Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Petroleum and Other Fuels Reporting Bill 2017 and also the Petroleum and Other Fuels Reporting (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2017 that have been joined in cognate debate. Energy is the lifeblood of modern economies, and, if anything, is likely to continue to be the lifeblood in an accentuated form in the 21st century as we move from an industrial society to an industrial and information based society, as we see the electrification of transport and a range of other very exciting technological transformations sweep across the globe and sweep across Australia. It is critically important that the parliament, business, non-government organisations and the community more broadly have a very clear understanding of how those raw materials that go to drive our energy system are operating in the Australian economy.

It is, most obviously, critically important that everyone have a clear line of sight of our energy materials to ensure that we have energy security. Particularly in an island continent, removed from significant parts of the globe, it is critically important that at any point in time the Australian parliament and other players in the Australian economy have a clear line of sight of Australia's energy security. Connected to that, it is also important that we have an understanding about energy supply to ensure our compliance with international energy reporting, particularly under the auspices of the International Energy Agency—and I'll have a few more words to say about that because there are clear reporting and stockholding obligations to which Australia is a signatory under the auspices of the IEA and also matters that are of clear interest to our allies and partners across the world.

It is also important that the Australian government, the Australian parliament, be able to publish detailed statistics and data about our energy supply to ensure that business and investors, most importantly, are able to make wise investment decisions, with the fullest information available to them that is possible, but also that academics and other levels of government be able to make considered decisions about communications to their constituencies about the state of the energy market in Australia. I think it is fair to say that the transparency of some of Australia's energy resource markets does significantly lag behind comparator nations, and that has become most obvious in the gas market, as we've had a furious debate around the gas market in the eastern part of Australia—all of those parts other than the Northern Territory and Western Australia. It has been made clear by a number of expert independent commentators that the transparency of the eastern Australian gas market, frankly, leaves a lot to be desired, and it does lag behind a number of our competitor and comparator nations very significantly. That is causing a great deal of unease in the investment market, both in the market investing in gas per se and downstream in hampering investment decisions for those that are big gas users. Frankly, we need to do better than that.

For some decades, 40 years, the Australian government on both sides of the political divide has produced statistics on fuel through a voluntary survey of business, and for a good part of our history that has served the country and served the economy very well. The statistics derived from the information that was reported by businesses have been released in a range of longstanding government publications, the most notable of which probably is the Australian Petroleum Statistics, or the APS. But this bill really flows from the clear fact that in recent years the proportion of the fuels market that has been participating in that voluntary survey unfortunately has declined, reducing the reliability of the statistics that the Australian government is able to publish, particularly through the APS but otherwise as well. So the Turnbull government has taken the decision to introduce a system of mandatory reporting which will enable the development of more accurate, reliable and informative statistics on petroleum, other fuels and fuel related products. The Shorten opposition supports the government's decision in that respect, for the important reasons that I outlined earlier. Having good information is critical to the Australian economy by enabling us to ensure we have energy security but make the right investment decisions.

Importantly, mandatory reporting of petroleum and other fuels will also facilitate a return to compliance with the International Energy Agency, or the obligation of IEA signatories to hold oil stocks that are equivalent to 90 days of the previous year's average daily net oil imports. The capturing of all IEA-relevant stock under mandatory reporting will ensure that a much more accurate picture of Australia's stockholdings can be determined and can be published. The introduction of mandatory reporting also implements a major recommendation of the Senate References Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport inquiry that dealt with this matter in a report published in 2015. That is an important development—to implement the recommendations that were made two years ago by that Senate committee, which explored a whole range of the matters that I and the minister, when he introduced the bill, have dealt with.

The bill empowers the Minister for the Environment and Energy to require persons who are specified in the rules to report prescribed information to the secretary of the department, which incorporates the mandatory element of this bill. The bill then empowers the secretary to collect, record, use and disclose this information, or statistics that are developed from the information, in certain circumstances. Importantly, the bill provides a range of safeguards to ensure that personal and commercial in-confidence information, obviously, is able to be protected in that collection and publication process. The bill also provides the minister with wide-ranging powers to designate certain activities, fuels and fuel related products as reportable. It is important, in a fast-moving and fast-developing sector such as energy, that there is the scope to add additional activities and products to ensure that the statistics that are published by the Australian government remain relevant and remain critical to those investment decisions as consumer preferences change and as technology continues to advance, as it is doing so quickly in so many different sectors of our economy, whether that's the development of hydrogen fuelled cars, electric battery-powered cars or the like.

The minister also has the power to relax the reporting requirements—for example, where data-sharing between different government agencies removes the need to collect information directly. That is an important efficiency measure that the Shorten opposition supports as well. The Petroleum and Other Fuels Reporting (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill that we're debating cognately also enables the ACCC and the Australian Taxation Office to share information with the department, which might obviate the need for separate reporting and is, as I said, an important efficiency measure.

I can indicate that the opposition does support this bill, but can I also foreshadow that I will be moving, at the end of my remarks, a second reading amendment to this bill to highlight the fact that, although we think this is a laudable and important contribution to sensible energy policy in this country, every debate in this chamber on energy policy just serves to highlight the gaping vacuum in serious energy policy—investment policy—that has endured under this government for the past four years, frankly, whether it was under Prime Minister Abbott or now under Prime Minister Turnbull. The opposition is deeply concerned, as are most players in the Australian economy and Australian society, about the ongoing paralysis in energy policy more broadly that continues under this government. Australia, undeniably, is in the throes of a very deep energy crisis, and, unlike so many energy crises that we've experienced over the decades previously, since World War II, this is not a crisis that has been engendered by an external shock. This is largely self-inflicted because of a range of factors—most importantly, the absence of a clear, stable and enduring national energy policy with investments, to be frank, that can be taken to the bank.

This energy crisis is manifesting in so many different ways, but, perhaps most importantly and most obviously, it has manifested in the doubling of wholesale power prices. Wholesale prices in the electricity market, in the four years that this government has been in power, are feeding through to power bills for households and for businesses that are just going up and up and up. We know the reason for that. We know the principal reason for that because, alongside all of those business groups that have called upon this government to finally put in place an enduring energy policy—the Business Council; the electricity industry; the National Farmers' Federation; and the Finkel panel, most recently, chaired by the Chief Scientist, Alan Finkel—the Reserve Bank Governor added his voice only last Friday to the cacophony of voices calling for this parliament, this government, to finally adopt a national energy policy. The Reserve Bank Governor was giving evidence on Friday to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, I think it was.

Mr Keogh interjecting—

Yes, it was the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, as the member for Burt reminds me. He is a hardworking member of that committee, among many others of my colleagues. The Reserve Bank Governor echoed the plaintive calls from so many business organisations for this parliament to get its act together under the leadership, obviously, of the Australian government and put in place an energy policy.

It is worth quoting from a couple of the Reserve Bank Governor's remarks. The Reserve Bank Governor was asked about the energy crisis, and he particularly said, first of all, that the most important factor driving that crisis was 'uncertainty in the policy environment'. He said that this is delaying investment not just in the electricity sector—which is leading to supply starting to get to a position where it falls short of demand because of investment paralysis. That is very different from the position that we had for most of the last decade, where we had a surplus of wholesale power supply. He didn't just point to that, which many other organisations have pointed to; he also said that, because of the skyrocketing power prices that households and businesses are experiencing under this government, investment decisions more downstream in the economy are starting to be delayed as well, because businesses don't know when they are going to get price relief. They don't know when they're going to get price relief in their power bills and their gas bills, because this government just cannot seem to get its act together and respond to the key central recommendations that business groups and, more recently, the Finkel panel, have made.

In relation to households, the Reserve Bank Governor made these remarks—these incredibly important remarks. He said: 'The higher prices of electricity are also affecting household budgets, particularly for lower income households, who spend a disproportionately high share of their income on electricity. It's crippling their budgets and having an effect on consumption.' Although I know that my friend the member for Hughes and I disagree about the causes of this, we agree on the symptoms. We agree that this is crippling, particularly, low-income household budgets. When asked by the deputy chair of that committee, the member for Kingsford Smith, 'So it would help if the Australian parliament sorted out this issue on a clean energy target and provided some policy certainty?', the Governor said, 'I couldn't disagree with the proposition that providing some certainty about the future structure of the electricity generation industry would be useful for the country, for investment, on prices and on household budgets. Yes.' That is a critical contribution to economic policy by the Reserve Bank Governor.

While the Prime Minister professes to cry crocodile tears and have concern for the position, particularly, of low-income households, we also learnt some very precise data about something that we've been seeking to draw the parliament's attention to for some time. We learnt precise data on Sunday, when the Sydney newspaper the Sunday Telegraph published clear data on the impact of the Prime Minister's insistence on stripping the energy supplement from hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pensioners, carers and other benefit recipients in the Australian economy. Just to remind the House, at a time of spiralling power prices, this Prime Minister intends to rip from the hands of hundreds of thousands of low-income households the energy supplement that provides them, if they are single, with $365 per year, and, if they're a couple, with $550 a year, to help with the cost of power—to help with the cost of energy. That is why it's called an energy supplement. Why you would do that at a time when power bills are out of control and wholesale prices have doubled under this government beggars belief, particularly when the Prime Minister tries to profess his deep concern for the predicament of low-income households with their power bills. The Sunday Telegraph pointed out on the weekend that more than 400,000 age pensioners will lose the energy supplement. More than 109,000 Australians on the disability support pension will lose the energy supplement; 105,000 informal carers, caring for their loved ones in their home, will lose the energy supplement; and many, many other benefit recipients will lose it as well.

The Prime Minister made a lot of the meeting that he had last week with the retailers. As we've said in our discussions since 2015, and expressly in our election policy last year—we have been saying this for months and months—these energy market rules are not working for consumers. Too often they are working in the interests of the big power companies. Many of those big power companies are operating businesses that were privatised over the past two decades by Liberal state governments, making very big profits off the back of Australian consumers, particularly Australian households.

Finally, the Prime Minister woke up to this, as he did with the gas prices. Even though we'd been talking about this for two years, he finally woke up and decided to pull the retailers into a meeting and jawbone them, to give them a stern talking to, wagging his prime ministerial finger. And at the end of that he said: 'Everything's fixed. There aren't going to be any rip-offs anymore; households are going to get the best possible deal.' But then, on Friday, only two days after the meeting with retailers, we read in the Financial Review an interview with Energy Consumers Australia, an organisation set up particularly to represent the interests of consumers, particularly household consumers, in the national electricity market, and an organisation that's doing very important things to improve the lot of consumers, to improve the information that they receive in order to make the best possible choice in the national electricity market. Well, that interview drew attention to the possibility that there were millions of customers whose position would not be improved one jot, one iota, by the meeting and the stern talking to that the energy retail companies received from the Prime Minister last week.

So all of the Prime Minister's attempts to have a meeting here and a press conference there, professing concern for the predicament of households with their power bills, really comes to very little when you look at what he's doing on the other hand: ripping the energy supplement from hundreds of thousands of low-income households and trying to come up with a solution with the retailers that leaves literally millions of households probably no better off than they were before the retailers got the stern talking to from him.

But at the end of the day we come back to the key problem, and that is that there is no central, stable, enduring energy policy in this country. As with so many things with this government, when they were in opposition, under the member for Warringah, they had a very clear plan to get into government. They had a very clear plan about what they were going to rip up, destroy and dismantle. The problem was that in so many policy areas they had no plan about what they were going to put in their place, and none more so than the area of energy policy. They dismantled all of Labor's climate and energy policies. They tried to dismantle the renewable energy target in its entirety. They weren't able to do that; they just gave it a very significant shave. They tried to dismantle every single element of our climate and energy policy without putting anything in its place.

I gave credit to the minister for cooperating with the state energy ministers and the COAG Energy Council and commissioning the Chief Scientist, a very clever, insightful man, to head a wise panel to look at these issues and start to bring together a range of different strands that had started to develop at the state and federal level around energy policy into a single report to give the country a blueprint about a way forward that would allow us to get back to our legacy, our tradition, of having good, reliable energy provided at an affordable price for households and business but also deal with the challenge of getting our carbon pollution down, dealing with the fact that we have an electricity sector in this country that is twice as polluting, on average, as the American electricity sector and the OECD average and reconciling those challenges that are, as the Chief Scientist calls them, the 'trilemma' of reliability, affordability and sustainability. And while I've publicly disagreed with a whole range of the underlying assumptions of the Finkel panel, it did a great job, pulling together a range of 50 very important recommendations. The critical recommendation, though, is to have a clear energy policy.

On the weekend the minister did an interview with Sky's Agenda, I think it was, on Sunday morning, where he repeated a remark that he's made a couple of times.

Opposition members interjecting—

Yes. A few people were watching it. He repeated a remark he's made before, which is: 'Well, the clean energy target's only going to start in 2020, so there's no rush. We'll get back to you in, I don't know, 2018 or maybe 2019. As long as it's all in place by 2020, it'll be fine.' He didn't quite say that, but that was the underlying implication. He said there's no rush. He said before that there's no rush to deal with this. Well, that's not the view of the business sector, I can tell you, because there is an investment freeze. Other than the renewable energy target, which is doing well at the moment, it will start to roll off in terms of investment decisions in the course of the next year. In broad terms, there is an investment freeze. The Reserve Bank governor described this only on Friday. Until the investment community—banks, equity lenders, the electricity industry and downstream investors that are seeking to make decisions about their factories and suchlike—gets a clear signal from this building about what energy policy is going to be in the medium to long term, that investment strike will continue.

I just want to contrast the words of the minister describing this as a no-rush situation with the clear words of the Finkel panel, because in recommendation 3.2 of their report, where the panel dealt with this question of a clean energy target, the words could not be clearer from the Chief Scientist and his panel:

There is an urgent need for a clear and early decision …

There is an urgent need for a clear and early decision on the clean energy target. I urge the government not to think that this is some position they can revisit over the next 12 or 18 months; it needs a clear resolution this year. We need to get to this.

It's all well and good to have this bill and some of the other bills that are being dealt with today and in coming weeks where there are some good decisions being taken by this government, but they will not amount to much if we do not deal with the central recommendation of the Finkel report. The minister knows what needs to be done. I'm pretty sure the Prime Minister knows what needs to be done. He just needs to summon the courage to take it through the coalition party room. With those remarks, I move a second reading amendment:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

“whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading the House notes the Government’s:

(1) lack of national energy policy, which is causing an investment strike in new electricity generation; and

(2) failure to ensure an adequate and affordable gas supply for Australian industry while Australia becomes the world’s largest LNG exporter”.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this, the honourable member for Port Adelaide has moved an amendment that all words after 'that' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I will state the question in the form that the amendment be agreed to. The question now is that the amendment be agreed to.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Petroleum and Other Fuels Reporting Bill 2017 and related bill. It is always interesting to follow a member of the Labor Party from South Australia after he gives us a lecture on energy prices. We all know that the policies that South Australia followed to give certainty to the South Australian industry have delivered the highest electricity prices in the entire world. That would take some special achievement, a special set of skills, a special set of policies, to have the highest electricity prices in the world, but that is exactly what the Labor Party have done in South Australia.

We have members of the Labor Party from South Australia coming in here and lecturing us on energy policy. Recently, we saw the disaster in South Australia with their beautiful, wonderful renewable energy target for the clean, green state of South Australia in order to keep the lights on over this coming summer: they're bringing in banks of diesel generators that will chew through 80,000 litres of diesel fuel an hour. Just think about that: 80,000 litres an hour. That's the equivalent of four large petrol tankers every single hour to keep the lights on.

Yesterday, we had the announcement of a solar thermal electricity plant. No-one in their right mind or no-one who cared about the cost of energy generation or about making sure that the investments are what is needed in this country would invest in a thermal plant. Just look at some of the recent costings, Mr Deputy Speaker, to see how completely and hopelessly uncompetitive a solar thermal plant is. These are from America's US Energy Information Administration. These are the latest numbers for the levelised cost of electricity generation for new plants entering service in 2019: advanced-cycle gas, $48.80 a megawatt hour; wind, $57 a megawatt hour; solar PV, $77 a megawatt hour. So we have $48 for gas, $57 for wind and $77 for solar PV, but for solar thermal it is $217. It is three to four times the cost of wind and five times the cost of gas. It is completely and utterly insane, if you have any concern about the cost of energy in this nation, to invest in a solar thermal plant, but this is exactly what we're seeing in SA—and we wonder why the cost of electricity in this nation is so high.

If the member for Port Adelaide is so concerned about the cost of electricity, I say: join with us, join with me, and let's freeze the subsidies. There is already $3 billion—that is, three thousand million dollars—that is going to be added to consumer bills this year, and there will be more next year and more the year after, to subsidise the renewable energy target. If the member for Port Adelaide is really concerned, let's freeze that target. If we want policy certainty, let's give some policy certainty to industry and freeze that target, because it is adding an incredible $3 billion annually. And they are only the direct subsidies. Of course, there are all the hidden, indirect subsidies. There's the additional cost of distortion in the market. If we want certainty, we know the way forward.

But the market can't have certainty. The paralysis is because anyone that invests, whether it be in coal-fired generation or gas-fired generation, needs to get a return for at least 20 to 30 years and they are terrified that in those next 20 to 30 years a mad, crazy, green, Left Labor government will come in and pull the rug from underneath them. That is why the investment is not occurring in this country. That is why we are punishing consumers with such high electricity prices.

The member for Port Adelaide complained in his speech about Australia's emissions from electricity being much higher than America's. There's a simple reason for that. The Americans have a thing called nuclear power. If we want to match America's emissions in our electricity sector, maybe we should copy them in having the same percentage of nuclear power plants. Maybe we should encourage more drilling for gas, like the Americans have done, because the other reason they have lower CO2 emissions per unit of electricity generated is their gas. Yet we see Labor governments—state Labor government after state Labor government—wanting to ban any further exploration and drilling for gas.

These bills establish the compulsory collection of data on the production, refining, trade and stockholding of certain petroleum products, something that we need to make sure we are closer to our obligations under the International Energy Agency's commitments on energy fuel.

I understand there is some urgency in getting these bills to the Senate. There's one point I would like to leave on in my comments. The Labor Party want to have a Paris Agreement target of 40 per cent. That accounts for all sections across the economy. Fifteen per cent of our nation's CO2 emissions come from liquid fuels for transport and aviation. I would like any member of the Labor Party to explain to the Australian public how they will get a 40 per cent reduction in the use of our nation's liquid fuels by 2040. How are you going to get that? How will you get that in the aviation sector? How will you get that in transport? How will you get it in cars? What will you do with the price of petrol? Come and explain it to us. Put your cards on the table and explain to the Australian people how you will get a 40 per cent reduction in liquid fuel usage by 2030. They won't, because they know the havoc, the chaos and the disruption that that would cause to Australian families, industries and businesses. Instead, they'll go down the track that has caused the disaster in our electricity sector and they'll cause it in our transport sector.

I will leave my comments there. I commend these bills to the House. I call on Labor members: if you are really concerned, in your hearts, about Australian families having difficulty paying electricity bills, put aside that renewable energy target. Put aside those subsidies. Let's join as one and say that we actually care about Australian consumers' electricity bills—not some Green-left frolic of ideology and idiocy.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's always interesting to follow the member for Hughes. Really, a Green-left frolic? You've got the entire world's climate scientists saying action is needed on climate change and energy policy. But, no, we should listen to the member for Hughes—he's the expert on everything! Who would believe that Australia could become the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas yet, at the same time, be facing a domestic gas shortage? That is what is occurring under this government, that the member for Hughes is a member of, which, for four years, has sat on its hands instead of adapting to the change in circumstances. In recent months those on the other side have stirred from their slumber and have realised that there is an energy crisis in Australia. Their answer? It is to blame Labor and continue childish attacks upon the renewable energy sector.

As investment in renewable power exceeds $260 billion—more than double what was invested in coal and gas—we have members opposite all but declaring war on renewable energy. We have the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, and his sidekick the member for Hughes calling on their own government to scrap the renewable energy target. The climate change wars continue on that side. What could they have done in four years if the flat-earthers over there had not been waging a climate change war within their party room, a war that shows no sign of abating? They could have used the past four years to develop a national energy policy, for a start. Instead, here we are, nearly half a decade into the coalition's term of government, with Australia the largest LNG exporter in the world, with the future of coal-fired power in the balance and a $3 billion renewable energy sector swinging in the wind. And those opposite only now realise that energy is, perhaps, something they should be paying more attention to.

Anyone who has dealt with the Australian gas market knows it is one of the least transparent industry sectors in the country. No-one knows how much gas is produced, who holds it, how much is sold, how much it is sold for or where it goes. So Labor are supporting this bill before the House because we believe Australians deserve to know more about the state of this country's fuel reserves, including gas. Under international agreements, Australia is obligated to hold enough fuel to keep the place running for 90 days, but we have not been keeping those commitments. We have been down to 48 days of fuel in this country—an unnerving prospect in uncertain times. Under this government Australia's maritime fleet and heavy-machine manufacturing capabilities have been gutted, impacting on our national security. But that's an argument for another time.

It is clear that voluntary arrangements with the energy industry to keep the government informed about fuel movements are not working. So this bill establishes a mandatory reporting regime and empowers the minister and department employees to distribute collected information while protecting that which is commercially sensitive. These are sensible measures. But no-one should think that this is in any way a solution to the energy crisis that is unfolding right now under this government. This is an energy crisis that has seen wholesale gas prices for Australian industry skyrocket from $4 a gigajoule a few years ago to $20 a gigajoule today. The international average is around $8.

To give some context to what we're talking about, Australia produces about 2,607 petajoules and consumes 1,500 each year. One petajoule is equal to one million gigajoules, meaning we produce in Australia 2.6 billion gigajoules a year and consume about 1.5 billion. That means wholesale consumption costs have quadrupled from $6 billion a year to $30 billion a year. To give you an idea of what a gigajoule is, the average Tasmanian consumes 207 gigajoules every year for lighting, heating and other uses. That's an increase from $828 to $4,140 per Tasmanian every year. I know these are wholesale industry prices and not retail household prices, which are much higher still, but they give some idea of how these price rises may be impacting Australians at the household budget level, let alone the cost burden that they place on industry and its international competitiveness.

Labor have been warning the government for years about the need for a national policy and, unlike the government, we have been developing a coherent plan. In 2015 we adopted a national interest test for gas at our national conference. At last year's election we announced how that test, applied under a Labor government, will ensure exports won't come at the expense of domestic users. What was the government's response to Labor's national interest test? There were shrill cries of 'red tape' and unfounded claims that it would hamper investment. Under those opposite, gas prices for Australian industry have quadrupled and they have no plan to address it. What a hopeless, hapless performance from a government that is unfit to run a lemonade stall, let alone a nation.

The International Energy Agency has slammed the administration of Australia's gas network, saying it is a market failure for domestic prices to have risen above those that are charged to export customers. It is up to government to intervene where markets fail and to guide markets so their outcomes have a community benefit, not just a private benefit. Grattan Institute Energy Program director Tony Wood says the government needs to act swiftly and release decisive targets or risk watching state governments embark on their own renewable energy plans that operate in a piecemeal fashion. But, instead of working cooperatively with the states, this government throws rocks at them, mocking them for taking action and blaming them for its failure of leadership. This government is so chaotic when it comes to energy policy that yesterday we heard that the Treasurer told a forum over the weekend that the era of cheap coal-fired power is coming to an end—just months after he brought a rock of coal into the parliament to extol coal's virtues as a source of abundant cheap power.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today he's bringing a kiwi fruit.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today he's bringing a kiwi fruit—thank you, member for Lalor! According to the AFR the Treasurer is now saying, 'Cheap new coal is a bit of a myth. Let's not think that there's cheap new coal; there's not,' he told a gathering of the Wombat Hollow Forum. This government's position on coal has been confusing, to say the least. Does anyone really know where the government stands, let alone the government? The Prime Minister proposed an idea to subsidise new coal, but that's been comprehensively rejected by the Prime Minister's own commissioned review by the Chief Scientist, as it would increase pollution, drive up power prices and leave taxpayers with a massive bill. The cleanest coal plants have emission intensities above 700 kilograms of CO2 per megawatt hour—twice as polluting as a modern gas plant.

I might just insert a plug here for biomass. As a renewable and reliable energy source, biomass can generate baseload energy on demand with virtually no net contributions to global emissions. Burning biomass releases no new carbons but releases what would be released naturally as organic matter decomposes. What's more, well-managed biomass can result in no net loss to plantations or forests, with essentially one or two trees planted for every one that is harvested. Technological advances regarding pelletisation have also resulted in a much more efficient burn rate. I mentioned biomass in my first speech to the parliament last year, and I continue to advocate for it as an underappreciated renewable energy source. It is an accepted baseload energy source across Europe and its potential deserves more scrutiny here, particularly in my home state.

But I come back to the Treasurer losing his love for coal. His cooled ardour will no doubt wound his fossil fuel fellow travellers, like the member for Hughes, whose heads remain stuck in the sand when it comes to the future of energy in Australia. But what the Treasurer's comments really do is underscore the chaos and inconsistency from this government regarding broader energy policy. For the past four years, Australian industry and Australian consumers have been pummelled by a government that simply doesn't know whether it's Arthur or Martha—or perhaps Tony or Malcolm—on energy. The former Treasurer, Mr Hockey, sent wind energy investment into a tailspin when he remarked how ugly he thought the turbines on his drive to Canberra were. The former Prime Minister has extolled the virtues of coal so often that I'm surprised he hasn't bitten into a piece to display his affection. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation was to be abolished, but then it wasn't. The current Prime Minister used to be a champion of renewable energy, but now that he's actually in a position to do something he's not on the field. He's at the back of the bleachers, hiding from a back catalogue of broken promises and disappointments. Six months ago the current Treasurer brought a rock of coal into the parliament for his colleagues to fondle; yet here he is now, admitting that coal's future in this country is limited.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He lost his lump!

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He's lost his lump! Chaos, contradiction, uncertainty and backflips—what a disaster this government has been for energy policy and energy investment.

I started this speech saying those opposite do not have a national energy policy, but that is not strictly true. In this year's budget, the government did institute a national energy policy, and that policy was to inflict higher power prices on Australia's pensioners. Yes, after four years in government, those opposite believe their best contribution to developing a national energy policy is to make the nation's pensioners pay more for their power. Bravo! Slow clap! I'm referring, of course, to the axing of the national energy supplement for pensioners, which has had the immediate effect of forcing pensioners to find an extra $365 a year to pay their ever-rising power bills. Their power bills continue to rise because this government have failed to implement a coherent energy policy that will contain prices and drive them down.

The head of Australia's peak body for welfare organisations says that the welfare sector is:

… deeply concerned about the impacts of increasingly high prices on people who are disadvantaged and living on low incomes.

The Australian Council of Social Service chief, Cassandra Goldie, says:

The price of electricity has increased by 114 per cent over the past decade, leaving many people having to choose between paying high bills or heating their house and buying enough food to feed their family.

This is the reality that people in my electorate live with every day.

I'm sorry to report that an Australian National University study found that Tasmanian electricity bills are, on average, the second highest in the country, at $2,181 a year. This is especially troubling given that Tasmanian incomes are amongst the lowest in the nation and our rates of socioeconomic disadvantage are higher across the board. Tasmanians are, on average, paying 66 per cent more for power than we did 10 years ago and spending more of our household budget on electricity than anywhere else in the country—and that's despite being home to an abundance of cheap, renewable hydropower. It's fair to say that there's a bit of disquiet in my state about the state of the national electricity grid and whether it's working in the best interests of the people of my state. That's a debate we're having in Tasmania. I was going to talk about fuel prices in Tasmania—perhaps another time. I think one of my constituents paid 109c on the Princes Highway at Noble Park and a day later in Tasmania paid 133.9c. It's a massive difference. For a 60-litre tank, that's a $14 difference. So you can see that the fuel increases in Tasmania are massive.

So, yes, we need medium- and long-term solutions. We also need action that will have an immediate impact when it comes to ensuring domestic supply to contain prices of gas and the other fuels that we have. The difficulty in securing gas supply and prices is impacting not just electricity prices and security today but also the viability of new gas-fired power stations. As the Prime Minister has pointed out, the Commonwealth wields significant powers to ensure domestic energy security, but so far all he has done is ask others to solve his crisis. This isn't good enough, and it's not strong leadership. Labor calls on the Prime Minister to actively deliver domestic gas security, not to continue to grandstand and blame others while he continues to preside over a chronic domestic shortage. Labor back this bill, but we certainly do not back this government's failure to enact a national energy policy.

Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor supports the Petroleum and Other Fuels Reporting Bill 2017, as it creates a reporting regime for petroleum and other fuels and fuel related products to improve Australia's fuel statistics. Some people may feel that statistics is a very dry subject, but I think this week and last week, more than ever, we have gained a very keen understanding of just how important statistical collection is to our country, and this bill goes further towards supporting statistical collection in the area of petroleum and other fuels. It will be key to have those statistics to be able to review and identify problems with fuel security levels in Australia.

The information collected under the mandatory reporting will be used to monitor energy security, to facilitate compliance with international reporting and stockholding obligations and to enable the publication of aggregate fuel statistics for use by business, investors, academics and government. The Petroleum and Other Fuels Reporting (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2017 also enables the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the ATO to share information with the department which will assist in reducing the reporting burden associated with the mandatory reporting obligations created under this bill.

The Australian government has produced statistics on the production, refining, import, export, consumption and end-of-month stocks of petroleum and fuels, such as ethanol, for over 40 years. The statistics derived from this information and reported by business are released in a range of government publications. The most notable of those is Australian petroleum statistics. APS contains detailed monthly stats on the production, refining, wholesaling and end-of-month stock levels of—wait for it; it's a very important list—crude oil, condensate, liquefied petroleum gas, natural gas, gasoline, diesel, kerosene, fuel oil, heating oil, naphtha, compressed natural gas, liquefied natural gas, oil lubricants and grease, paraffin wax, petroleum based solvents, petroleum coke, bitumen, biofuel, hydrogen, and other fuel related projects that may be prescribed under the rules. That point is quite important, and I will come back to it at the end of my remarks.

In recent years the proportion of the fuel market that participated in the voluntary survey that existed has been declining. That has reduced the reliability of the statistics that have been collated. Mandatory reporting will enable the development of more accurate, reliable and informative statistics on petroleum and other fuel products. These stats are vital to the government in the monitoring of our markets and energy security for our nation. Also, it's very useful for business to be able to monitor supply-and-demand trends and priorities for future investment; and for international organisations, to help compile global statistics that not only increase market transparency but also help us understand energy consumption at a global level. Mandatory reporting also forms part of the government's plan to return to compliance with their obligation to the International Energy Agency to hold oil stocks equivalent to 90 days of the previous year's average daily net oil imports. The capturing of all IEA-relevant stock under mandatory reporting will ensure an accurate picture of Australia's stockholding position, which is very important. The introduction of this reporting also implements a major recommendation of the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee from 2015. It's good when the government gets around to doing things so quickly. But what these statistics will show is that Australia now imports some 91 per cent—

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the member for Burt will be given an opportunity to conclude his speech at that time.