E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SUNRISE
MONDAY, 26 JANUARY 2026
TOPICS: ENERGY PRICES; COALITION CHAOS
NATALIE BARR: Let's bring in Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek and One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce. Good morning to both of you. Tanya, look, we know the energy rebates can't last forever. Every economist has said we can't keep propping up the economy. That's a lot for families to stomach, though.
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES: It is. And we are always worried about families cost of living. We know when it comes to energy, the rebates couldn't last forever. But the best thing we can do to bring down prices is get more, cheaper, cleaner, renewable energy into the grid. We've added well over 18 gigawatts of more renewable energy into the grid and that is bringing down prices over time. And for people who've got solar on the roof, that's 4.2 million households now, for well over 200,000 households have added batteries, their prices are coming down. There'll be three days free power for a lot of households from the 1st of July. We're doing everything we can. And of course it's the other cost of living measures as well. Cheaper medicines, cheaper child care, lower taxes, higher wages. We're doing whatever we can to assist families.
BARR: It's just hard while people wait, isn't it?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: It is. No, I understand that.
BARR: You know, 500 bucks, that's just on top of everything else.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, it's not easy. But the same article says one of the reasons that the costs are so high is because oil and gas prices and coal prices are so high. So, the solution is cheaper, cleaner renewable energy. You just got to build it. And I wish we had started 10 years ago. We should have started during the time of the previous government. We didn't. We're playing catch up. That's absolutely true. But we're doing the best we can to get that into the grid as quickly as we can.
BARR: Barnaby, we can't keep propping up the economy can we, with these rebates? Would you, do support this?
BARNABY JOYCE: Playing ducks and drakes I think that'd be a better, better word for it. I mean, ultimately, what, when are we going to call this, the intermittent power swindle is not working. I mean when is the epiphany going to happen with the government? The only people they're fooling is themselves. The intermittent power rollout of wind and solar has been a disaster. They keep on promising us that it's going to go down. How many times we heard the promise, power prices are going to go down. How many times have we been taken for a ride? But I don't think the government's, they're not fooling anybody. It's a complete fiasco. It's getting worse, it's getting more unreliable. And the only reason we had any reduction in prices before is because taxpayers were handed back their own money by way of a rebate. And it sits at the core of the cost of living crisis because it requires electricity. And if you don't believe, and I know what they’re gonna say, oh this is what they say, this is what you know, AEMO says and the CSIRO says, but I’ll tell you who assesses it really, really well. Rio Tinto, the major manufacturers who’re all leaving our country because they can read exactly what's happening to our energy prices. It's a fiasco. They're going to other countries because they know it better-
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: What’s your plan Barnaby?
JOYCE: - they know better than anybody else what a complete debacle this energy crisis is as a creation of the Labor Government. And the truth is go back to coal fired power.
BARR: So, Barnaby. Look, as Tanya said in this article, the biggest thing that's been driving up electricity prices over the last couple of years has been gas and coal and it spiked when Russia invaded Ukraine and it's never gone back down. And well, you know-
JOYCE: [inaudible]
BARR: -because coal power stations are going out of business and they're so old we're pumping money into them to keep them going. So, if there's a better plan, people want it because we all want cheaper power. So, what is it?
JOYCE: They're pumping money into these intermittent power swindles. I mean maybe Tanya can tell us exactly how much-
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Every single day-
JOYCE: - in these paid in these capacity investment schemes which are billion, hundreds of billions of dollars subsidies which we, come out of our pocket.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Everyday Barnaby there are unscheduled outages because as Nat says, the power stations are 50 years old. If you want to build a new one, tell us where, how much it'll cost, and who's going to build it. Where will it go, how much will it cost and who's going to build it.
BARR: Okay Barnaby.
JOYCE: You created policies, you created policies to put them out of business. Remove those policies, remove the subsidies for the intermittent power. Put those subsidies back into coal fired power to get them going. You'd save a heap of money and actually have a power grid that works.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: There's a bunch of subsidies going into 50-year-old stations open. It's like keeping a 50-year-old car on the road. It's expensive and its unreliable.
JOYCE: Ok. What do you think is going to happen to intermittent power grids.
BARR: Ok Barnaby.
JOYCE: What do you think is going to happen to all your wind towers?
BARR: Where should we be building new coal power stations, Barnaby?
JOYCE: Yeah, we should have new coal fired power stations.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Where?
BARR: Where?
JOYCE: And I'll tell you, I'll tell you where you're going to get the money from. You're going to get the money by cutting those subsidies to the capacity investment schemes, to the wind towers, to the solar panels which are absolutely bastardising our power grid and costing us hundreds of billions of dollars.
BARR: Ok. So, how many should we build and where should we build them?
JOYCE: You should find all the ones that you've already got and use the money for the capacity investment schemes to refurbish them. I mean, what you're doing now, forget about the idea. They even, I don't know where they are. Probably not even half the way of rolling out these wind towers and solar panels. And they're all going to be subsidised by secret agreements. So, why not do it transparently? Why not have the government build the coal fired power station?
BARR: Well, you guys had an election like less than a year ago-
JOYCE: And they were- it was wrong. It was wrong. Let's see, I can say these things now. The cheapest power is coal fired power.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: No, it's not.
BARR: Well, Angus Taylor was in charge of your energy policy. So, did he mess that up?
JOYCE: It is because people think that we're going to cool the planet.
BARR: Barnaby?
JOYCE: That's what's driving it. People think we're going to cool the planet, which is another absurdity.
BARR: So, Barnaby, Angus Taylor was in charge of your energy plan going to the election.
JOYCE: He was, he was.
BARR: Did he mess that up?
JOYCE: Because we got sucked into this idea that we can cool the planet. Chris Bowen, as much as you think he's a god, he cannot cool the planet. And until we have that epiphany and realise this is just a fool's errand.
BARR: Okay well, speaking of Angus Taylor, word on the street is that Taylor and Hastie are duking it out to be leader of the Liberal Party. You seem to have your ear to the ground, Barnaby. What are you hearing?
JOYCE: Yeah, I'd say that's probably right. And you know, that's what happens. The Coalition cannot stay where they are or they believe they can't. It's ridiculous. The last polling where One Nation actually out polled them is a- and remember, the Labor Party's polling went down too, by the way. I don't know what they're down to, 32 per cent or something. There is a move on. It's not unique to Australia. It's happening all around the world and it's happening here. And I saw it on the street. Nat, when I walk down the street in Tamworth, people just one after the other, because they're coming in from all around the country, from Western Australia, South Australia, awful lot from Sydney, and people are just over it. And they're going to change.
BARR: Who's going to lead them, Barnaby?
JOYCE: I would say, if I was, see, I'll put the kiss of death on them, but I'd say Andrew Hastie's got the numbers.
BARR: That's what you're hearing. Tanya, what are you hearing?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, it's a matter for the Coalition and it's, well, what used to be the Coalition, it's a matter for the Liberal Party who runs the Liberal Party. But I'd say, first of all, it was pretty disappointing that all of this blew up on our National Day of Mourning last week. And I don't think they've really given Sussan Ley a fair go. They've been out to get her since day one. I don't think Angus Taylor ever got over not winning the leadership in the first place and Andrew Hastie's been nipping at her heels the whole way through. So, it's been, all in all, a pretty unedifying thing to watch.
BARR: On February 3 we're going to see.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Oh, who knows? Matter for them.
BARR: Okay, thank you very much. We'll see you next week. Here's Shirvo.
ENDS
