Andrew Charlton (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's true that rising energy prices are affecting families right across Australia, and affecting businesses as well. And Australians know the reasons why energy prices are rising. They know that Russia is the largest energy producer in the world and they know that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has affected energy markets across the globe. They know that OPEC's reluctance to increase oil production has exacerbated this problem. They know that climate change right here in Australia is also affecting domestic electricity supply. Unplanned outages at power stations caused by extreme weather over the last 12 months have meant that less electricity is being produced. And in May 2022, up to 30 per cent of national coal generation capacity was offline at different times.

Australians know that these factors are causing a perfect storm in energy markets, leading to higher prices. But the question is: why are Australians so vulnerable to these shocks? What are the factors that have caused these global shocks to have such a terrible impact on Australia's domestic energy market? Why are Australian families and businesses left so exposed? To answer those questions we need to look back at how Australia has approached its energy market over the last decade. How did we manage not to shield ourselves against global energy markets? How did we manage not to prepare? How did we manage not to make our country more resilient to these shocks? And what should we have been doing over the last 10 years? What are the lessons that we can learn from a decade of inaction, a decade of denial and a decade of delay?

The first thing we could have done would be to go back and put significant investment into new generation—new generation that increases supply and reduces prices. But we didn't do that. In the last 10 years, four gigawatts of energy generation came off and only one gigawatt of energy generation came on. Australia missed the boat on the opportunity to enhance our energy supply and to put us in a stronger position to face the type of global shock that Australian families are suffering from right now.

The second thing we could have done, if we had a time machine and went back in time, would be to lift the share of renewable energy in our energy mix. That would have made Australia more resilient to the current global circumstances. It would have kept prices down, because renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy into the grid. It would have helped make Australia more resilient to global shocks, because renewable energy sources aren't as vulnerable to the vicissitudes of geopolitics.

The third thing we could have been doing, if we went back in time, would have been to modernise our grid, creating new transmission pathways so that we could move energy from where it's generated to where it's consumed—actions like building linkages between the enormous potential of Tassie's hydro and the east coast grid. But, again, we didn't do that.

The fourth thing we could have been doing over the last decade would have been to prepare for a transition away from fossil fuels. That's because fossil fuels are expensive and it's because fossil fuels are vulnerable to the global shocks that we're experiencing right now. But, again, that didn't happen. Instead the previous government doubled down on fossil fuels in our energy mix. They had the bright idea of a gas-led recovery. Well, aren't we all paying the price for that gas-led recovery right now? That gas-led recovery has become a gas cul-de-sac as the cost has increased from $4 to $34 per gigajoule.

This failure to act, this failure to lift supply, this failure to shift the dial towards renewables, this failure to modernise our grid, this failure to move away from fossil fuels—these are the things that have left Australian families vulnerable. These are the things that have put Australia's energy market in this position that is so precarious and so vulnerable to global shocks. When Australian families get their higher energy bills over the next few months, they know exactly who they have to blame for a decade of inaction, a decade of denial, a decade of dithering.

By contrast, this government does have a plan: more renewables into the system; building transmission, including 10,000 kilometres of transmission lines so that we can move renewable energy around Australia's grid; and building the storage to support renewable energy's efficacy in the grid. This is the government's plan, and the government is working with a range of stakeholders on this plan. We're working with the states through the National Energy Transformation Partnership. We're working with businesses. Businesses in many cases have stepped into the leadership position created by the vacuum of the previous government, setting up their own pathways towards net zero. More than 30 of the ASX 200 already have a plan to arrive— (Time expired)

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