Varun Ghosh (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, I always enjoy listening to you, Senator Smith, so I would have. There was an absence of sustainability in that discussion, and there is an absence of sustainability in the Liberals' energy vision. That was perhaps best illustrated in this chamber but a few days ago, when, voting on a net zero motion, you had two members of the coalition on this side of the chamber, you had two members of the coalition on that side of the chamber, and the rest were missing in action. They wouldn't nail their colours to the mast on one of the most important issues facing Australia.

That takes me to consistency and the importance of consistency, because, when those opposite were last in government, they had more than 20 different policies across a decade. No-one knew the direction, no-one could plan and no-one could invest. And that net zero vote simply shows that those opposite haven't learned or done the work necessary to go in and have the policies to solve this issue.

Senator Smith referred to the CSIRO report, and what that said, just this week, was that renewables remain the cheapest form of energy—not coal, not gas, not nuclear. This government is a government that believes in harnessing renewables as part of Australia's energy future to drive down prices long term. We support that because it's a model that's good for the environment and good for the economy.

A decade of inaction has compromised our energy grid. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis explains:

The existing coal fleet—

in Australia—

… is ageing, and nearing the age when Australian coal power plants have typically retired …

The reliability of coal-fired power stations typically declines as they age, due to the progressive degradation of critical plant components. Age-related wear and tear can increase the frequency of technical issues and outages as the plants need to reduce output or temporarily shut down … to undertake necessary repairs.

That drives up prices and it reduces reliability. The volatility of the power prices we're seeing at the moment is a result of a failure to invest in our system long term.

And there's a study I want to discuss today, which was published just recently, in June this year, from the Griffith University's business school, which examined the counterfactual that is still proposed by senators opposite, and that is: what would happen if we cancelled renewables and reverted to coal and natural gas? What that study found was that the result would be an increase in energy prices of between 30 per cent and 50 per cent—that's looking at it from 2025, if we went with coal and gas rather than renewables and batteries, firmed by gas. On a unit-cost basis, coal- and gas-fired generation were unambiguously the lowest cost technologies in the mid-2000s, setting aside the cost of CO2 emissions. But by 2025 the price of both coal and natural gas had increased at multiples above general rates of inflation. That study found that our 2025 counterfactual scenarios, which deploy new coal-fired and gas-fired generation with no renewables, proved to be surprisingly expensive—more expensive than the model that's been proposed by the government.

The driver of higher prices in energy in Australia is not renewable energy; it's the failure to invest long term, the failure to plan properly. And that's one of the problems when you don't have consistency and vision in energy policy, because the consequences are felt much later. We're facing the consequences now of 10 years of poor energy policy and energy indecision. What Australia needs is a government that will back in successful strategies to fix and modernise our energy market, provide security to operators and encourage investment, and help the country move on from a decade of policy failure in this area. And, luckily for our country, that's exactly what they've got in the Albanese Labor government.