Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to this matter of public importance discussion. The Prime Minister yesterday announced the government's new energy plan or policy. We don't have the details of it; we don't have the modelling. The Prime Minister wants us believe that perhaps this will save householders money—maybe 50c by the year 2020, if they're lucky. Of course, what we do know is that one of the best ways of reducing electricity prices is to help people put solar panels on their roofs and batteries in their backyards. If this were really about helping everyday Australians and small businesses to reduce their power bills, that's what this government would be doing. But, instead, the Turnbull government has taken the axe to the renewable energy sector.

I stand here as a very proud South Australian. Our state is the renewables state. The investment from the renewable industry into our state has been in the vicinity of billions and billions of dollars, with billions and billions to come if, indeed, the industry is able to get on with the job of providing clean, reliable and affordable renewable energy to customers, to householders and to businesses across the state. Hopefully, if we're able to have a properly built interconnector between South Australia and New South Wales, which we desperately need, we might also be able to export that green power interstate as well. But what we've had from the Turnbull government is just another attack on South Australians, on South Australian businesses, on our industry and on South Australian jobs.

Make no mistake, an ideological war within the Turnbull government—fuelled, of course, by the ghost of the former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, lurking in the dark shadows, making problems and trouble for the Prime Minister—is why this policy is in place. This government is obsessed with doing everything it can to keep alive a dying coal industry. At a time when we are meant to be reducing pollution and cutting emissions, we have the Prime Minister of Australia, because he is scared of the antics of the former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, wanting to prop up the coal industry. The last thing we should be doing is throwing good money after bad to fund more coal-fired power stations and even open the world's largest coalmine with Adani. Make no mistake, this policy announced by the government yesterday is more about a turf war inside the Liberal Party than it is about reducing the electricity bills of Australian households or doing anything to combat and deal with global warming and climate change and to reduce pollution.

We all know—the experts have said it time and time again—that the reason electricity prices are high in this country is that the big, old power companies have been price gouging and ripping off customers for years. They've been able to get away with it because the government have turned a blind eye. Now the government want to use taxpayers' money to give subsidies to coal power, throwing good money after bad and attacking the renewable energy industry on their way through. This will cost South Australians jobs—no doubt about it. This will cost South Australians investment money, and the Greens will do everything we can to stand up to this reckless, irresponsible and politically ridiculous plan from the government.

If you want to reduce electricity bills, help people put solar on their roofs and batteries in their backyards. That's the best way of ensuring that householders and small businesses can afford their renewable energy, and they also get to help the planet as well because it's clean, it's renewable and it's cheap. But this is an ideological war from the government, just as we've seen already today with their ideological obsession with beating up on the ABC. Today in this place the government tabled legislation from the deal they did with One Nation to take the axe to the ABC. This is a government that is obsessed with ideological warfare inside their own party room. It's Tony Abbott and the other right-wing nut jobs in the backbench of the Liberal Party—