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

The short answer to Senator Bernardi is no; they are not correct in any such claims. Ultimately the NEG is not a carbon tax. It does not put a price on emissions. It is not an emissions trading scheme. What the NEG does seek to do is put in place a unique condition, working through the retail environment, that addresses reliability concerns whilst ensuring that Australia meets its emissions reduction targets, and it seeks to do that in a context that puts downward pressure on prices over the long term. It is a technology-neutral approach. It doesn't seek to pick any winners. It is an approach that ensures that investment flows to those areas of the energy generation market that can best guarantee stability and reliability whilst ensuring that Australia meets those emissions reduction targets. The modelling indicates very clearly that the NEG will help energy prices in Australia. Around $300 or $400 per household benefit is likely to accrue to households as a result of the type of sound policy that the NEG is, as recommended by the Independent Energy Security Board, as a clear pathway to be able to ensure that we provide ongoing future stability for investment in energy generation in Australia, and, in doing so, know that that ongoing stability will help people to make investment decisions about existing assets, as well as any new investment that can maintain a guarantee of levels of supply that are necessary for Australian industry to have confidence that energy will be available for them, that prices will have downward pressure applied to them, and that, ultimately, all of those things will work in a way that is technology-neutral, without direct subsidy or tax of any part of the energy market.