Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Birmingham and Senator Scarr, for the interjections there. This late in a sitting week I didn't have the number quite front of mind. But the number I did have front of mind is 275, because that's how many dollars they said your electricity bill was going to go down by. Instead of making savings for households, the government has been forced to make an embarrassing admission that, over the next two years, Australians can expect to see electricity prices go up by 56 per cent. People voted for Mr Albanese and Labor based off this promise. The question is: what is Labor going to do about it? The fact is: they do not have a plan. That is why we saw this behaviour from the government today. They will talk as much as they like about the last nine years and their various views on our government, but, six months in, they can't focus on the issues that are important to Australians.

Not even Labor state governments believe that the Albanese government has a plan that's going to work, let alone a plan that's going to deliver that $275 promise. I was looking through the Financial Review yesterday and I read that the South Australian government was appealing to the federal energy minister not to do anything stupid. Well, it's a bit late for that. Most people would say that promising every Australian household that their power bills would go down by hundreds of dollars, to win an election, and then announcing in your first budget that bills will actually be going up by hundreds of dollars is a fairly stupid thing to do. The Albanese government's plan to put a cap on gas prices faces a new roadblock, with the South Australian government joining industry warnings that it could deter investment in new gas supply developments. That was the report in the Fin yesterday. This came on the same day that the Queensland Labor government told the Albanese government to keep its hands off their generators. Not even Labor governments trust other Labor governments to bring down power prices.

The dishonesty that was on display by the Labor Party earlier this year when they promised Australians they would lower the cost of living is extraordinary. When they promised Australians they'd get a $275 cut to their power bills, millions of people believed them. They believed them when they said that they were going to be a government that was about transparency and accountability, and yet this week, in this place, they tried to take days out of our Senate estimates sitting schedule for next year. You can't be much less interested in transparency and accountability than that—taking away the ability of this chamber to scrutinise the decisions of government. Instead of a $275 cut, Labor brought out a budget promising Australian households a 56 per cent hike to their power bills, and now we are seeing Labor state governments fighting with the federal government about these very same issues. It's not good enough. Six months in, it's a pretty disappointing result for the government.