Turnbull presents a policy which helps him escape the energy “crisis” and Liberal rebels

THE PM reckons we’re going to be sitting around counting out the $115-a-year we’ve saved from our electricity bills.

ANALYSIS

So does anybody really think they will be sitting around between 2020 and 2030 counting out the $115-a-year they have saved from their electricity bills, as suggested by Malcolm Turnbull today?

The lessons of past disappointments would say: Probably not.

That wad of cash will not even exist. It is just an average of possible savings if there is a “least-cost trajectory” maintained over 10 years.

Power prices will continue to go up under the new Turnbull energy policy, although the rises might not be as steep as under the old Turnbull energy policy.

But the figure is there because it covers at least one of the political objectives needed by Mr Turnbull to get the Government and his prime ministership out of the energy “crisis”. The politics of this policy can’t be ignored.

In 1975, the Liberals came up with one of the lamest election slogans in Australia’s history: Turn on the Lights.

More than 40 years later, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has provided an equally dismal four-word slogan: Keeping the Lights On.

He kept repeating it today as he released a policy package outsourced in large part to the experts of the Energy Security Board, commissioned to hit the three benchmarks of electricity cost cuts, greater reliability, and emission reductions.

Power prices will continue to go up under the new Turnbull energy policy, but it has ticked the necessary political boxes. Picture: AAP Image/Lukas Coch

This outsourcing not only opened up a source of specialist and valuable advice but allowed the Prime Minister to ditch the Clean Energy Target proposed by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel and opposed by a sceptical and noisy rump within the Coalition led by former prime minister Tony Abbott.

The advice of the board allows Mr Turnbull and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg to insist, “It wasn’t Tony wot done it.” The Government had succumbed to sound science rather than political extortion when it dropped the CET proposal.

And it will also allow the Government to shelter behind the independence of the ESB as it demands Opposition Leader Bill Shorten back the policy.

“It is a test of the Leader of the Opposition’s ticker: Will he stand up for Australian families?” Mr Frydenberg asked in Parliament.

“Will he follow the advice of the experts? Will he adopt a bipartisan approach to ensure that power bills for millions of Australian families are lower and that we get the investment certainty in the energy sector?”

The Government still has to deal with the significant affection voters have for renewable energy, which has a role in the new policy but certainly not a dominant one.

Polling by Essential Report released today showed 74 per cent of voters backed incentives for renewables, including 75 per cent of Coalition voters.

Mr Turnbull and Mr Frydenberg would not want to disappoint that renewable fondness as they maintain there is a place for “clean” coal-fired power stations.

Unbothered by this, Treasurer Scott Morrison told Parliament: “This takes us into a new era for energy … where households and business also no longer be forced to pay for these ideological-driven subsidies (for renewables) ...

“And the electricity bill … you will get from the Labor Party will be $66 billion in higher subsidies driven by ideology.

“Not by economics and engineering but from the sheer ideology of the Labor Party.”

The political horizon is not yet uncluttered for the Government. It still has to negotiate elements of the package with the states and legislate for a 26 per cent emissions reduction target.

But the initial hurdle of actually getting Coalition MPs behind a policy has been cleared.