Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Under the default market offer, energy prices are to rise by $383 for South East Queenslanders. Why did the Prime Minister break his promise that energy prices would fall by $275? Why do Australians always pay more under Labor?

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

I say to the member for Wright: why did he vote against $1½ billion of energy price relief? Why did he do that? It's beyond my comprehension. It's also beyond my comprehension why he is determined to vote against the safeguard mechanism that was the former government's own mechanism put forward. How can they even vote against their own policy? They are so determined to vote no. But the energy regulator made her position clear that the default marker offer would have been much, much lower, to quote her, than it would otherwise have been, had that intervention not occurred.

We do have an inflationary issue globally. It's a global issue. It's due to supply chains, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and it's all of course in the aftermath of the global pandemic. But what the Secretary of Treasury had to say in evidence before Senate estimates was that the energy price relief package will make a material difference to reducing cost of living pressures. That's what they had to say. Philip Lowe, the RBA governor, in his address to the Financial Review business Summit on 8 March, similarly referred to what was happening with high inflation. He said: 'The high inflation that we're currently experiencing is one of the legacies of the pandemic and of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The pandemic interrupted the supply side of the global economy and this pushed up costs and prices, and on top of this, the monetary and fiscal policy response to the pandemic has also pushed up costs and prices.' There of course he was referring to the last budget of the former government in March, where considerable money was pumped into the economy. It all ended as soon as people voted in May. That considerable increase also had an impact as well—not according to me; according to the RBA governor.