Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I just want to make a few points that Senator Colbeck and Senator Cadell made. It's convenient when people come into this place and try and recast history and try to pretend that, somehow, the cost of energy was solely this government's problem—when we came to government in 2022. It's just worth placing on the record that what was forecast by Treasury, when we were elected in 2022, was that this government was looking at one of the highest increases to energy prices ever seen by an incoming government. In fact, Treasury had estimated that, without the government's reforms that were—some of the members of this place would remember that we had a special sitting of the parliament very late in December in the year 2022. Energy prices were forecast to go up by around 20 per cent by the year 2022-23 and then by 36 per cent by the year 2023-24. If it weren't for the government's intervention in our reform packages that were passed by the parliament late in 2022—when we came to government, the former coalition government had left an energy sector that was exposed to offshore price shocks and that was exposed and overly reliant on an ageing and increasingly unreliable plants, mainly in coal.

At the election—and it's what we see time and time again now from those opposite—the opposition were not able to articulate a very clear set of policies that would bring back and reduce the cost of electricity in this country. We had some sort of half-cooked nuclear power policy. They were not able to provide a straight answer about whether they were going to continue the government's $300 energy rebate. Fast forward some years later and what we see is a coalition that is not only divided, but in chaos. They are tearing themselves apart, and we had the National Party, over the weekend, embracing a policy that would, effectively, say no to net zero—no to zero! Who would be against a policy that would ensure our country would have a position of saying that we can get to a position of net zero—not saying that 'we want to reduce energy pricing' or that 'we want to reduce our emissions here in this country', but a completely flat out 'no to net zero'.

We also see now, I think, one of the best quotes going around at the moment, from an unnamed coalition MP—and I think it was attributed to a Liberal MP, nonetheless—in the Australian.

It may not be you, Senator Scarr, but I want to place it on the record. The quote goes like this:

The first rule of being a parasite is not to kill off your host.

I have seen a lot of memes floating around online. In fact, I think there's a potential movie or a film call 'Parasite by Senator Canavan'. I'm not directing that at Senator Canavan, just to be clear, but that's the meme that is going around at the moment. But what you can see is the disdain, the confusion and the chaos that is happening right now from those opposite, because, quite frankly, they have no idea what their energy policy is.

Unfortunately, there are people in the gallery and people watching today who are wanting to have one simple question asked—where does the coalition stand when it comes to electricity? Where do they stand when it comes to investment in gas? Where do those opposite stand when it comes to the future of this country? Business, right now, want some certainty. They want to understand where we, as elected members of this place, are positioned. When we bring in a set of legislation, like we have with the EPBC Act, where do those opposite stand? Are they going to be dividing or crossing the floor? Quite frankly, we have no idea where those opposite stand at this point in time. We don't even know if the Leader of the Opposition, Sussan Ley, in the other place, will remain the Leader of the Opposition come Christmas.

You are sending a very bad message to those right across the country, particularly those in the business community and our future generations. We see the schoolkids here today looking down upon us. They're looking to us for hope and to make sure we do the right thing by them. (Time expired)