Matt Gregg
Deakin · Australian Labor Party · Australia
“Now, let's talk about the challenges faced by the Australian people: a quadrupling of house prices over two decades, unresolved by the Liberal Party in government; and we had 4.1 gigawatts out of baseload energy, unresponded to by the coalition government.”
“This is a government focused on the future and focused on actually resolving the challenges faced by the Australian people rather than whinging about them and going on template tirades which solve absolutely nothing. The coalition then have the gall to say, 'Oh, look, the coalition's less popular.”
“We are going to confront them on behalf of the Australian people, to make sure that they can be optimistic that the future is going to be better. We make absolutely no apologies for that. Today, 1 July—despite me sounding a little angry—is actually a very good day. It's a very good day! Every taxpayer is getting a tax cut.”
“Change is what the Labor government is delivering. We are making difficult decisions that actually address the challenges faced by Australians. We don't just sit here proud of the status quo; we come here to make a difference. It's very easy to come in and make statements. What is difficult is change.”
“Then, suddenly, they come into this chamber as if all challenges faced by society came out of nowhere and are all Labor's fault. It's complete nonsense. We are responding to the issue of energy shortages by developing a 21st-century grid, because we know that energy is the key to future productivity and success.”
“Where do I begin? We start with the member for Goldstein making up quotes to be outraged by, reciting tired old campaign lines from a party fast approaching the abyss.”
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“They do the stuff that we don't talk about in either the main chamber or in this chamber but is really important and affects people's day-to-day lives, such as ensuring our tax system works properly and with integrity to ensure that we receive the revenue that is required to pay for all the things that Australians need—defence, health, education and all of those important things—but also making sure that it is done in a way that Australians can have trust in. That institutional trust is essential for the functioning of our democracy and our economy. It's the strength of our institutions which can give investors confidence all around the world that Australia is the right place to invest. So, when we invest in the institutions listed in this appropriation, we are actually investing in our own economic prosperity going forward.”
“I know in my electorate of Deakin there are a lot of people—older people, young people and even small businesses—that are being affected by scams, and some of the remarkable work being done by the ACCC in helping protect individuals and small businesses from the increasing risks of scams has been incredibly important. That is the kind of day-to-day grunt work that is so essential to keeping our economy going, and it's these bodies that sit under Treasury that do a lot of that thankless work.”
“It ensures that, when we're confronted with decisions that affect the future of the Australian people, we have the relevant facts on the table, whether we like them or not, and that we have the economic reality put in front of us, whether it suits us politically or whether it reflected our perceptions years ago, simply to make decisions based on the world as it is, not how we wished it to be. The strength of those institutions is essential for us to maintain the strong governance that Australians rely on. These institutions also play an essential role in protecting us from things like scams, like the work of the ACCC.”
“This budget paper is more than just about supporting bureaucrats, it's about maintaining and building on our economic resilience, our productivity and on our consumer protections. The efficiency and effectiveness of our institutions doesn't mean that this is something that can just be ignored. I understand the temptation for political theatre, and I have enjoyed some of the showmanship as much as anyone, but the reality is a well-governed society requires good institutions. It's the boring bit of the budget process, but it is important. It ensures that, when we come up with challenging policies, we actually have the facts behind us.”
“I rise in support of the proposed appropriation. This is about funding our essential government agencies under the Treasury umbrella. These are agencies that help shape our economic policy, administer our tax system, protect consumers, support business and ensure that all of us, as decision-makers, have the information and thoughtful advice we need to make good decisions on behalf of the Australian people. We know that our economy is facing a series of long-term challenges—the difficulty for Australians to buy their first home; demographic change; technological change, which is presenting both remarkable opportunities and challenges at the same time—so we need more than good intentions. We need strong, robust institutions that support good governance in Australia.”
“While important progress has been made, I will of course continue to harass the Minister for Aged Care, who sits in front of me in this chamber. The budget also recognises the increasingly uncertain world in which we live. Australia faces a more complex strategic environment, and this requires continued investment in defence capability, national resilience and the security of our nation. Again, these are not optional expenditures; they are essential responsibilities of government. A strong economy requires a secure nation, and a secure nation requires a government that is willing to make long-term investments in Australia's defence and national capability. This budget is about aspiration. It is about setting Australia up for future prosperity. It is about fairness. And it is about getting the balance right.”
“It will save millions of Australians the burden of keeping receipts and navigating complex deduction rules—and I know it will keep the gloveboxes of many of my friends and family cleaner! The bill complements the investments we're making through the budget as well, such as through health care. It makes Medicare stronger. It makes medicines more affordable. It supports public hospitals. It locks in Medicare urgent care clinics as a permanent part of Australia's health system. For families in Deakin and communities across Australia, access to affordable health care is not a luxury; it's a necessity. The budget also makes important investments in aged care. But it also requires reform and a long-term commitment to building the broader support infrastructure that older Australians and their families increasingly rely on.”
“That is why I welcome the introduction of the $250 Working Australians Tax Offset. This is a permanent measure that will provide additional tax relief to more than 13 million Australians who earn income from work. It recognises a simple principle: that Australians who work hard should be able to keep more of what they earn. Importantly, it is not just a one-off payment; it is a permanent structural improvement to the tax system. For younger Australians in particular, it sends an important message that work remains the primary pathway to opportunity and economic security. We're also introducing a $1,000 instant tax deduction for work related expenses. That's a practical reform. It reduces paperwork. It will simplify tax time.”
“They're designed to make our economy more efficient, more productive and more competitive, because ultimately the best form of cost-of-living relief is sustained growth in wages and living standards—and it was great to see another announcement yesterday, handed down by the Fair Work Commission, that there will be another real wage increase, which was of course supported by the government. It's also important to recognise that these reforms are being delivered in the context of responsible fiscal management. Another important feature of these bills is the support they provide to working Australians. Millions of Australians earn their income through work. They get up early, they contribute to their communities, they pay their taxes and they deserve a tax system that recognises and rewards that contribution.”
“For too long, productivity growth has been weaker than we need. That matters, of course. Over the long term, productivity is what drives wages growth and improvements in living standards. We cannot sustainably increase living standards simply by borrowing more, spending more and hoping conditions will improve. We need an economy that produces more value from the skills, effort and capital we already possess. That is why this bill matters. It is not simply about immediate tax relief. It is also a bill about strengthening the foundations for future prosperity. Our tax reforms, the housing reforms, the investments in infrastructure and the measures to reduce compliance costs all contribute to that objective.”
“It is an economic issue, it is a productivity issue and it is increasingly becoming a national competitiveness issue. When workers cannot afford to live close to employment opportunities, businesses struggle to attract staff. When families are forced to spend an ever larger share of their income on housing, they have less capacity to invest in education, skills and entrepreneurship. When capital is disproportionately directed towards bidding up the price of existing assets rather than creating new productive assets, the entire economy becomes less dynamic. That is why housing reform and tax reform cannot be viewed in isolation. They form part of a broader effort to ensure that investment flows to where it generates the greatest economic value. One of the most important challenges Australia faces today is productivity.”
“Our obligation is not simply to defend arrangements that worked for some in the past; it is to ensure that opportunity remains available into the future. That's why these housing reforms matter. They're expected to support an additional 75,000 Australians into homeownership over the coming decade. They complement the government's broader housing agenda, including an additional $2 billion investment in enabling infrastructure, to unlock up to 65,000 more homes, and the broader Homes for Australia plan, which now exceeds $47 billion. This is not about punishing investors. It is about restoring balance. It is about ensuring that aspiration is not reserved for those who already own assets but that it remains available to those trying to buy their first home. Housing isn't simply a social issue.”
“They have also contributed to distortions in the way that capital is allocated across the economy, encouraging investment to flow disproportionately towards existing housing and asset appreciation, rather than towards new productive activity, innovation and business investment. The result is that investment decisions can become driven as much by tax treatment as by underlying economic value and long-term economic benefit. If we're serious about aspiration, we should be asking whether the next generation has the same opportunities that previous generations enjoyed, not whether every tax concession should be preserved indefinitely. A ladder of opportunity only works if people can still reach the first rung. The truth is that preserving exactly the same rules does not necessarily preserve the same opportunities.”
“I want young Australians to believe that, if they study hard, work hard, save diligently and make responsible decisions, they can still buy a home, raise a family and build a secure future. That's what aspiration means to me. And, if we're honest with ourselves, that aspiration is becoming harder for too many Australians. The question before us is not whether Australians should be encouraged to invest, build wealth or start a business. They absolutely should. The question is whether every aspect of the current system continues to serve that purpose. Over time, some tax settings have increasingly rewarded existing asset ownership, particularly housing, while making it harder for young Australians to enter the housing market for a home, to build wealth and to get ahead.”
“The aspiration to get a good job, earn a good living, own a home and retire with financial security has been part of the Australian story for generations. Yet, for so many, that aspiration is becoming harder to achieve. That's why I find some of the criticism of these reforms unconvincing. We're told that any attempt to revisit longstanding tax concessions is somehow a war on aspiration. I reject that proposition. Aspiration is not a tax concession. Aspiration is not a legal structure. Aspiration is the belief that hard work, reasonable choices and effort should allow people to build a better life for themselves and their families. The reason I support these reforms is not that I oppose investment success or wealth creation—quite the opposite.”
“Families are worried about housing costs. Renters are concerned about the availability and affordability of rental accommodation. Parents worry what their children might face in the future ahead. We're seeing fewer younger couples having children, contributing to a fertility rate that is now below replacement levels. A growing body of research suggests this is not simply a reflection of changing preferences. Many Australians continue to express a desire to have children, but they face financial and practical barriers to doing so. Access to homeownership is increasingly recognised as one of those barriers, alongside childcare costs, cost-of-living pressures and broader economic insecurity.”
“In Deakin, I regularly meet with young professionals—nurses, teachers, tradies and small-business owners—who are doing everything society has asked of them. They're working hard. They're saving. They're making sacrifices. Yet many still feel as though the goalposts keep moving further away. They're not seeking special treatment. They're not asking for a free ride. What they want is a fair opportunity. They want confidence that their efforts will be rewarded, and they want confidence that owning a home is still achievable. They want confidence that, if they work hard and contribute to their community, then they can build a secure future for themselves and their families. Those are reasonable aspirations. They are aspirations that transcend political allegiances, and they are aspirations that deserve the attention of this parliament.”
“When I look at the budget, what I see is a government attempting to deal with some of the biggest structural challenges facing our country: persistently weak productivity growth, housing affordability, cost-of-living pressures, an ageing population in need of services and the need to maintain sustainable public finances while continuing to invest in the services Australians rely on. These are not challenges that emerged overnight, nor are they challenges that can be solved with slogans, wishful thinking or short-term political fixes. They require serious policy responses and a willingness to confront issues that have too often been deferred. For the people of Deakin, housing affordability remains one of the most significant concerns I hear about.”
“My parents generation generally assumed that, if you worked hard, saved consistently and acted responsibly, homeownership would eventually be within reach. That assumption is no longer shared by many young Australians. Increasingly, young people and Australians more broadly are questioning whether the economic system is still working for them, and they wonder whether the opportunities available to previous generations will still exist for them. Governments cannot solve every challenge, but governments do have a responsibility to ensure that public policy does not make those challenges harder than they need to be. If we're serious about preserving the Australian dream, then we must be willing to examine whether existing policies are helping or hindering the next generation.”
“I rise today to speak in support of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026. Like every budget, there will be measures that attract debate. There will be people who would have allocated funding differently, and there will be those who would have preferred the government to avoid difficult decisions altogether. But governing is about making choices. It's about balancing competing priorities, responding to the economic circumstances before us and making decisions that are in the long-term interests of the Australian people. One of the great strengths of Australia has always been the belief that each generation should have the opportunity to do a little bit better than the last one.”
“There's a Cancer Council fundraiser in my area that has been going on for 29 years and has raised thousands and thousands of dollars. I pay tribute to Jenny Hall, who has been fundraising for the Cancer Council for 21 years. She has been an absolute force in attending those lunches, which are getting more and more people every year. It makes you really proud to be part of a community that really backs one another in. I'm always pleased to make whatever small contribution I can to those events, and I know that this really is a collective community effort, but we need those driving forces like Jenny in our communities. We all have them—people who lead from the front, who bring people together and who have that can-do mindset. Congratulations, Jenny.”
“We've got another business in our electorate that is getting an internal combustion engine and getting them running on hydrogen. We're really looking at scenarios where fuel supply chains might be unpredictable and how we can provide sustainable and emissions-free power when times get difficult not only in Australia but also in our Pacific family. There is a lot of good work being done in my wonderful area of Deakin, and I know fantastic work is being done by businesses around the country. I would urge not only government but also business, society, all of us to get on board and make a strategic decision to back Australian manufacturing whenever we get the chance. In addition to meeting many fantastic manufacturers in our area, there have been a lot of great events in my electorate of Deakin, and I want to quickly mention one.”
“Government is strategically making the decision to support not only local manufacturing but small and medium-sized businesses in our country to help them invest, scale up and continue to do what they do so incredibly well. It really is about backing themselves not only in selling their goods and making a profit but in reinvesting in more research, more development and more problem solving. We've seen amazing things happen. I can think of a number of examples in my own electorate. We've got precision electronic technologies that continue to make all sorts of fantastic electronic goods. It's a really niche, high-level market. We've got pop-up recycling that has systems where you can recycle milk bottles and regenerate them through some fantastic machine work.”
“It has been a bit of a bugbear of mine, and I have written to the relevant people about this. But I think it's really important that we do get animated about the importance of supporting our essential industries, our rural and regional industries, our healthcare industries and our manufacturing across sectors. There is no element of Australian manufacturing that I'm not going to back in my area. We do amazing work. But, obviously, there are some particularly critical goods that we need to make sure we have a constant and ready supply of. We know that resilience has value, we know that sovereign capability has value and we know that trusted local supply has value. We need to match our words with actions. That is why I'm so proud of the Albanese Labor government's Buy Australian Plan. We're leading from the front.”
“But in this case the economics stack up. It's actually cheaper. You use fewer wipes. They don't cost as much. They're of really high quality. To my mind, it only seems to be inertia that's driving us to continue with the status quo. But we do need to be self-critical. We need to be conscious about every single decision we make. Australian made isn't just a nice to have. It's not just a platitude. It's not just something we put on a poster. It's something in which we all have a role to play. Every choice we make, we've got to be thinking, 'What does this do to set us up as a country?' Maybe one decision alone might not do much, but, cumulatively, these decisions are essential. They help us maintain our strength and sovereignty when we really need it.”
“They are so detail oriented—and here is an example—that, during COVID, when there were those wipes at Woolies with which we were wiping the trolleys, they developed a specially designed wipe so they could fit as many as possible into rollers so they could distribute wipes that were the perfect size to clean trolleys. These are thoughtful, intelligent people—problem solvers. We have them all around Australia. Many businesses in my electorate have that engineering mindset of problem solving all the time. But, in order for them to be successful, they need to be supported when times are good and when times are bad. That is part of a strategy to ensure resilience when things aren't going as they normally would. In my own personal view, even when the prices are a little bit different, it's still worth investing in Australian made.”
“The only way we can protect that supply is to ensure that those manufacturing businesses are alive and well when times are good, that we make those decisions all the time and that we don't just buy from overseas and then suddenly, when things go wrong, come crawling to our local manufacturers and say, 'Please, please, please can you make it?' They need to invest in their technology. They need to invest in R&D. In the case of DentaLife, they have full-time R&D staff looking at ways to innovate in everything they do. They were looking at new ways to improve dental equipment going forward when I was visiting them only a few days ago.”
“It means thinking about what our healthcare professionals need and what our economy needs to continue when times get tough, as they inevitably will once again. I draw this as one example of very important work not only that we, as the government, have to do but that the private sector have to do in thinking about every decision we make in terms of procurement. How are we supporting local manufacturing as an essential part of our procurement responsibilities and of our resilience? The old neo-con idea of just going for the cheapest price all the time has proven to be incredibly short-sighted. There are some things we need to be able to make and produce whenever necessary.”
“We've seen, particularly in recent months, the importance of being very clear minded as to what is absolutely essential when times are tough. I look in the regions and I see the concern about urea. I see that as another example of where we've really got to learn the lessons of this moment. We know that we can make urea. It's a fairly simple chemical. We can produce it through gas. We can produce green urea as well, through making ammonia. There are lots of options. It is absolutely important that we have the systems in place to ensure that these dependencies are taken care of in moments of difficulty. It is essential to our security as a country that we be very clear eyed as to what we need when times get tough, when things get unpredictable. That means thinking about what our rural sector needs.”
“It might sound a little petty of me to be going on about medical equipment wipes, but it is an example of how we have to be thoughtful about every single decision we make and of where the procurement officer in a large business actually has an incredibly important job—not just in the moment, and not just for economic efficiency, but as part of a strategic pivot to ensuring that we maintain a secure and resilient supply chain for these essential products. I would encourage all hospitals and every veterinary clinic to consider investing in DentaLife wipes because it is a small decision you can make that can make an enormous difference to maintaining our sovereign capability in this very, very important area.”
“But medical hygiene is a key one—and we saw it during COVID. We need to be able to produce our own hygiene products in the medical profession. We've got a product, here in Australia, proudly made in my electorate, and we have the tragedy that hospitals continue to import these wipes. To me, that is a great lost opportunity to secure our resilience and ensure that we have what we need when times get tough. And let's face it: the world, as it is now, is telling us that we are going to have tough times; we are going to have supply-chain disruptions. So maintaining that resilience in critical industries is essential, and this is just one small example.”
“They are a reminder to me that good Australian-made products must be supported, whenever possible. In this case, it even makes sense, because DentaLife has been able to make a product that is better in quality and competitive on price. On any reading of any environmental or social responsibility, or any corporate social responsibility policy, it would be completely remiss to not have a focus on protecting Australian manufacturing, particularly in key areas—particularly in medical hygiene. It is a key tier-1 area in my mind. Now, obviously, when it comes to resilience, we've got those things that we can simply not live without during a period of crisis. Then we've got other ones where we can, with secure and multiple supply chains, maintain adequate supply of what we need and those nice-to-haves.”
“They have also been working on medical equipment wipes—the only organisation in Australia that is able to make accredited and standard-fulfilling wipes for medical equipment. Yet they find themselves in a frustrating position. They are at the leading edge of creating technology that is suitable in the healthcare profession, yet they find themselves unable to sell their product. They have some of the best products in the world, but, due to inertia, sometimes, in supply chains, we're seeing circumstances in the healthcare and other professions where they're just not turning their minds to the importance of backing Australian manufacturing—not when it's a crisis, not when the other supply chains shut down, but as a matter of course, to ensure our resilience.”
“Last week was Australian Made Week, and local manufacturing is an incredibly important part of my local community. Our businesses are innovating and making high quality Australian product and creating fantastic employment pathways for young people, and I'm incredibly proud to be a part of a government that is once again focused on backing local manufacturing. Just last week I visited DentaLife, which is a leading provider of dental equipment and healthcare sanitisation equipment in our country. They began in a garage, back in 1999, and they have become a real success story—leading the way in the dentistry industry, providing key supplies to dentists around the country. They also have a presence in Asia as well.”
“They could send all the AI messages in the world, but young people know they have been screwed. We have spent most of our adolescence, our 20s and our early 30s knowing that we were being screwed. We went to auctions with our friends and saw them outbid time and time again by investors. The system simply isn't fair. We're privileging some forms of income over others. This is a simple budget. It says: a buck is a buck is a buck and we're going to have closer-to-equal taxation, whether you make your income from owning things or from working. It is entirely fair. We're maintaining an adaptation of CGT to ensure that it reflects inflation so that, essentially, you are tax based on actual profit, not on any distortions from inflation.”
“It's the idea that, if some people don't benefit from the removal of a tax concession, the whole tax concession must be preserved at all times and that all tax reform is impossible. What utter nonsense! We have got a generational opportunity to actually make the dream of homeownership possible again for the next generation, and we are committed to achieving just that. Things have to change. It is not the young people of Australia who have been benefiting from these negative gearing and CGT settings, and the frankly absurd sideshow that we're seeing from the coalition shows that they simply don't get it. But, of course, in a lot of these speeches, they haven't even been talking about housing. They were outraged about it for the first couple of days after the budget. Then they realised young people weren't falling for it.”
“They've got the taxpayer behind them because they know that, if interest rates go up, half of that's going to be deductible. So we even see monetary policy blunted by the fact that a whole lot of interest on mortgages charged to investors is not creating the same amount of pressure as interest charged to those who are owner-occupiers, who cop the full whack of every single interest rate increase—not true, because of the current settings of negative gearing for investors. We've seen the distortion of our entire tax system over a number of years, and what is the Liberal Party's plan? They say, 'I know what we'll do. We'll go back. We'll ignore every reality of this tax system and decide that it was good enough for young people. They're happy.' They'll find a couple of examples of some angry people.”
“While the Nationals have been calling for an immediate election as a referendum, I suspect their Liberal colleagues would not be calling for the same, otherwise it would be 'so long, farewell' to the Liberal Party, because their identity crisis is yet to culminate in any sense of who they are or what they stand for. This Labor government is about making the aspiration of homeownership actually achievable for the next generation—people who have done everything right. They went to university, got a good job, got on a good wicket, but still, despite doing everything right, they have no chance of successfully bidding in an auction because they're competing against investors who are effectively subsidised by their own tax dollars.”
“When I go out to Deakin and I speak to young people about their aspirations, they don't talk about discretionary trusts, they don't talk about getting into their fourth investment property, they don't talk about the niche issues they're trying to use as an excuse for the preservation of a distorted tax system they know not to be working for young Australians. To suggest that young Australians have been the big winners out of the current tax system is beyond absurd. If they're so out of touch as to actually believe that, they should consider early retirement as soon as possible.”
“We've got housing in Adelaide approaching levels of affordability that are greater than those of Paris, London and New York. That's where we're at. These are distortionary; we know they're distortionary. The member for Goldstein's motion talks about bad faith. That is when you hold one position but secretly believe another. Of course, the member for Goldstein's not-so-best-selling book reveals he understands the reality that those systems have been screwing the next generation and have been distorting the tax system to make it harder and harder for people to actually achieve the aspiration of a home to live in.”
“This was by bad design. In 1999, the Howard government came in and said, 'Let's introduce new CGT settings. That'll help increase the number of shareholders.' Well, it didn't. What it did was create, with negative gearing settings, a magic combination that made investing capital in existing housing simply irresistible. So, of course, people made the rational decision to invest in equal housing. But what we saw was a huge injection of capital into the existing housing market, producing no productivity whatsoever, increasing debt and making the dream of a home to live in all but impossible for working Australians everywhere across the country. Now we've got Sydney as the second-least affordable city in the world—second only to Hong Kong.”
“I think we've just had a confirmation of the coalition's long-distance relationship with reality. If they are seriously pretending that the old settings were producing broadly fair and sustainable outcomes for the young people of Australia, they're living in la-la land and, once again, proving themselves to be the group serving nothing and serving no-one as a coalition. It's no wonder their political future is increasingly in the abyss, when their only vision for tomorrow is tax distortions that have, for 25 years, made it harder for the next generation to get a home of their own. It plainly ignores the fact that, for my generation and those who are younger, getting into a house has been a whole lot harder than it was for our parents' and grandparents' generations. It's not that the investors have done anything wrong.”
“I also think we have to be forward looking in what our energy mix looks like in the future to make sure that we maximise our national resilience to ensure that we don't again fall into the troubles we've had. I've had people in tears in my office worried about the future of their businesses if this Strait of Hormuz crisis continues and fuel prices continue to go up. This is life or death for a lot of businesses and sectors around the country, and we owe it to Australians to do everything we can to ensure energy security for our country going forward.”
“I have no shame in saying that that is the approach we're taking, and that is an approach I would recommend in all areas of public policy. We are thinking ahead, thinking about the lessons we've taken from this period and ensuring that we're implementing those lessons and not forgetting them. Often when we see troubles, they say, 'Keep calm because there's another disaster around the corner,' and there no doubt will be and, we won't have predicted it yet. But we do know that these are the lessons we need to learn and we need to get onto this job fast. So I'm incredibly proud of the important steps being taken by the government. I think we should all be encouraging that.”
“As I said, we've been talking about predictable shortfalls of gas on our east coast, which seems absolutely crazy. Given that we're one of the world's biggest exporters of gas, how can we in Australia be talking about gas shortages? It's absolutely ludicrous. And so it's important that we finally see real action being taken to ensure that Australians, as leading exporters of gas, don't have to worry about a shortage of gas. That is just good common sense. We haven't got the final details of the policy yet, because we actually do detailed policy work, engage with relevant stakeholders, design a policy, predict shortcomings, see if we can address them in the design of the policy and then implement something that will actually work in the long term.”
“Where we can electrify things in a practical way that is economically efficient, we should do so there is diesel there for the farmers and there for industry where it's needed. If households are happy to have an electric car and it works for them, that's wonderful. So it is ensuring that we are electrifying what we can practically do so that we have an energy supply with renewables backed with gas and storage to ensure that we can facilitate that in an effective and efficient way, and we've been working in that direction for a long time. Sometimes when we say the word 'renewables', people get a little bit crazy, but it is part of a bigger plan to ensure that we have that access to sovereign energy. Gas reservation is an important step for the country.”
“We need to learn the lessons from this: storing more, refining more and ensuring that we don't continue making the same mistakes we've made in decades past. I really don't want to be too partisan about this, because this is too important. This is about our sovereignty in terms of our energy, and we all know that energy is going to be essential for our future prosperity. We know that there are shortcomings in this country's approach over a period of decades, and we need to get to work and do things about it. That is exactly what this government is doing, and I applaud that. In relation to electrification, while this does seem to be a bit more of a contentious political issue, minimising our dependency on energy that we do not have an abundance of is good sense.”
“We've found ourselves in a difficult situation, but we have seen the leadership of this government get to work quickly. We've managed to secure more supply in the here and now, during this crisis, than we had beforehand. We've leveraged our reciprocal relationships with partners overseas and ensured that we've had a continuity of supply. We've made legislative amendments to ensure that we can pull every lever available to us as a country to ensure that those who need the fuel have it. That's important for farmers, industry and tradies. It's important for mums and dads and everyone who depends on vehicles or machinery in their work. So that has been incredibly important work. And then we have to think long term.”
“I'll try to deal with each of them in turn with as much order as I possibly can. In relation to the liquid fuels, obviously we found ourselves confronted, as the world did, with a sudden shortage of liquid fuels. Over many years we'd become dependent on liquid fuels from overseas. Australia is a country very used to having an abundance of everything we need, but there is a notable exception when it comes to liquid fuels. We have some in the ground, but, even if we were to uneconomically dig up everything we have and sieve all the oil through every bit of sand, we would not have a forever supply of oil. We've been importing it for a long time, and, regrettably, our storage and refining of it has diminished over a period of decades.”
“The member for McPherson was talking about coalition policy when it came to energy security, and I recall that, from 2013, AEMO was warning us of a coming gas shortfall. What was done? Well, a whole lot of nothing. We have known this was coming for a long time, and the steps necessary to ensure the sovereignty of our supply were not taken. We've got three distinct issues raised in this debate. The first is liquid fuels and the very urgent issue we confront in the face of the Middle East crisis, particularly with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Related is electrification and the importance of making sure that we can minimise our dependency on an increasingly unstable supply of liquid fuels. Then, thirdly, there's the important work being done in relation to the gas reservation scheme.”