Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the early 1980s, when New South Wales was afflicted by power outages and blackouts, the Wran government acted decisively and they built two new coal-fired power stations in Bayswater and Liddell and, once they were operational, the blackouts stopped. The east coast of Australia is now facing a similar scenario, with constrained supply of electricity and a warming climate. Many people are now asking, 'Why doesn't the government simply do what the Wran government did and bring on extra capacity and supply?' The reason they cannot do that is that assets in South Australia, in Victoria and in New South Wales have been privatised. Yes, that is right: Liberal governments sold off those power generation assets to the private sector many, many years ago. And we are all now paying the cost for that, because the private sector is not investing in new and additional base load power. That is constraining supply and it is pushing up prices, and we are all paying the cost of that.

I recall 2007 when the Iemma government was proposing to sell the electricity generation assets of New South Wales. I was running the union movement's campaign against that reform, and I recall the proponents of that reform saying at the time, 'Don't worry; if we privatise the generators, the private sector will always invest. They will always invest in new capacity and we'll never have a problem with constrained supply.' Well, guess what? The private sector ain't investing at the moment, because of a lack of policy certainty by this Turnbull government. There is no plan to transition from dirty, polluting coal-fired power to cleaner renewables. In fact, this government has completely wiped out a plan.

And we are all paying the cost of that. In its submission to the Finkel review the Australian Energy Council nailed it when it said:

The lack of national policy certainty is now the single biggest driver of higher electricity prices.

That is the view of the National Australian Energy Council. They know what is going on. Because the Turnbull government does not have a plan for investing in new-generation in renewables, we are all paying the cost. Who is going to invest in a coal-fired power station? You would have to be nuts to invest in new coal-fired power stations at this point in time. It is becoming an outdated technology. The industry is not investing in renewables, unfortunately, because there is no certainty. This is a government that removed the price on carbon and completely destroyed the RET and, as a result, investment in the industry fell. Over recent years we have seen that the government has overseen a dramatic reduction in investment in renewable energy. In 2014 investment in large-scale wind, solar and other clean energy sources fell by an astounding 88 per cent to 240 million—the lowest level since 2002. And we are now behind countries like Panama, Sri Lanka and Myanmar when it comes to certainty of investment in renewable energy.

What is the government's plan with all of this? Well, they have introduced this Snowy 2.0. What a joke that is. It is a feasibility study. That is all it is: a feasibility study into whether they can do pumped hydro at the Snowy. And now they are talking about using the Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility to invest in coal-fired power, to invest in an outdated technology. I ran a petition in my community against this, because the people of Kingsford Smith do not want to see valuable taxpayers' dollars wasted and invested in coal-fired power in an outdated technology, and 275 people signed a petition opposing that. I thank the people of Kingsford Smith for their support for action on climate change and ensuring that we do not leave the responsibility for cleaning up the mess around electricity prices and action on climate change to our kids.

Labor has a plan to deal with this. Labor has a coherent plan to increase and grow investment in renewables. We outlined that plan in the lead-up to the last election. It includes a 50 per cent target of renewables by 2030, and we will achieve that through an emissions trading scheme. We will introduce a price on carbon in our economy, and that will reduce over time, thereby creating the economic incentive for people to reduce their emissions and invest in renewables. We will boost the RET and ensure that there is incentive to invest in renewable energy technology, and we will ensure that the new market rules around how the system operates are fair and reasonable and encourage renewables. Only Labor has a plan to increase investment in renewables and to reduce electricity prices in Australia.