Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

As I outlined, we understand that keeping a strong manufacturing industry in this country relies on us having competitive energy prices, and the thousands of jobs in that industry rely on affordable energy to survive. To demonstrate how important this issue is to our economy, you just have to look at South Australia, where currently electricity prices are some of the highest in the world. They are sitting at around 47.8c per kilowatt hour. South Australians are paying more for electricity than Latvians, at 25.6c per kilowatt hour; Estonians, at 23.4c per kilowatt hour; Romanians, at 21.2c per kilowatt hour; and Hungarians, at 19.3c per kilowatt hour. That is not good enough and that has to change. It's the result of renewable energy targets being forced on South Australian consumers. And now we have a Victorian government wanting to do the same. They're seeing that South Australia has done this to their economy: 'Let's have some of that too.' That's exactly the approach of Daniel Andrews, and it's going to fail in Victoria, just as it has failed in South Australia. We need to get back to the job of providing reliable power to all Australians.