Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Australian Energy Regulator Separation) Bill 2025, and I'm delighted to be able to do so with the limited time available to me before we get to two-minute statements.

I think it's important to first point out that Australians continue to struggle under this terrible cost-of-living crisis, which is having such a massive impact on people's way of life and their capacity to live life to its fullest. Sadly, the government can't be believed when it comes to the policies they've put in place with regard to cost of living and, in particular, energy and emissions reductions. They went to the 2022 election with three promises, which I think we should recount for the benefit of all those listening and those in the gallery. The first of those is one we can't forget, and that was the promise to reduce power bills by $275; the second was the promise that we would have 82 per cent renewable energy generation in our grid by 2030; and the third was a further promise that we'd have 43 per cent of emissions taken out of our environment by the same time. Of course, we're on track to fail all of those, and, in the case of the power price reduction, we are in no way coming anywhere near that. We've gone in the other direction.

Indeed, sadly, Australians were sold a pup when it came to the promises of the 2022 election because any promise of lower power prices is completely a mirage. We know, in fact, that power prices went up by more than $1,300 on what was promised by the Labor government. Instead of delivering on their promise to cut power prices and take decisive action to lower costs and ensure that there's enough energy in the system to avoid the risk of blackouts, the government is focused on reshuffling the deck chairs and redressing the bureaucracy, and none of those measures offer any relief to households or businesses that are struggling to make ends meet. This bill will separate the Australian Energy Regulator from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. This really does come down to priorities. It's interesting and quite telling frankly that the first piece of legislation that the government brought in on this is exactly what I said before—a shuffling of deck chairs on the Titanic relating to what bureaucrats are doing what. As I said, this is just separating out the Australian Energy Regulator from the ACCC. It'll do nothing to address what they said was a priority and certainly something Australians have told us, from end to end in this country—that they want the cost of living reduced.

Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We've reached the hard marker. We'll move to two-minute statements.