Critical issues that Australia is facing as we go through a difficult period of inflation and challenge for household budgets on energy prices.

 

Mr HAWKE (Mitchell) (19:50): I rise tonight to speak on one of the most critical issues that Australia is facing as we go through a difficult period of inflation and challenge for household budgets on energy prices. The budget was a test for the government. It was a chance and an opportunity for a new government to set the tone on what is going to be the biggest pressure on business, manufacturing, households and small business, and that is power prices. It was a test for the government, and the government didn't meet the challenge it was faced with because it has an ideological bent in relation to climate change that prevents it from pursuing good economic and engineering policies.

We've heard much in recent days from the Treasurer and Minister for Climate Change and Energy about how gas companies are to blame for gas prices going up and that it's greed that has enabled gas prices and energy prices to go up. It's like a scene out of a movie because it's so unrealistic. It's hard to imagine what audience they're speaking to. Are they trying to say that people in Australia are so silly that they think that prices have gone up purely because a bunch of executives sat around and said, 'Wouldn't it be fun to lift prices and make tonnes of money off people just for fun?' and that's why the prices have gone up? I think every member of this House knows the truth that that's not why power prices have gone up. That's not why the price of gas has gone up.

We have had supply shortages in Australia in relation to gas for some period of time. There have been perhaps a decade or more of warnings about the need to bring on a much greater supply of gas, and there are several governments in Australia—

Mr Rae: If only there was a government listening!

Mr HAWKE: I'll take the member for Hawke's interjection. As he might remember, we are a federation. There are governments that have had responsibility for resources inside their states that have banned exploration for new gas. One of those you'll be familiar with is his comrades Daniel Andrews, the Premier of Victoria, who in 2017 with great fanfare on an ideological basis banned gas from being bought on. You can't increase the supply of gas in your state. States are sovereign, and you can't increase the supply of gas. The Commonwealth can't override that decision because the state has banned the new supply from coming on. The member for Hawke will understated what I'm talking about. He's probably a big supporter of that.

The federal government did do something. We signed agreements with every single one of those state government, and I'm happy to talk the member for Hawke and other members opposite through the bilateral energy agreements. We struck a deal with the New South Wales in January 2020, a $2 billion gas deal with New South Wales to increase gas supply and reduce emissions by bringing 70 petajoules of gas a year into the east coast market. In April 2021 we signed a deal with the South Australian government, a billion dollars. I know Labor members don't see $2 billion and $1 billion as significant amounts, but these are significant investments in gas supply. We signed that agreement to bring on an additional 50 petajoules by the end of 2023. With Daniel Andrews we couldn't sign a deal to bring on the gas—I hate to tell you this—because he doesn't want to bring on the gas. He refuses, so you can't have more supply of gas when the Premier says, 'No gas,' because he doesn't believe in gas, so I know your point was well made over there. The government worked really hard to ensure that states understood the urgency and priority.

Why was gas so demonised? We know that for the left it became fashionable. Once they'd finished with this relentless assault on Australian coal—even though it's one of our major exports, even though it's still one of the world's primary fuel sources for cheap and low-cost energy for people around the world to generate electricity—they turned on gas savagely. Members opposite were part of that. They said gas was the next coal. Gas had to be stopped as well, even though the warnings said that gas would be needed as a transition to whatever the technology will be. Whatever source of energy you prefer to have generated in the future, we must transition through the use of gas.

It is cute for Labor ministers to now stand up and say, 'Why haven't we got enough gas?' and 'It's the greed of companies that have produced this shortage of supply.' This is purely incorrect. It is a failure of government and regulatory policy. It is a failure of the climate wars, but not in the way the Labor Party mean it. They fought the war against gas, and they did it knowingly and willingly. They said: 'We don't want it. We still have a premier of a major state in Australia.' We have as much gas under Australia as oil under Saudi Arabia, but we're not allowed to get because the Premier of Victoria says—