Opposition leader Peter Dutton has made the extraordinary call for Australians to "put firewood on your Christmas list" after this week's fears over the energy grid.
A multi-day heatwave this week saw warnings of blackouts and brownouts in New South Wales and Queensland, though no major outages were reported.
Some power loss in Sydney was found to not be heat-related.
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The NSW government urged people to conserve power and avoid using the dishwasher.
Outgoing Labor Minister Bill Shorten said the government was focused on renewable energy for Australia's future.
"The problem is that the coal industry, the people who make the money out of coal power stations, aren't interested in running coal power stations," Shorten said.
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"We have to move to renewables. It's not renewables that cause the blackouts.
"What happens is these old coal plants break down the companies who own them won't reinvest in them."
However, opposition leader Peter Dutton said that the reason investment in coal had slowed was because government subsidies were heavily weighted towards renewables.
"We need renewables, but we need 24-seven power, which is what coal and gas provides us," he said.
"The second point, as importantly - put firewood on your Christmas list this year, buy your family or buy your cousins on Christmas day, you know, a bag of firewood at the local servo.
"Because soon we'll be cooking over an open fire and keeping warm next winter with the use of wood and fire."
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