Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources) Share this | Hansard source

Third attempt and he gets it right—sounds familiar. To get back to the point, though, it is estimated that an investment in the energy sector of $37 billion needs to be spent on baseload power over the next decade, and that is needed simply to guarantee that the lights stay on. When I first stated that figure, I know there were those who thought I was being quite alarmist. I remember saying that there was a risk that the lights would go out during the Commonwealth Games and, in fact, that risk was almost realised. Of course, since then, we have seen that risk realised on a number of occasions, particularly in heatwave conditions where the electricity generation sector simply cannot keep up. So these reforms are certainly needed, and the investment that will come from the private sector is desperately needed.

The good news, though, is that, through all this toil by state ministers and by the Commonwealth, Australia has been recognised as having the model for other countries in terms of energy market reform. It can be said quite categorically, irrefutably, that Australia leads the world on energy market reform. They are not my words; they are in fact the words of the International Energy Agency, the IEA, who looked at what we had achieved here—I say ‘we’ and I genuinely give credit to my state ministerial colleagues, because it was a team effort. Australia has set a course that has really turned out to be the envy of the world.

In saying that, I should also pay credit to the departments involved. I cannot remember the correct name of the department; its name has been changed so many times. It used to be the Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources, but I think it is now called the department of energy, tourism and resources. That is probably in the wrong order. I know that I wanted to call it DIRT. I thought, ‘What a great name for a department—the department of industry, resources and tourism, DIRT,’ but I could never get that past the bureaucrats. Whatever their name is now, I pay them credit. The people there both now and in the past have done an enormous amount of work on this. They provided guidance and sometimes counselling to their then minister and I am sure they do so now. They certainly provided some guidance and counselling to their state departmental colleagues. I think they have a lot to be proud of.

If we look at the whole area of energy market reform, there are a few final areas that I would like to briefly touch on. The ministerial council has called for a review of energy market frameworks in the light of climate change policy. The purpose of the review is to determine if energy market frameworks should be amended to accommodate the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, or the CPRS as it is known—

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