Tuesday, 18 March 2025

Energy policy

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (13:51): I want to alert the chamber today, and the community, to the worst fears that many people obviously felt when they heard about the Victorian default offer released last week by Lily D’Ambrosio and the Essential Services Commission. This sets the electricity price high again. It is stuck at a high level. Under this government it has gone up and up and up. It is a small rise this year, but it is stuck at a high level. Victorians are doing it tough with the cost of living – families are and small businesses are. We saw an increase in 2022–23 of 4.5 per cent and then in 2023–24 of 25 per cent – huge rises in electricity costs in Victoria. I see one Labor member saying, ‘Oh, they’re the cheapest in the country.’ Well, coal has kept it cheaper, but at the same time the costs have gone up and up and up, and we have got the highest level of electricity increases across that period in the country. That is the truth of the matter. This government has locked these charges in at a high rate – at an unaffordable rate for families – higher than ever before in Victoria, higher than ever before in this state. It is because Labor has mismanaged the energy transition. They have mismanaged energy policy. 10 years –

John Berger interjected.

David DAVIS: I tell you what, they were cheaper under us. People are paying more under Lily D’Ambrosio and Labor. They are paying more and more and more as prices go up and up and up.

The PRESIDENT: Mr Davis, your time has expired. I remind you about not pointing across the chamber.