Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Absolutely; in the national interest—to provide a more consistent, better governance model for energy markets across the country. That truly is good news.

This bill is here for two basic reasons. The first is the changes in relation to the Australian Energy Market Operator, scheduled to commence operations in July this year, as I said, and the legislative changes necessary for AEMO’s establishment. They will also need to be in force on that date, so there is an alignment of a number of policies that need to take place and therefore some timing issues for enactment of this bill. As we heard from opposition members, there is no opposition to this bill. It is widely supported, for good reason: it is a good bill that does the right things. The second is that Western Australia also intends to pass legislation by 31 March which will require consequential Commonwealth amendments to be enacted.

So, across the country, from state to state, we are now seeing the right sort of national character of energy market governance, and we have done that through the right process, and that is through the Coalition of Australian Governments with an agreed platform to establish a national market energy operator, the AEMO. Before I turn to other parts of the national gas law and also the national electricity law, I want to take the opportunity to make a number of comments about how important these new directions are because of the great changes taking place not just here but across the world, particularly in the area of renewable energy.

While solar PV energy has been around for many decades, it is really only now that we see it coming into force and becoming a significant energy provider across Australia. That is happening at the same time as wind energy comes into play in Australia as well as a range of other energy sources, including wave energy, which is being developed in Western Australia, geothermal, solar thermal and a range of other thermal-type energy generation systems. There are others systems that may not seem at first glance to be able to provide baseload power, but I have heard of some recent fuel cell technologies that can provide baseload power. In fact, in the United States a company has developed some very sophisticated stand-alone fuel cell units that can power complete hospitals, villages or small towns. There are some real opportunities for Australia to look at how these systems work.

Being a Queenslander I will play at being parochial here. As we heard, gas, coal seam energy and, of course, coal still play significant roles. I am keen to see government policies continually looking at ways to improve the way we use energy and the way that we encourage new energies to come on line. The Rudd government has already made a substantial move in the right direction in terms of solar energy with the Solar Schools program and with getting solar PVs on people’s roofs. By 1 July this year we will see some more amendments coming into place that will provide a different mechanism for people to receive a rebate for installing solar PVs in their homes. Gone will be the means tested one kilowatt type mechanism for a rebate—

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