Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Perhaps for a change today we actually learnt something in question time. It doesn't happen very often, but today we learnt that the government has no plan to lower electricity prices for Australians any time soon—and definitely not in the next decade. During question time the government were asked multiple times, 'When will electricity prices come down?' and 'Do you agree with energy CEOs who say they won't come down in the next decade?' and there was absolutely no response. In fact, the government spend more time talking about the opposition, as they were just then, than they do about their own plans. They're actually in government. I thought they were in government. I thought we were asking questions of ministers who could possibly do something, but apparently the only thing they can do is carp about the opposition. I believe that the Australian people are hurting right now and that there are many Australians who are losing their jobs because of our uncompetitive energy prices, and it would be better if the government had a plan to fix those problems rather than simply criticising politicians here in Canberra.

The minister in question time mentioned that the government is pursuing the lowest cost. It's very important to understand what they mean by that because they're very tricky with their words. They're saying it's the lowest cost to get to net zero, to get to an 82 per cent renewable energy target. So right now, when the energy planners are planning our electricity system, they're not planning it to deliver the lowest cost; they're planning it to deliver these arbitrary, artificial targets that the government has set which effectively put a straitjacket around our economy and our ability to be competitive and provide good-paying jobs.

What we have decided to do on this side of politics is to say something that I think is pretty common sense, and that is that we should run our energy system with the primary goal of delivering the lowest energy prices for Australians. That's the fundamental thing we would change. The fundamental thing we would change is to say to the energy planners—and put in our laws and policies in this space—that everything we do should be about delivering the lowest price. That is not the priority of this government. The priority of this government is to hit net zero by 2050, whatever that means for people.

I'm now accused, by the previous speaker, of being a stegosaurus or a dinosaur. I want to put on the record that I've never been against emissions reductions. I've always supported sensible reductions and commonsense plans to reduce our emissions in this country. What I'm against is our country being asked to bear an unfair share of the world's reduction in emissions. For the past 10 years, Australia has been cutting its emissions at a rate double that of developed countries. I'm not talking about China and India; I'm talking about Europe, the US, Korea and Japan. We are going at a rate double that of the rest of those countries. The government's announcement the other week of a 62 per cent cut by 2035 means they are now saying they want to increase that to triple the rate of other developed countries over the next 10 years.

It's not a secret. Their friend Matt Kean, who advised on these targets, said he was presenting targets that were a higher ambition than other advanced countries. Why would Australians be asked to bear a higher cost than other rich countries to reduce emissions? As I say, I support reducing emissions. We have said we would reduce emissions, but we have made, I think, the commonsense decision to say that our reductions targets should be set in line with what other nations are doing, not racing ahead of the rest of the world.

Finally, the previous senator said there's nothing worse for businesses than uncertainty. I'm not sure I agree with that. Perhaps the worst thing that I hear for Australian businesses right now is our shockingly high energy prices. That's the worst thing. It's almost impossible to run anything that is energy intensive in this country right now because we are paying so much for energy. We are paying so much for energy that we are paying a higher price, and our factories are paying a higher price, than factories in Japan pay. We are the biggest supplier of energy to Japan, and they can deliver an industrial power price for factories that is lower than we can.

Something has gone horribly wrong. We have power prices that are now three times higher than those in Indonesia. Indonesia has already stolen our nickel industry, with 10,000 jobs lost in Western Australia last year because of that. Now they're targeting copper and aluminium, and they're doing that using their own coal, yet we ship our coal to other countries. We may as well ship the jobs off with them at the moment. That's got to stop. That's why we dropped net zero. It's time to put our own country first, protect our jobs and lower living costs for Australians. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.