David Van (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In 2022, I stood in this place and said of Labor's 43 per cent Paris target that I didn't think it was ambitious enough and I also couldn't see how they'd get there. One of the key platforms for getting there is building $100 billion worth of poles and wires. That's $100 billion worth of poles and wires that is underpinned or seed funded by $20 billion of taxpayers' money.

The problem with this is that there is no social licence to operate for poles and wires. These projects are being pushed by AEMO, the Australian Energy Market Operator. Despite being owned by the federal government and state governments, AEMO is not accountable to anyone. Next week we have Senate estimates, and I cannot ask AEMO to come. There are so many doubts about their projects—what's actionable and what's not; how they're counting benefits and how they're not—and this is all for $100 billion worth of poles and wires.

We all recognise that we need more renewables, but putting them out in places where there is no transmission and expecting the taxpayer and energy users to fund them is just a farce. We need accountability of AEMO. We need to be able to ask them questions and hold them to account for the actions that they're pushing on behalf of the foreign owned transmission companies. This total lack of accountability should be appalling to everyone in this place, and I will look to the AER next week for more answers.