Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Coal will play a role in energy generation in Australia. But, if we are going to be honest and admit the facts, in terms of electricity generation, the role of coal will be a diminishing one. The reason for that is that coal-fired power is dirty. It is polluting and it generates carbon emissions, and over time we need to reduce those carbon emissions if we going to do justice to our kids and plan for the onslaught of climate change and for reductions in emissions. The role of government is to plan for that transition—to plan, for 20 to 30 years time, more renewables and less coal-fired power. That transition is government's role, and the plan is to make that transition as smooth as possible, particularly to reduce the adverse impact on jobs, on investment and on communities.

The one thing we can say about the Turnbull government is that they are incompetently hopeless at planning for this transition away from dirty, coal-fired power to renewables in the future. Why? Quite simply, they do not know what they want to do. One minute, the Prime Minister is for renewable energy, but the next minute, Tony Abbott makes a speech and changes his mind, and Australians are paying the price. Australians are paying the price for this government's competence and lack of a plan, through higher electricity prices. The one thing we can say with certainty is that, since the election of the Abbott-Turnbull government, electricity prices for Australian consumers are much higher. They are much higher, because the government do not have a plan for the future.

In the 1980s, when New South Wales faced blackouts, the Wran government acted and commissioned additional coal-fired power stations in Bayswater and Liddell. When they were built, the blackouts stopped. They brought on extra supply and they planned for the future. A lot of people have said: 'Why can't the government do that again? Why can't they stop these blackouts by providing more supply?' There is a reason they cannot, and that is that Liberal governments privatised the systems. They sold all of those public assets off to the private sector. In the three states where they did it, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, guess what? There have been blackouts and there have been higher electricity prices.

The private sector simply is not investing. I can recall, in 2007, when we went through this debate in New South Wales about electricity privatisation, and the advocates at the time saying: 'Don't worry. Don't worry. If we privatise the generators in New South Wales, the private sector will always invest. They will always bring on new capacity.' Well, guess what? We have privatised the system and they are not investing. They are not bringing on new capacity. And why would you? You would have to be nuts to invest in a new coal-fired power station in this day and age, because it is becoming an outdated technology. Where you would be investing is in renewables. If you have got any sense, you will invest in renewables, because that is where the future lies. But they are not doing that in Australia, because this government has no plan for that transition. This government has no plan for that transition, and it is affecting electricity prices. It is perfectly summed up by the Australian Energy Council's submission to the Finkel review, where they said:

… the lack of national policy certainty is now the single biggest driver of higher electricity prices.

That is the view of the people that work in the industry.

By removing a price on carbon, by reducing the RET and by ignoring the advice on the establishment of an emissions intensity scheme, the government has completely destroyed any plan for certainty of investment in renewable energy in Australia. When you get a lack of investment, you get a constraint on supply. With increasing demand, which we have seen in Australia over recent years because of the warming of the climate, you get higher prices. Constraint on supply, increasing demand, higher prices—it is simple economics. That is all because of a lack of investment to bring on that additional supply. That is ensuring that jobs are lost. That is ensuring that emissions are increasing in Australia. In Australia, over the last year or so, emissions have increased by 2.2 per cent, and investment in renewable energy has fallen. In 2014, investment in large-scale wind, solar and other clean energy sources fell, by an astounding 88 per cent, to $240 million—the lowest since 2002. It is because of this government's lack of plan and its lack of commitment to a transition to renewable energy that we are all paying the cost in higher electricity prices.

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