun of it. It is a gigantic project that is transforming the prospects of the communities the honourable member seeks to represent.

The reality is that the honourable member raises coal-fired power and compares it with hydro. I saw that the member for Port Adelaide was out there today talking about renewables and how they were better than coal-fired power. The reality is the Labor Party can have its debates about one technology or another but what we're in favour of is cheaper electricity. That's our commitment: cheaper electricity. The market will work out what the cheaper model is. It may that hydro will be cheaper than a new coal-fired power station. Time will tell, but the bottom line is: let the market compete and that is what the National Energy Guarantee does.

The time has come for the Labor Party to get real about the energy challenge having made so many poor decisions; having created the environment in South Australia where one minute a massive wind resource generates over 100 per cent of the state's demand and the next minute none; and where the member for Port Adelaide lives in a state where, thanks to the ideology and idiocy of the Labor Party, you have the most expensive and the least reliable energy in Australia. As Rod Sims, chairman of the ACCC, said just today, the time has come to stop 'subsidising one technology or another'. He said to prioritise affordability and ensure that you have a level playing field that delivers all the dispatchable power you need and will deliver the reliability and the cheaper electricity that Australians want.

The Leader of the Opposition wrote to me last year and called for bipartisanship and cooperation on energy. The National Energy Guarantee is there. It's time now. It's designed by the experts. It will deliver cheaper electricity. It's now time for the Labor Party to support it and to stand up for Australian families who have been paying too much for power for too long.