Response to Labor Motion Cost-of-Living Pressures
Extract from Hansard
[COUNCIL — Thursday, 15 August 2024]
p3825b-3834a
Hon Klara Andric; Hon Dr Steve Thomas; Hon Sandra Carr; Hon Jackie Jarvis; Hon Ayor Makur Chuot; Hon Tjorn Sibma
HON DR STEVE THOMAS (South West) [11.51 am]: Thank you, Acting President, for a brief 10-minute response to the diatribe that we have just had. We must be getting towards an election, and it is good to see members get in and arc up a bit. That was nicely done; I was happy to see that. I will address some of the comments that the honourable member made, particular about energy. I thought they were particularly good! The government has a great energy plan going on at the moment. It is taking $260 million, a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money, and shovelling it into a foreign-owned company that is under liquidation orders—an insolvent company called Griffin Coal. That is $260 million—a quarter of a billion dollars. Do you want to know why they are doing that, Acting President? It is because the government’s plan for energy is rubbish.
The Liberal Party, the opposition, has released its plan for energy and it works, it is a good plan: extend coal until we build another 300 megawatts of gas and use gas to get to the future. It will provide lower energy prices than the current government’s plan, which will not be delivered and will not come true. The fantasy of the Labor Party’s energy policy is an embarrassment to it. Do you want to know how embarrassing it is, Acting President? The government has to shovel a quarter of a billion dollars into an insolvent company because it knows that after the next election it will put power prices up massively, and it has said repeatedly that companies will have to pay an appropriate price for coal. The government has said it—its Minister for Energy has said it, and its representative parliamentary secretary has said it. They said that the price will have to reflect the price of production. The price of coal will go up, but it will not go up until after March next year, will it? Funnily enough, the government was going to close down one of the units at Muja. That was going to close this year, but now, guess what? The government has extended it to April next year. What is important about April next year? It will be one month after the next state election.
The government knows that its energy policy is in tatters. It is an embarrassment to the government. The government understands that. I feel for the former Minister for Energy. The former energy minister was quite good. I do not think the current one understands energy very well yet but give him time and he might get there. The government’s policy has fallen apart. Do government members know how bad their energy policy is? Their energy policy is so bad it makes Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy policy look feasible—it actually makes it look feasible. That is how bad the government’s energy policy is. It does not work. The government does not have enough generation, does not have enough storage, does not have enough transmission and does not have a plan to deliver those things. This is the Labor Party’s plan for energy: the private sector will ride in on a white horse and deliver the energy, both storage and generation, that the government needs. The government is relying on the private sector. The Labor Party’s policy for energy, would honourable members believe, is privatisation by stealth, and it makes nuclear power look feasible. It is amazing that any member of the Labor Party would stand up and say that the Labor Party has done even a half-decent job.
Hon Dan Caddy interjected.
Hon Dr STEVE THOMAS: Hey! I do not have to make Peter Dutton look good—the government does it. The government makes him look feasible. He has never looked better thanks to the Western Australian Labor Party. This is the best opportunity he has ever had to sell a policy that is difficult to sell. It is tough to go to a nuclear policy. As I have always said, I am not afraid of nuclear energy, and I am not opposed to nuclear energy. The business case has to stack up, there will have to be contracts for delivery and Peter Dutton will have to take the community with him—all those things are a part of that process. But do members know what that opens the door for it? The incompetence of the Labor government in delivering energy policy opens the door because the policy does not work. We know that next year the price will start to rise. On 1 July 2026, the subsidy of a quarter of a billion dollars that keeps Griffin Coal operating will disappear, and this government will not be able to close down all its coal-fired power stations in the timeline it has been spruiking to try to keep the Greens a bit further away and to pull back a couple of those central seats. The government knows its policy does not work and it will have to do things. At some point I fully expect that the Labor Party will announce that there is a bit more gas coming.
Do members know what happened last week? The energy minister, when he was not quite so unwell, put out a press release welcoming more peaking gas into the system—he did. He only referred to little units, 80 megawatts here and little units there. It is privatisation by stealth. That is the energy policy that the Labor Party has that it is too weak to talk about. Do members know what? I welcome it. We should talk openly about the Labor Party’s privatisation by stealth. The government was not afraid to sell a few wind farms when it first came to power. There was a bit of privatisation. When Hon Ben Wyatt was energy minister, he was quite proud about it. He said, “We’re selling wind farms.” The privatisation agenda at Energy for this government has not really shifted but the government is being a bit clever and is trying to hide it. The government is trying to use it to save itself from the embarrassment of its lack of delivery on energy policy—its lack of ability to meet its promises. When we get to 2027 and the lights start going out, the Labor Party will say, “Hang on, this doesn’t work, we’re extending the life span of our coal fleet until we get this bit of extra gas built”, and it will steal the opposition’s energy policy, which it will almost inevitably have to do.
Hon Dan Caddy: No-one’s seen it.
Hon Dr STEVE THOMAS: It has been released; it is out there. I have been discussing it for months. I beat my federal colleagues by a month. It is out there. Would members believe that I was distributing it this morning? It is out there.
As I walked in and the member jumped to energy, I thought I might have been standing in a puddle of light, I thought it might have been divine intervention!
We are going to run out of time, unfortunately, but anyway, let us talk about the other area in which this government has destroyed its argument on the cost of living, which is the construction marketplace. That is where the government has destroyed its argument. The government has been so desperate to cut ribbons on projects, particularly Metronet, that $3 billion project that is now $13 billion and a bit, and plenty of others. The government has been so desperate to cut ribbons on that project that it has bumped up its infrastructure spend to $12 billion a year. That was at the same time that the resources sector said it was in the middle of the boom. It said it in 2020 and 2021. The resources sector said it was in the middle of a boom and that it would be spending $10 billion a year on infrastructure development. Do members know what happened at the same time? The government handed out money to stimulate the housing market, and so did the previous federal government. Guess what happened? Suddenly everybody was trying to build houses at the same time. Do members know what happened? The $70 000 maximum that the government could have put into people’s houses —
Hon Klara Andric: The construction industry did not crash.
Hon Dr STEVE THOMAS: It did crash. How many companies have gone out of business? All these years later it is still struggling to recover from the mismanagement of this government, and this is what happened. The resources sector was desperately trying to get stuff built, this government was desperately trying to cut ribbons for political benefit and people were desperately trying to build houses at the same time. Guess who was at the bottom of the pile? It was the poor old home builder. It was the people who were trying to build their first home. What happened? First, the price of everything skyrocketed because people could not find labourers and they could not get materials. The mining sector was making billions and because the mining sector was making billions, this government was making billions. Iron ore royalties went up by $6 billion and surpluses went to $6 billion a year. Then iron ore royalties corrected a bit and surpluses came down a bit. It is a simple economic message, people. I know members opposite struggle with it. I know it is hard for them, but it is a simple economic message. As the cost of living went up, the government went into competition with the people of Western Australia to get things done and that drove up their housing prices.
I could spend another 10 minutes on how the government’s contempt for agriculture and the regions has driven up food prices. We could talk about that, but I do not have the time. Maybe a member could move to extend my time and I will have a crack at agriculture and food prices, but I do not think anybody is going to do that.
The government drove up the cost of the most basic item that everybody needs—that is, housing. It drove up the cost of housing by tens of thousands of dollars, and in some cases by hundreds of thousands of dollars. As interest rates went up, the government drove up housing costs with the competition that it put in place because it was much more interested in political outcomes than in economic outcomes. The government was much more interested in being re-elected than in the poor people who could not get a house. The government was much more interested in its political benefit than in their economic benefit. That is a problem with the motion today; the government has been dealing with its ambition instead of the people of Western Australia’s needs, particularly those who struggle to keep a roof over their heads.
