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

I rise today to talk about energy prices—something that I know every Australian household is interested in. Yesterday, the Australian Energy Regulator released its draft default market offer determination. At best—and, luckily, this was in my home state of Victoria—there was a seven per cent decrease on that offer. That is the ceiling at which energy retailers can set their highest price. In some states and for some consumers, there were actually price increases. This is on the back of the last two years. Last year there was a 22 per cent increase, I believe, and the year before that there was a 10 per cent increase. The premise for those price increases was that energy prices had gone up because of the war in Ukraine, which we know had some effect. But, since then, we've seen a 70 per cent decrease in wholesale energy prices for coal and a 38 per cent decrease for gas. Yet the AER comes out and says, 'No, at best we're going to give you a seven per cent decrease on your energy prices.' I don't know how they get to this number. This is the Australian energy system being rorted for the benefit of retailers and transmission companies, and it's not in the interests of Australian households.

The AER goes on to say in their draft determination that some of their network costs have gone up due to the poles and wires that deliver the energy from the point of generation to your house. These costs are extraordinary, and they're only going up. AEMO, through its integrated system plan, or ISP, is proposing that Australian consumers pay for another $100 billion worth of poles and wires. The seed funding is being underwritten by $20 billion of taxpayers' money via the Rewiring the Nation plan.

Let's have a quick talk about transmission and the poles and wires that are delivering energy. They were historically needed. When Sir John Monash was asked to start the SEC in Victoria and to electrify Melbourne, he looked for a source of fuel for energy, and he found coal down in the Latrobe Valley. So he built the generation down there and he built transmission to bring it up to Melbourne. That is no longer necessary. With the cleaner energy technology that Australia possesses, we no longer need to transmit energy over long distances. We can put the generation where the load is because the fuel is everywhere. The sun is everywhere, most of the time, and wind is in separate places, but the idea of building generation out in the far reaches of the countryside and transmitting it throughout Australia is century-old thinking. Our clean energy technology has got past that. We no longer need to spend these obscene amounts of money to transmit energy to where the demand is. It's just going to drive up energy bills more and more, and it's not necessary.

In the not-too-distant future, I'm going to call for a Senate inquiry into Australia's energy system so that senators can look at the prices that are being paid and the amount of transmission that is being forced through without the AER enforcing the rules. That will hold the whole energy system to account and finally give Australians some transparency about the energy prices they're being asked to pay.