Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

As I've told the Senate endlessly, we're taking action at every single step of the electricity supply chain. We've taken action with retailers, we've taken action with energy networks, we're taking action in terms of the generation mix, and we're taking action in terms of ensuring that meeting our emissions reduction obligations and meeting the reliability requirements for the Australian energy market is done and achieved in the most efficient, effective way—without the need for new bureaucracies, without the need for certificate trading and without the need for new schemes but by using the existing market frameworks to guarantee reliability, to guarantee emissions reduction and, as the evidence demonstrates, to do so in a way that provides cost savings to consumers, cost savings against business-as-usual operations, cost savings against a clean energy target and cost savings certainly against the type of policy proposals those opposite have come up with in the past—cost savings that ensure we give the reliability and affordability that Australians need. (Time expired)