Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is a need for the government to take immediate and meaningful steps to reduce electricity prices for all Australians. The so-called national energy market is, in fact, not a market at all because there is limited competition between the companies which control the $11 billion of electricity traded annually. Competition needs to be restored so that an electricity market can be created and coal-fired power stations need to be built.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, ACCC, recommends that market participants be limited to owning or controlling dispatch of no more than 20 per cent of generation capacity because, currently, artificial shortages of electricity are being created to drive up prices. Network costs—by that, I mean the cost of transmission lines—need to be written down in the books of state governments and other entities, because so much of that cost has been wasted on gold plating assets. Let me explain: they are encouraged to build transmission lines, or poles and wires, they don't need and to a much higher standard than needed, because they are then financially rewarded. Consumers should not be asked to continue to pay for services in their quarterly bill that they do not receive. Finally, the government needs to break up the integrated players, who both own electricity generation assets and sell electricity to customers. Too much transfer pricing is taking place, with the result that consumers are being gouged. I would support a royal commission into the conduct of the integrated electricity providers who have gouged customers. It is time the truth came out.

The ACCC report Restoring electricity affordability and Australia's competitive advantage is full of sensible recommendations. I challenge the government to implement them rather than doing nothing, as they have with the Callaghan report into the petroleum resource rent tax. Delay in implementing just one of those recommendations concerning the netback price of gas is costing Australians $1 million a year.

The government needs to stop subsidising intermittent and unreliable energy sources, to the tune of around about $10 billion by 2020. If it wants to keep doing that, then it should be subsidising new coal-fired power stations, because its policies have seen us retire old coal power stations, which are the backbone of the network, and made replacements impossible to finance. If we let Labor into government here, they will put us on a 45 per cent emissions trading scheme. What's been found is that at 55 per cent we're going to be seeing an increase of 84 per cent in our power bills. (Time expired)