Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I did acknowledge in my remarks that I recognise that not everything can be done with $42 billion but that there are a number of processes. I accept what he is saying about the Infrastructure Australia process, but my concern that I am now articulating about the electricity grid around Australia, which I would like the minister to take on board, is something that I really want to put on the Commonwealth agenda as it considers the national priorities into the future.

The states are recalcitrant and I just had to reinforce to the government that if you are waiting for a state like Tasmania, or any other for that matter, to get its head around the fact that it needs to upgrade its electricity grid and to start thinking about making it an intelligent grid in order to bring on renewables, you will be waiting a long time. My concern is that the Infrastructure Australia process really is one where the states bring forward overwhelmingly the major infrastructure proposals that then get considered by Infrastructure Australia. So what is the nation to do if these states do not start thinking about upgrading their energy grids or, indeed, where there are big gaps—and one state does and other states do not. It is like the railway gauge issue at the beginning of our history, if you like. This is where the Commonwealth needs to take some oversight concerning what the national grid should look like into the future. I want to put on the government’s agenda—and I recognise that it is beyond the scope of this package but it is not to the extent that we are looking at infrastructure—that if the states do not come up with it there has to be some mechanism for the Commonwealth, even if it has to get a consultancy to put something like this to Infrastructure Australia, to consider some national planning about upgrading the national grid to an intelligent grid.