Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade) Share this | Hansard source

In respect of Minister Ayres's explanation relating to the order for the production of documents concerning Climate Change Authority advice of potential 2035 national greenhouse emissions targets, I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

There are two things that will harm the economy. The first is high energy prices, and the second is hubris from the government. What we had this afternoon is a classic example of hubris.

What the coalition is seeking is information—documents that are available and that we know are in the possession of the government—with regard to advice the government is receiving about the 2035 national greenhouse emissions target, which we know, because Senator Ayres revealed it, will be announced in September. My colleague Senator Bragg is in a very, very privileged position. He gets documents from the government, even if they are heavily redacted. I don't even get documents from the government. The order for the production of documents is one of the most significant powers available to the Senate. It is a power that is derived from the Constitution of our country itself, and that power says there are no documents that cannot be ordered by this Senate. And what does it take for a set of documents to be ordered by the Senate? It takes 39 senators to agree to the release of those documents. I thank the 39 senators who agreed to the release of those documents, and, over here, called 'government senators', are the people who opposed the release of these documents.

Senator Ayres, in his explanation, says that the government claims cabinet confidentiality over these documents. That is a claim they have made for the first time this afternoon. They didn't make that claim in any of their previous defences about why these documents should not be released. Hubris is the key character that is now taking shape in this government. The release of these documents goes to the core of whether or not Australian families and households can deal with rising energy costs.

It's been a bad week—a bad month—for the Albanese government when it comes to its emissions targets. Just this month, we had a report from the Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner that confirmed that regional Australia is shouldering the burden of large-scale renewable projects, transmission lines and storage developments while Labor fails to provide a framework to deliver affordable, reliable energy to Australia's households and businesses.

More than that, this month we've also seen a report from the Australian Energy Regulator which shows that the wholesale 30-minute energy price exceeded $5,000 per megawatt hour on 66 occasions in just three months—66 occasions, which compares with just 11 times in the previous quarter and just 19 times in the same period last year. Added to that, we saw another report from the Australian Energy Regulator this month that highlighted the lack of adequacy of AEMO's explanations of key inputs and assumptions used to inform the content of what is known as the Inputs, assumptions and scenarios report, which is a key input—a key ingredient—when it comes to modelling and doing the cost-benefit analysis on what we call the integrated system plan, which goes to the core of whether or not energy prices in our country are affordable or unaffordable, whether it goes to the core of the issue about whether energy is reliable or unreliable.

This month, we'll find out exactly what the government's 2035 national greenhouse gas emissions target will be, but they will have turned their back on a fundamental issue, which is transparency in their decision-making about energy policy.