Malcolm Turnbull gets support for National Energy Guarantee in Coalition party room
MALCOLM Turnbull has won Coalition support for his National Energy Guarantee that will offer Australians a $550 power bill saving. But it didn’t stop Tony Abbott from firing back.
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POWER bill relief of up to $550-a-year is one step closer for Australian households after Malcolm Turnbull secured the “overwhelming” support of Coalition MPs for his National Energy Guarantee.
But an angry Tony Abbott has reserved the right to cross the floor to block the policy and lashed out at colleagues “leaking” and briefing journalists during the heated two-and-a-half hour Coalition party room meeting on the NEG at Parliament House today.
Only a handful of rebel MPs spoke out against the NEG during the meeting.
Thirty-four members of the party room spoke during the debate, “overwhelming” in favour of the policy, while four reserved their right to cross the floor.
Mr Abbott noted there were “lots of pleas for unity” and “lots of regard for ‘experts” during the meeting but also said: “I heard at least four lower house MPs formally reserve their position on the legislation and at least a dozen express serious concerns about the NEG or about turning the non-binding Paris targets into law with massive penalties attached.”
He added that most explanations of how the NEG might “theoretically” get power prices down sounded like “merchant bankers’ gobbledigook”.
Speaking after the meeting, Mr Turnbull said Australians were “one step closer to cheaper and more reliable energy” after the NEG gained the “overwhelming” backing of Coalition MPs.
Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg is now seeking to clear the next hurdle - getting the states to back the NEG - before October when Victoria goes into caretaker mode before the state election.
He aims to legislate the policy before the end of the year so a reliability guarantee can come into effect from 2019.
I’m not going to release my own comments to the party room, because they were along the lines of my remarks to media on the way into the parliament, but the rampant hostile briefing of journalists while the meeting was underway does require a response. pic.twitter.com/YOfv9PZVQA
— Tony Abbott (@TonyAbbottMHR) August 14, 2018
Sky News reports Mr Abbott, Craig Kelly, Andrew Hastie and George Christensen were among several MPs who spoke out against the policy in the party room today.
Mr Hastie and Mr Christensen reportedly also reserved the right to cross the floor on the NEG.
It’s understood Barnaby Joyce backed the policy but flagged he wanted amendments.
The Prime Minister said he was concerned about MPs threatening to cross the floor but insisted “everything we’re doing is seeking to bring down energy prices”.
“Concerns were expressed across the board about prices and we share those,” he said.
MPs crossing the floor will be embarrassing for the government but it will only block the NEG if Mr Turnbull fails to gain Labor’s support for the policy.
The ALP has indicated it supports the NEG “process” and wants a bipartisan energy policy to end the uncertainty which has plagued Australia’s energy market and driven power prices up for almost a decade.
But the party still has concerns, particularly about the government’s 26 per cent emissions reduction target being too low, and has yet to give final support.
“If Labor wants to go to the next election and argue for a higher target, they should do so and we’ll gladly have that debate with them because if you were to have a higher target than 26 per cent, it would increase costs on consumers,” Mr Turnbull said today.
Labor’s energy spokesman Mark Butler has not ruled out Labor backing the NEG but said the party would argue for a higher emissions reduction target.
“It’s our view that the emissions reduction target of 45 per cent should be put in place,” he said.
“The government’s plan of 26 per cent is a reduction of 2 per cent over the course of a decade and will pull through absolutely no new investment, and that will be felt in higher power prices.”
He claimed the meeting was a win for the “right wing” of the Coalition and Mr Turnbull’s credibility on taking action on power prices and climate change was “in tatters”.
Mr Frydenberg will hold a phone hook-up with his state counterparts tonight, where its expected they will agree to a month-long consultation period for the draft legislation.
He will then look at amendments to the NEG and will aim to get a final sign off on its design from the states by October.
“The Turnbull Government has a laser-like focus on reducing power bills and the National Energy Guarantee will help deliver that, reducing the household average family’s power bill by $550 a year,” Mr Frydenberg said today.
HANSON URGES REBEL MPS TO CROSS FLOOR
Pauline Hanson urged rebel backbenchers to cross the floor over the National Energy Guarantee if the government doesn’t pull out of the Paris Agreement and “ditch the NEG”.
The One Nation leader issued the call ahead of the Coalition party room meeting today.
A $550-a-year cut to the average household power bill was on the line at if Coalition backbenchers blocked the policy which Mr Abbott reportedly branded a “crock” at a backbench energy committee meeting last night.
As the meeting got underway at Parliament House this morning, Senator Hanson fired off a series of tweets calling on government MPs to cross the floor if the government did not “ditch” the NEG.
She said renewable energy targets would drive up electricity prices and any Coalition MP who didn’t cross the floor to “vote against these terrible policies is putting the UN’s green agenda first and Aussie families last”.
“The UN’s Paris Agreement is a joke. Major players China [and] India have increased emissions, the US has rightfully pulled out,” Senator Hanson said.
“Yet Australia, a small fish in a big pond and a minor carbon emitter, is determined to suicidally meet our targets and destroy our economy for nothing.
“Tony Abbott (former PM) and Barnaby Joyce (former deputy PM) have spoken out strongly against the NEG.
“If they can’t stand up for Australian families and cross the floor, then they have no right to hold leadership positions ever again.”
Meanwhile, Opposition leader Bill Shorten has accused the Prime Minister of “surrendering” to Mr Abbott’s values on climate change and energy despite openly opposing them.
“Whilst Mr Turnbull goes around attacking Mr Abbott, Mr Turnbull is in fact giving in to a lot of Mr Abbott’s values when it comes to climate change and energy,” he said.
“What we will see is promises to deliver new money, new coal-fired power stations.
“We will see less renewable energy in the system which means higher prices.”
PLAN FOR A NEW CLEAN-COAL STATION
Ahead of the meeting, one of Australia’s leading electricity companies reportedly declared it will seek to build a new “clean-coal” power station if Mr Turnbull locked in support for his “NEG-plus” plan.
Delta Electricity’s chairman Trevor St Baker told The Australian the company could build a 1000-megawatt coal-fired power station in under five years if the government accepts a consumer watchdog recommendation for it to underwrite new power generation.
Australia’s largest energy users, including BHP, Rio Tinto, BlueScope and Shell, also made a last-ditch attempt to convince federal MPs to support the NEG last night by writing to them to warn inaction could lead to even higher power prices, The Australian reports.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg will hold a phone hook-up with his state counterparts this afternoon to kick start the next step in the process.
Mr Frydenberg aims to legislate the NEG by the end of the year.
Last night, after a two hour briefing, seven members of the committee voted to approve the NEG policy going to the party room today.
Three members, including Mr Abbott and Liberal MP Craig Kelly, voted against it.
Publicly, Mr Abbott told the ABC’s 7.30 program last night that the NEG was flawed because it was “run” to reduce carbon emissions, not just to drive down prices and ensure a reliable power supply.
Mr Abbott, former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce and a handful of other backbencher critics have threatened to cross the floor over the NEG.
Mr Joyce said he was concerned there was no mechanism in the current NEG that would set a price target for big electricity companies.
“We really don’t have any definitive mechanism to deal with price,” he told reporters at Parliament House this morning.
“We’ve got to have a mechanism that is able to enforce the savings that we are talking about.
“If we can’t enforce some sort of regulation of price then corporations will do what is their statutory duty and get the biggest profit they possibly can.”
He argued government should have a divestiture power, which would allow it to penalise companies by divesting them of one of their assets if they did not lower power prices.
“This is not a case of being in a team with Abbott or being in a team with somebody else, it’s not that at all,” Mr Joyce said.
“In fact, I find that, to be honest, a complete misreading of it. I’m not in a team with anybody except in a team with people trying to pay their power bills.”
NEG BRINGS A POWER BILL SAVING
A report by the Energy Security Board has predicted household power bills could be slashed by $550-a-year over the next decade if the NEG is implemented.
It found $150 in savings would come as a direct result of the NEG, while $400 would come from new, mostly renewable energy generation coming into the market.
Under the current NEG, energy companies such as AGL or Origin would be forced to meet a reliability guarantee and an emissions guarantee.
The reliability guarantee, designed to prevent blackouts, would force them to provide a set amount of baseload power from sources such as coal, gas, pumped hydro and batteries.
They would also have to provide a certain amount of power from clean energy sources to meet the emissions guarantee or face deregistration from the market.
The NEG would also lock in an emissions reduction target of 26 per cent for Australia to meet the Paris Agreement on climate change.
Australia’s carbon emissions are already on track to drop by 24 per cent without the policy.
The NEG-plus proposal means the government would implement the initial plan but also accept the ACCC’s recommendation to underwrite new power generation, which could potentially include coal and gas.
Mr St Baker told The Australian if the government launched the “NEG-plus”, Delta Electricity could seek to build a power station for as little as $2.5 billion if it was built on the site of an old plant which still had transmission and cooling water capability.
He told the publication had already spoken with Japanese and Chinese developers with experience in rolling out High Efficiency, Low Emissions plants internationally.
“The ACCC’s recommendation will nicely complement the NEG. We need a Hazelwood replacement and there are competing parties wanting to work with me in different capacities to bid — on open competitive equal terms against all other options — to offer a Hazelwood replacement as a HELE (high-efficiency, low-emissions) plant,” Mr St Baker said.
“Alternatively we could bid in NSW for an 800MW HELE plant at Vales Point … In NSW it’s critically needed before Liddell closes.”
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