Leah Blyth (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Stronger Families and Stronger Communities) Share this | Hansard source

Energy bills have become one of the heaviest burdens on Australian families. Everyone I speak to says the same thing. The cost of keeping the lights on, heating and cooling a home, and running a small business has climbed beyond what ordinary budgets can absorb. It is felt in every quarter, with every bill that slices further into a family's disposable income. Hardworking Australians are now making trade-offs on what were unthinkable things a decade ago. Parents are turning off appliances to protect the grocery budget, seniors are rationing heating in winter and cooling in summer, and small businesses are shutting earlier because power costs make it difficult to stay open those extra trading hours. These are quiet sacrifices, but they speak to a deeper failure—energy policy that has lost contact with reality.

Australia should not be a country where abundant natural resources coexist with crippling power prices, yet that is exactly what has happened under Labor. Ideological targets have displaced practical planning. Dispatchable generation has been pushed out faster than it can be replaced. Investment has certainly collapsed. The result is a grid under strain, wholesale prices that move like a seismograph, and consumers forced to pick up the tab for policy experiments that never match the engineering. Lowering energy costs is not a luxury; it's an economic and social necessity. Affordable power is the foundation of manufacturing, the life support of small businesses and the safety net that shields families from cost-of-living shocks. Australians are doing everything they can to cope.

A country with our resources should deliver cheaper power, not higher bills. Only the Liberals will get back to affordability, accept reality and restore balance to the energy grid.