Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. According to today's data from the Australian Energy Regulator, did wholesale electricity prices rise, or did they fall?

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

BOWEN (—) (): The quarterly wholesale prices rose, yes. They did. That's what the report says. Thanks for noticing. Now, the honourable member has very clearly asked me about wholesale energy prices, and yes, over the quarter they rose. Compared to at the time of the election, though, they are substantially lower. In New South Wales, the wholesale price was $320.48. The current figure is $127.72.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Moncrieff is warned.

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In Queensland, the price was $347.28; they are now $107.39. I won't go through it state by state. On average, across the country, the price is currently $126.62. When those opposite handed over, on 22 May, the price was $286.18. This compares with the promise made by the then minister for energy, before the 2019 election, that the wholesale price would be $70 a megawatt hour within three years, and it ended up at $286 a megawatt hour—missed by that much, as the Prime Minister likes to say!

Now, if the honourable member wants to ask me about wholesale prices, I'm more than happy to have the conversation about wholesale prices, because it is not a pretty story for those opposite. They presided over nine years of denial and delay and dysfunction, and that saw Australian households pay the price, because the energy grid was left fundamentally unprepared for shocks. They saw four gigawatts of dispatchable power leave the grid and replaced it with only one gigawatt. When you see a net three gigawatts leave the grid, that sees prices go up and reliability come down. That's the key reason wholesale prices rose so much on their watch. The fact that we have turned that around and, just in the past financial year, seen 4.4 gigawatts added to the grid—connected already, operating today—is one of the key reasons wholesale prices have come down so much since May 2022. So, I very fundamentally thank the honourable member for asking me about wholesale prices, and I invite him to have another go.