Senate debates

Thursday, 16 August 2018

Adjournment

Energy

7:42 pm

Photo of Pauline HansonPauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | | Hansard source

The legislation to introduce the National Energy Guarantee, the NEG, will be introduced next week but it will not have the support of One Nation. The NEG is a political agreement which integrates energy and climate policy, and the result will be increased prices for consumers. The proposed NEG places an obligation on energy retailers to contract with electricity generators who own wind farms and solar projects, because these sources of energy do not emit greenhouse gases. The NEG gives certainty to the producers of unreliable sources of energy and creates uncertainty for the producers of base-load electricity from coal and gas.

The NEG is the government's response to the 2015 Paris agreement, which seeks to stop the earth's temperature from increasing more than two degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial levels. The NEG will provide investment certainty for wind farm and solar energy companies but it will end investment in cheap, clean, coal-fired power energy and gas-fired energy. Households, farming communities and businesses will suffer with high prices if the NEG becomes law.

Voters at the next election have been given little choice, because the coalition has a target of 26 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and Labor's is nearly double that amount. If these political parties believe man is the cause of climate change, then why do they have policies which see 60 per cent of our population growth each year come from immigration? These greenhouse emission targets apply not only to electricity generation but also to the farming and transport sectors. How are Australian farmers going to meet their United Nations emissions targets when two-thirds of the emissions come from the flatulence of their livestock and the other major contributors are agricultural soils, manure management and fertiliser application? Labor has not ruled out culling livestock to meet emissions targets.

If the government and the Labor Party were serious about making Australia a more attractive place to invest then they would support One Nation's policy to build new coal-fired power stations which are owned by government. Australia cannot compete in the global marketplace when our electricity prices are double those of our competitors. Giving tax cuts to big business without globally competitive electricity prices is just a waste of taxpayer money.

The reason our electricity prices are too high is that both the coalition and Labor have interfered in the electricity marketplace in the mistaken belief that they can control the natural variability in our climate. The geological record shows that prior to burning coal to create electricity in Australia, we had worse droughts and higher and lower sea levels and temperatures. Climate variability has been with us for a long time and it has shaped our unique landscape. We see that clearly in our largest river system, the Murray-Darling. This inland river system has been the subject of much research, where arguments started before Federation because of extreme changes in the rainfall over the catchment.

Australia is the largest exporter of thermal coal in the world, and this coal is burned by our competitors in Asia to create electricity. If the major parties genuinely believed that burning coal causes climate change then why are they not banning the export of thermal coal? Japan buys about 40 per cent of our thermal coal and in the past two years has built eight new coal power plants, with plans to add an additional 36 in the next decade. Japan supports the Paris agreement but at the same time is using coal to create electricity, so why are we not doing the same?

I see no reason to destroy our economy any further when the reasons for climate variability are unclear or trumped up to make some people very wealthy and give others jobs. On the basis that government policy has scared off private investment, it is sensible that the government must fund and own new coal-fired power stations in Australia. It is a tragedy that the state of Victoria can no longer generate enough electricity at peak times because it has closed its coal-fired power stations and refuses to build any more. What will happen when their lights go out just like South Australia's did?

The mismanagement of the electricity market by inexperienced politicians is a sad moment in Australia's history because we have seen a huge transfer of taxpayer money to energy companies. Integrated energy companies have sought to profit from gaps in the electricity market legislation and rules and from government subsidies. AGL Energy has just posted profit for 2017-18 of over $1 billion. Do we need to provide this company with taxpayer subsidies? The government has wasted $10 billion on subsidies for renewable energy projects like wind farms. Currently companies are rushing to meet the 2020 deadline for these subsidies, which continue on to 2030. These massive subsidies have increased electricity prices and distorted the electricity marketplace. The government cannot guarantee prices will go down under their NEG agreement. What have they got to lose if they don't? Who do you complain to?

Electricity is a major cost in agriculture. The high cost of electricity together with drought conditions in eastern Australia threatens the lives of Australians on whom we depend to provide food on our tables. The major parties want high levels of immigration, but they have forgotten to provide new water supply and cheap electricity. The failure to build new dams and new coal-fired power stations in the face of high levels of immigration can only end in tears because costs for essential services must go up and take an increasing share of our income. It is a scandal that hundreds of households a week are being disconnected because they cannot pay their electricity bill. It is very telling when a radio station in Adelaide has a competition in which you can win money equal to your electricity bill.

Australians would be shocked to know of the huge bureaucracy they now fund in the name of the National Electricity Market, which interconnects Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. Further, they would be shocked to know about the level of profiteering by electricity generators, retailers and transmission line owners who have feathered their nests using the National Electricity Law and the National Electricity Rules. The national energy market, which is a partnership between government and business, is a monumental failure, and, to make things worse, the companies receiving some of the biggest subsidies are foreign-owned multinationals who pay no tax in Australia. For example, Energy Australia, a foreign-owned multinational resident in Hong Kong, has 2.6 million household and residential customers but pays no tax in Australia. Windfarms owned by non-resident companies have received large government subsidies. Some of these companies have also donated generously to platforms like GetUp! which lobby for more renewable energy.

State governments have also been quick to profit from the formation of the national energy market. The Queensland state government's owns the transmission lines and much of the generation capacity and uses its monopoly to gouge Queenslanders so it can make ends meet. It is a form of hidden taxation when approximately 50 per cent of your electricity bill goes to the transmission line provider which is a state government. Prior to the formation of the National Electricity Market in December 1998, each state managed its own electricity generation. Electricity prices were low and globally competitive.

A country which owns so much coal and natural gas should have globally competitive electricity prices, and the only reason we do not is that consecutive governments have mismanaged those resources. It is difficult for ordinary Australians to be informed about the issues concerning electricity supply and price. Quite reasonably, they think they can trust their elected representatives to sort through the detail. But I am here to tell you the public-private partnership that is our National Electricity Market is a swamp. The swamp is filled with crocodiles and the swamp needs to be drained.

It is not too late to undo the harm of chasing useless emission targets, because we can build new coal-fired power stations and open the debate on nuclear energy. But voters are going to need to vote for minor parties because the major parties have the same electricity policy, which is to increasingly rely on unreliable forms of energy while leading us down the path of destroying our standard of living, industries, manufacturing and the farming sector. (Time expired)