Anthony Albanese ends press conference after comment from WA Premier Mark McGowan

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called an abrupt end to Friday’s press conference following his first National Cabinet as the country’s leader.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese abruptly ended Friday’s press conference following a series of cheeky remarks from Western Australia’s premier.

While addressing a question concerning major skill shortages in WA, Mark McGowan took the opportunity to boast about the “appeal” his state offered to prospective eastern state migrants.

Mr McGowan said while the state’s economy was “very high and strong” and WA had “very low rates of unemployment and very high participation rates”, a growth in population was imperative to sustain its momentum.

Premier Mark McGowan had the final say at Friday’s press conference. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

“Attracting more people into the state is very important for the economy, not just of the state, but also of the nation,” he told reporters.

Mr McGowan was not shy about highlighting his desire for eastern state residents to move west.

“We run campaigns in our state and in the east to attract people,” he said.

“You get a very high-paying job and a house which is half the price of Sydney and Melbourne so there’s a lot of appeal coming in and living in Western Australia.”

He then joked, “I think I’ve just wrecked the bipartisanship” before Mr Albanese swiftly closed the conference.

“With the ad for the great state of Western Australia … I think we will leave it there,” he said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese closed the presser after Mr McGowan’s comments. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Mr McGowan earlier argued a domestic natural gas reserve for eastern states, like the one in place in WA, would help save Aussies from power supply issues, saying it is “very strange” there wasn’t already one in place.

“The gas is actually the property of the people of the state, whichever state that is,” he told ABC RN Breakfast.

“It just seems to me to be very strange that there’s no gas for local people yet. We export boatload after boatload.

“But having enough for domestic consumption seems to me just to be almost something that should be automatic.”

It comes as national leaders met for first time to discuss continuing Covid health funding and the ongoing energy crisis at Mr Albanese’s first National Cabinet meeting.

The leaders affirmed their shared commitment to the Commonwealth’s revised Nationally Determined Contribution to a reduction in Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions of 43 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, which has been submitted to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Mr Albanese earlier lashed out over the current energy crisis plaguing Australia, taking aim at power generators for withdrawing from the market and threatening power supply.

This forced the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) to make the extraordinary move to scrap the market, making it compulsory for generators to feed their supply into the system in a bid to avoid mass blackouts.

It’s the first time the national market – which includes Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, NSW and the ACT – has been suspended since creation in 1998.

Now, Mr Albanese has accused generators of essentially “gaming the system”, telling ABC the way the east coast energy system was designed meant there was “almost a disincentive for it to operate properly”.

“There was a bit of gaming going on of the system, which is why AEMO used its tools at its disposal to intervene, so we do have these short-term issues,” he said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has lashed out at gas generators. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The PM has said his government will seek to change the rules on how the energy market operates so that power generators are unable to hold back supply from Australians.

“The circumstances which were there, because of the way that the price mechanism was working … is why AEMO has intervened. We will look at any policy changes we could apply there as well,” he said.

“The weaknesses in the system there have been known for some time.”

Mr Albanese warned he wouldn’t be able to completely change the system in one day, but this “short term measure” was needed to ensure these same problems don’t occur in the future.

His comments come as NSW Treasurer and Energy Minister Matt Kean was granted emergency powers in a late-night meeting on Thursday in a bid to regain control over the growing energy crisis.

The powers, granted by NSW Governor Margaret Beazley, will allow Mr Kean to direct coal companies to provide fuel for electricity generators.

NSW Treasurer and Energy Minister Matt Kean was given late night emergency powers. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Nikki Short

The move came after the Energy Minister asked Sydney residents this week to reduce their energy usage between 5.30pm and 8.30pm.

Mr Kean said AEMO had informed him that “supply conditions will be tight”.

“A number of the generators that we rely on to produce our electricity haven’t come online in the way we expect them to,” he said.

“We’re not telling people to turn off their heating … we’re just saying maybe if you’re washing the dishwasher at 7.30pm to delay it until 8.30pm.

“What we’re doing is focused on making sure that we get through tonight and the next couple of days.”

WA premier’s gas ‘solution’

Mr McGowan said gas generators need to be doing more to ensure there are sufficient energy supplies for Australia, saying it would be one way of avoiding government intervention like we are seeing now.

Western Australia introduced a gas reservation policy 2006 that saw future gas projects forced to keep at least 15 per cent of production for domestic use.

Mr McGowan said in light of what is happening on the east coast right now, the “best time to put something in place is now when there is a crisis happening as we speak”.

It appears that Mr Anthony Albanese agrees with the premier’s thinking, telling Sky News that Western Australia “got it right all those years ago.

“The decision on the east coast is one that was made by former governments to not go down that track,” he said.

However, he noted that it wasn’t as simple as just introducing a similar mechanism for the east coast now.

“Once you have contracts issued and in place, you have issues of sovereign risk, and it’s not as simple as being able to intervene halfway through all processes,” the PM said.

Originally published as Anthony Albanese ends press conference after comment from WA Premier Mark McGowan