Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I want to comment on the remarks Senator Colbeck made a little earlier when he said that high energy users are attracted to Australia. They are indeed. It is not just because Australia has not ratified Kyoto. It is not just because we have got cheap power, mostly coal-fired power. It is also because the Australian government has not shown much interest in those big energy users—how they use energy and why they use as much as they do—or put any sort of pressure on them to reduce usage. This bill is another example of that. In fact, we do not have energy and energy efficiency data collected in this country so the parliamentary secretary cannot answer a whole range of questions about those 250 biggest energy users. We do not have minimum key performance indicators of energy intensity. We do not calculate those on an annual basis. Our energy data collection is a disgrace. We just do not know which energy users are using power and how. That is the fact of the matter.

A point about carbon trading needs to be made, and this is something that Senator Evans raised before: it will not necessarily produce energy efficiency. It is likely—we do not know because we have not got it yet; we have got a task force, nothing more—that it is going to be applied at the smokestack as it were, and that is not where energy is used. So you need other mechanisms to mandate energy efficiency.

Also, energy efficiency would make power cheaper. The government does not seem to understand that. As I said in my second reading debate speech, a study has been done—I am not making this up—which shows that a one per cent energy efficiency target would reduce our wholesale electricity price by 19 per cent. You would not only be doing industry a favour by finding savings for them through the audit requirement; you would be advantaging consumers across the board because that wholesale price would go down. I explained why. It is about peak loads; it is about the need to find new energy generation that would be avoided with even a one per cent target, a very tiny per cent. We know that one per cent can be achieved at little or no cost.

There is much the government can do. It does not necessarily take away the cheapness of our energy, although plenty are talking about a price signal. Again, no doubt our high energy users are attracted to Australia because we do not have that price signal and we do not look like having one, frankly, any time soon. The reasons that those energy users are attracted to Australia need to be examined. It is not something to be proud of; it is an indication of the lack of government action and the lack of the right signals to make energy efficiency happen.