Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) | Hansard source

I rise to take note of answers given in relation to the recent statement about the Daniel Andrews government banning new gas fittings to houses by 2024.

I heard the statements made by Senator Smith. Of course, we all place the greatest importance on those who do these hard jobs like aged care. I heard the statement about a 15 per cent wage rise, but wouldn't it be great if we could give workers all over the country, like the Australian Labor Party used to purport to do, the benefit of cheaper everything, rather than having to constantly look at these sorts of government-interference-type actions, like increasing wages artificially like this? I say that because we are living in the middle of an enormous era of high prices, of high inflation, of exorbitant mortgage repayments and—probably most tellingly and the one that drives it the most—high energy prices.

There seems to be an aura of almost dismissal in this place about what's actually driving this. It's not the range of factors that are brought up in this place by those opposite. What's driving this is this reckless rush to renewables, and we see that everywhere. If we want to really make ends meet for working families across the country, what we would be doing is: drill, baby, drill. Get back into the energy market and get those projects pumping. With this gas ban, just when you think that a government can't be any more reckless, along comes the Andrews Labor government to prove us wrong. Right in the middle of a period of high energy prices and high inflation, the worst thing you could do is start to make these kinds of announcements, which have nothing but a deflationary impact on confidence an inflationary pressures on the costs of energy, which are already skyrocketing. This is almost like the canary in the coalmine—the icebreaker for further reckless energy policy.

Of course, we know that this isn't where it'll stops. All across the country we're seeing these policies being rolled out by Labor governments. There are far too many Daniel Andrews fan boys in this place to accept that we won't end up in a similar situation federally. These actions are terrifying enough for the Victorians who have to endure it but are even more terrifying for those in the rest of the country who know that this policy is something which is going to be rolled out at a federal level any time soon. While the federal Labor government is doing everything it can to undermine gas investments in this country, this decision to ban gas connections by 2024—that's less than two years away, I might point out—for new homes in Victoria can only serve to tighten the screws further on household budgets. This is all at a time when Australians can afford it the least.

As I said earlier, there needs to be a reality check in this place as to what's actually driving this. I had the opportunity this week to speak to a notable expert in the area, Dr Bjorn Lomborg, who told me in no uncertain terms that this extraordinary climate hysteria we're in the grip of has nothing even remotely to do with anything other than the rush to renewables. He made the observation to me that the high price of solar and wind and the fact that those renewables don't operate when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow is the primary factor in high energy prices, and yet there's almost a cognitive dissonance in this place—a wilful blindness, if you will—to accept that that is the case.

We have seen in recent times broken promises on energy bills. We were promised electricity bills were going to come down by $275, but prices continue to rise. They're continuing to spiral out of control, increasing by something like 28.7 per cent across the country, which will be an additional $564 a year that families are going to need to find just for the simple purpose of getting back to where they were the previous year. Just to keep the lights on, families are having to find this extra money—money they simply cannot afford. This is a crisis. This decision will ripple through the country, and it cannot be afforded by Australians.