Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I stand today to strongly support the progression of this private senator's bill on electricity reporting. The rationale behind the Productivity Commission Amendment (Electricity Reporting) Bill 2023 is straightforward, as it is aimed purely at creating more accessible, better consolidated public information and reporting on electricity prices and generation in Australia. In short, the core objective underpinning the bill is that its passage would require the Productivity Commission to compile quarterly reports on retail electricity pricing, as well as on resources from which that electricity is being generated and for each state and territory. The relevant minister would then be required to table these reports in parliament. This would fill a glaring void that exists in Australia, given that we don't currently have a central national repository for this kind of data. Australians right across the country deserve to know not just how much they're paying for their electricity and why but also how much these amounts are changing over time and how they compare to what people in other parts of the country are paying. These are important concepts when it comes to improving accountability and transparency in relation to energy policy, and the passage of this bill will ensure these objectives are better realised.

It is true that a substantially broader variety of data about electricity generation, pricing and usage has been made available to Australians over the past decade or so. In particular, there's been an emergence of several new and/or improved reporting mechanisms and tools from agencies like the Australian Energy Market Commission and the Australian Energy Market Operator. Foremost amongst these has been the AEMC's residential electricity price trends document and the AEMO's online dashboard. We have seen a number of companies and publicly funded bodies opening up avenues for Australians to compare the price and deals being offered by retailers and to secure financial savings for themselves in the process. Those have included the Australian Energy Regulator's Energy Made Easy site and the Victorian government's Victorian Energy Compare site, as well as various webpages and products of organisations such as Canstar Blue, iSelect, Finder and Compare the Market. Unfortunately, however, there still isn't a single source or a single report through which Australians can regularly see, at a glance, something as simple as a full national snapshot of current and past retail electricity prices.

The content of this bill is aimed at bridging that divide and, if successful in doing so, would represent a significant advance. It would also ensure that not only the Albanese government but also each future Commonwealth government in Australia would be held to a better standard of accountability in relation to the impacts of their policies on electricity supply and pricing. This would, likewise, sharpen the country's focus on the trajectory of energy prices and, accordingly, exert greater pressure on an incumbent government to arrest ongoing increases in these prices, where that is occurring. This would be an eminently good outcome. It would also mean that a government that is not acting responsibly or achieving good outcomes in the energy portfolio, like the present administration under Mr Albanese, would be better held to account for their broken promises and abandoned commitments. This includes broken promises like the one made 97 times before the 2022 election—but, shamefully, not even mentioned once by the ALP since then—that Australian power bills would be reduced by $275 annually.

Households should brace for bigger bills as the new financial year ushers in higher taxes and increases in electricity prices, courtesy of the Albanese Labor government. From today, Australian households and budgets will be slugged with some of the highest electricity prices in the world as energy bills increase by up to 28.7 per cent across the country. That's an additional $564 a year that families will need to find just to keep the lights on and to keep the house warm in winter and cool in summer amidst Labor's cost-of-living crisis. Small businesses will need to fork out up to $1,738 a year just to keep the doors open. These energy bill increases are a slap in the face to hardworking Australians who were promised 97 times that they would receive a $275 reduction in their energy bills and were guaranteed that nobody would be left behind by an Albanese Labor government. Instead, Albo has delivered the highest energy prices on record.

Labor's electricity increases will force more Australian families onto hardship programs because of this government's failure. More small business, the backbone of our economy, will be forced onto a knife's edge, fighting for survival. Australians keep seeing their power prices going up, not down, and it is only Labor that can be relied upon to pat themselves on the back while Australian families and small businesses struggle to make ends meet. It's little wonder the number of families on electricity hardship programs has reached record highs under Labor. It is this kind of arrogance and prioritisation of politics over people that saw electricity prices double the last time Labor was in government. Australians have been warned by AEMO of energy rationing and blackouts in the coming years. When we left office, there was no reliability gap. Labor has lost control of Australia's energy system. Labor has broken its promise and it has broken its trust with the Australian people.

Regional Queenslanders outside of the South-East Queensland corner are set to cop the highest electricity price hikes in the country—the highest in the country! Families across regional Queensland are already doing it tough, and Labor hasn't a clue what to do. The Queensland Competition Authority confirmed the news with the release of the final determination of regulated electricity prices for regional Queensland. Labor was elected on a platform of transparency, honesty, integrity and not going missing. Well, we know how that is going. But what better way to prove that they are holding to that than to allow regional Australians to see exactly how their power is being generated and how much it costs? Regional people and businesses facing rising power bills don't have the luxury of simply encouraging more customers from a limited population base through the door, and they often don't have a choice of electricity providers. Think of the local butcher, the IGA or any of the businesses that rely on high energy use to service their customers and to ensure cold supply chains are kept intact—for food and nutrition, in particular. As food moves further north and west across the country, we see nutrition values fall in food. In part, it is because of limited cold supply chains. And yet Australians, Queenslanders, are seeing a conga line of Labor ministers continually telling them to ignore their eye-watering power bills and believe that the rush to shut down conventional energy will bring costs down. Every cost increase is like a hammer blow for regions already paying more for insurance, transport, fuel and food.

Failure to vote for this sensible bill can only mean Labor is trying to hide the truth about its energy policies and its claims about energy policies. After not being honest, dozens of times, about bringing power bills down, it's time for the Labor Party to come clean with the Australian people. A government confident of its energy policy should support anything that shows Australians more information about just how these policies are supposedly helping them. This bill is not about playing politics. It is about openness and transparency. Openness and transparency are meant to be Labor's new approach to government. But unfortunately we are yet to see any such openness from those opposite. This bill provides a chance for them to put their money where their mouth is and give Australians clear information on the state of our electricity market. For each of these reasons and many more, it would be a tremendous development if this bill were passed. The coalition looks forward to the support of all senators and members for its translation into law.

Just specifically, proposed increases to regulated offers will ensure that 1.6 million households will be worse off in New South Wales by $564 a year, in South Australia by $485 a year, in Queensland by $432 a year and in Victoria by $426 a year. Labor's rush and lack of a sensible plan mean that Australians are paying more for electricity at a time when they can least afford it, with higher interest rates and higher costs for insurance, food and flights. This is all at a time when Australians are now being expected to miss out on those small luxuries that they had in life, the small things that they might have been able to provide for their kids, like sports gear or activities. Instead, they're spending that money on electricity because this government doesn't have a plan. The government are in a headlong rush to turn off, prematurely, affordable, reliable energy generation and move to renewable energy. They have no plan. As we know, without a plan, you are actually planning to fail. The gas market interventions last year and further into this year mean that we have less gas supply available in this country. Gas will not be available the way it was last year and in previous years when there have been shortages because of maintenance of coal-fired power stations or for other reasons. People are buying generators because they know that the government will fail to be able to provide their electricity needs in the coming months and years.

At the same time, the energy minister is urging manufacturers to be a part of a rebate scheme to use less electricity to allow more manufacturers to access the market. This demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of how business works. When you shut down your production, your manufacturing program, it means that you generate less income. You generate fewer profits. And that never comes back. If you missed those this week or this month, there's not a period when you do doubly well later on. So the government are determining with this failed energy policy that Australian businesses, already with other higher costs of business, are doing it even tougher when they don't supply this core business supply of electricity.

It is shocking for a nation that is so truly blessed with energy sources, ones that we have relied upon for generations and that other parts of the world would give their eyeteeth to have, that Australia is so recklessly turning its back and rushing without a plan to move away from this reliable energy and to move instead to a new source of energy that will only hurt Australia. The latest news reports regarding the need to extend the licence at Eraring to keep the lights on should come as a wake-up call to the Albanese government and its tattered energy plan.

I support this private senator's bill. It's planned to provide more transparency, more data and more information to Australians from a single transparent location. I can only urge those opposite to come to the table, to live true to their stance on transparency and openness for Australians and to pass this bill. It is urgently needed and an excellent proposal.