Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is for the Prime Minister. Greedy energy corporations are driving up electricity bills by 56 per cent while making massive record profits. Prime Minister, will you back to the Greens' costed plan to freeze electricity bills at precrisis levels, funded by a windfall tax on coal and gas corporations, to deliver people immediate cost-of-living relief?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Melbourne for his question and I thank him for the constructive engagement as well. I understand that we have different solutions that we will present in dealing with the challenge of climate change, but I don't doubt his sincerity in wanting to deal with it, and the starting point is acknowledging the science which is there. But we went to the election with a very clear plan—our Powering Australia plan—that acknowledges the changes that are required in our economy to provide for an 82 per cent share of our energy mix being renewables by 2030. We understand that that is the cheapest and cleanest form of new energy. I know that, on a number of areas—housing, energy and these areas—we have had propositions stating we could just take the action of freezing payments, as is put forward by the member for Melbourne, but it's completely unclear to me, upon any legal advice, how you would do that in terms of intervening in the way in which the member for Melbourne has suggested.

What the government has to do is come up with practical plans that make a practical difference. We did that in June by making sure that the lights stayed on. We did that in the negotiations that took place with gas suppliers to make sure that we secured the greater-than-56 petajoules that was anticipated would be the shortfall by the ACCC. And we'll do that, as we're working through the current solutions—working through with industry, working through with our department, working through with manufacturers. That's because we understand that the increase in global energy prices that is occurring as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is feeding into global inflation as well, is a challenge for the economy. We will deal with it with real solutions rather than slogans. That's the Labor way, and that's the responsibility that we have as a government.