Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Productivity Commission Amendment (Electricity Reporting) Bill 2023. The Greens won't be supporting this bill. The purported purpose of this bill has merit, and publishing more information on electricity prices and generation on a more regular basis would be a good thing. But in our view the Productivity Commission is simply the wrong agency for this task. As the Productivity Commission states on its website, it is 'an advisory body. It does not administer government programs or exercise executive power.' It contributes by providing quality, independent advice and information to governments, and the communication of ideas and analysis. We could have a long discussion about the quality and even the independence of the Productivity Commission's work. It's questionable, but that is another matter and I'm not going to go into that today. The point is, what the Productivity Commission does is long-form analysis in preparing in-depth reports. What it doesn't do is provide information to consumers. That is not its job.

You would think that the Liberals and Nationals, having been in government for nearly a decade, would have worked out that the Productivity Commission is not the right agency for this task, and if they really cared about transparency around electricity prices they would have made this reform themselves. Of course, instead, they did the exact opposite. They deliberately buried the Australian Energy Regulator's report recommending an increase in power prices before the last election. It is utterly shameless for them to be serving up this bill but, unfortunately, it is what we have come to expect from the climate-denying dinosaurs in the Liberals and Nationals.