Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Energy. Can the minister update the House on actions the government is taking to address systemic problems with the Australian Energy Market? Is the minister aware of the impact of any alternative approaches?

Dr Chalmers interjecting —

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

The member for Rankin needs to realise that, whilst interjections are disorderly, when there's a lull, it's an indication that we've moved on. The Minister for Energy has the call.

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Minister for Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the member for his question. He knows this government's priority when it comes to energy policy is getting electricity prices down, down, down while we keep the lights on. During the last Labor government, the energy market was badly damaged by bad policy. In the shadow minister's own book, called Climate Wars

Mr Keogh interjecting—

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

Member for Burt!

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Minister for Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

which I can't recommend; it was described by one of the reviewers as longwinded and boring, but I'll quote the best bits from it—he said:

That's not to say that Labor hasn't made missteps in the area of policy over the past decade. At times, we've made mistakes in both the design of our policies and their presentation … In hindsight, it's also clear to most that the carbon price introduced … was too high …

Isn't that an understatement! It was about 100 per cent too high because it resulted in a doubling of electricity prices when you were last in office.

Our unambiguous, unrelenting focus in electricity markets is to get the prices down while we keep the lights on. We're doing that in three ways. We're stopping the price gouging by the big energy companies in the distribution and transmission networks and in the wholesale market. We're providing customers with a price safety net, a default market price that's a fair, reasonable price even if you haven't got time to spend hours on the phone negotiating with the energy companies. And we're backing investment in fair dinkum, reliable power. If that means we've got to guarantee that investment, we'll do it. If that means we have to force divestment to ensure there's competition in the market, we will do it. The policies of this government are working. We saw price reductions in the price changes on 1 July in South-East Queensland. We saw a reduction of up to 14 per cent in small-business bills—$1,400 a year. Every small-business person here knows what $1,400 a year in reductions is worth to a hardworking small-business person in Australia. We've seen 1.8 million households better off.

The member asked if there are alternatives. There are: a 50 per cent renewable energy target and a 45 per cent emissions reduction target. We've seen in South Australia what that does. South Australia led what the then Labor Premier called 'an experiment' where he delivered to South Australia an electricity price that was amongst the highest in the world—48 cents a kilowatt hour compared to Estonia at 23, Romania at 21 and Hungary at 19. We are the party of lower electricity prices. You are the opposition of higher electricity prices.