Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on this MPI moved by my friend and colleague from Western Australia, Senator Dean Smith. It really does bell the cat when those opposite and their fellow travellers in the Greens stand up and say, over and over and over again, that renewable energy is the cheapest form of power. Meanwhile, every month, when people, individuals and businesses receive their energy bills, they see prices going up and up and up. And now we see from the supposed experts—those that those opposite claim to follow—that these power price increases could go on for at least a decade. But they've been saying that this transition was going to deliver cheaper power for years. Now, we have to wait another decade. How can you trust this government?

Let me give three examples from WA, Senator Smith. You will be very interested in these examples. I've got the evidence here, and I've met with these businesses just in the last week. Firstly, there's a small supermarket in the suburb of Maddington. The owner has got his bills and provided me with them. There's been an increase of 20 per cent off peak and 36 per cent on peak. Think about that. That is going to the grocery prices of every Western Australian who shops in that store and all those stores across WA who have seen the same ratcheting up of power prices. Those are increases in electricity prices of 20 per cent off peak and 36 per cent on the peak in a small supermarket in the suburb of Maddington in Western Australia. That is adding to every Western Australian's cost of living.

Let me give you a second example, this one in regional WA. The power bills of a food processor—not a huge food processor by any stretch of the imagination, but they are a high-energy user—have gone up from just over $2,000 dollars a day to $4,300 per day. That's from just over $2,000 to 4½ dollars per day. Think about what that is doing to the cost of their product. It's extraordinary. And those opposite say, 'But renewables are the cheapest form of power.' Wait a sec—we've had renewables as an increasing part of the grid for at least the last 20 years. Every year for the last 20 years we've had more renewables than the year before. Those opposite and their fellow travellers in the Greens have said it's the cheapest form of power, and yet every year we've seen prices go up. Here we have it: a 36 per cent increase in the peak rate of power.

I'll give you a third, much smaller example of a potato producer in the south-west of Western Australia who I was talking to last week. He runs irrigation off electricity and runs a small coolroom. His power bills have gone up $20,000 over the course of a year. That's $20,000 for a small, family food producer in the south-west of Western Australia. Think about what that is doing. Think about the combined impact of those three businesses I have just talked about. All of them have an increasing exposure to solar and wind—and batteries to a lesser degree—and yet their power prices have gone up by 36 per cent, by $20,000 a year and by well over $2,000 per day in each of those three examples. This is what Labor's ideological drive to net zero is doing to the Australian economy. This is what it is doing to small and medium sized businesses in Western Australia. It's taking a wrecking ball to our productivity. It's taking a wrecking ball to our international competitiveness. This cannot go on. We will not have an economy in this country if Labor keeps the reins for too much longer.