Peter Dutton’s energy policy is hostage to climate deniers
While each Liberal prime minister had different levels of ambition when it came to modernising our energy grid, they were all hostage to a partyroom of vocal climate deniers. The LNP partyroom is still home to enough climate deniers to effectively veto any meaningful climate action.
Because of this, Australia is playing catch-up on energy policy after a decade of delay, denial and dysfunction.
Energy minister Angus Taylor promised to deliver 2 gigawatts of dispatchable energy as part of the failed Underwriting New Generation Investments program.
He didn’t deliver a single watt of energy under that program.
Instead the LNP oversaw 4GW leaving the grid and only 1GW of replacement dispatchable energy come on.
From the government benches Taylor decried that any future Labor government couldn’t be party to the Paris Agreement without a 2030 target.
Now he’s shadow treasurer of a party with no targets and where candidates frequently denounce targets, giving the lie to their faux commitment to our international obligations.
Taylor changed the law to hide from Australians that their energy prices were surging by up to 20 per cent and deliberately didn’t disclose that the Snowy 2.0 scheme was massively over time and budget.
Now he’s vying to be treasurer of a government that claims it would buck all international experience and from a standing start establish a nuclear industry on time and on budget.
Under Labor we’re fixing the mess and we’re on track to meet our legislated targets. We’ve delivered 15GW of new, affordable solar and wind generation that is putting downwards pressure on prices.
In terms of dispatchable energy, we’ve delivered 4GW while overseeing record private investment into more renewables, thanks to the policy certainty we’ve shown.
Our national grid is now 46 per cent renewable and we have more batteries and storage coming online to ensure the cheapest power is available when and where you need it.
And the report in The Australian on Tuesday that we are not on track to meet our 82 per cent renewable energy target is out of date, at best.
As the Clean Energy Council has pointed out, the investment we have seen in the past year is strong enough to indicate the target is on track.
We’ve also secured 600 petajoules of enforceable supply commitments for gas in the domestic market and are expanding the powers of the Australian Energy Market Operator so we can get the gas market working for local needs.
It has not been without its challenges. But in three short years, while dealing with the worst global energy crisis since the 1970s, we have made progress.
Of course, three years is not long enough to turn around all the implications of a decade of dysfunction. We need to stay the course.
And at each point we’ve been honest with Australians and fought to get all bill payers a better deal.
Along with my state counterparts, I have encouraged the Australian Energy Regulator to closely examine retail costs and ensure that the benchmark retail price they set is the best deal for consumers.
While Taylor busied himself hiding bad news, our government is fighting for a better deal.
We’ve acted on energy price in the short term, providing two rounds of energy bill relief, while capping gas and coal prices in the height of the global energy crisis.
We continue to work with the states and territories to make the energy market fairer and easier for consumers.
And we’ve reset Australia’s relationship with our Pacific neighbours, for whom climate change poses an existential threat.
We’ve done this all because the Albanese government believes acting on climate change is in our national interest.
The same can’t be said for Peter Dutton’s rabble. Why else would the party of the free market propose a $600bn nuclear scheme, paid for by the taxpayer and cuts to services, that promises to only push up bills and emissions and worsen energy reliability?
They’ve all got different visions of what should power Australia.
Nationals leader David Littleproud has promised to tear up contracts of large-scale renewable projects. He luxuriates and celebrates the sovereign risk this creates and the jobs it destroys.
Matt Canavan frequently calls for more coal-fired power stations to be built and freely admits his party isn’t serious about nuclear energy, rather it’s a political fix. At least he’s being honest.
Barnaby Joyce, despite previously declaring that nuclear energy was ruled out by matter of cost, now agitates anti-renewables protesters telling them to use their votes as “bullets” against the Prime Minister and myself.
Ted O’Brien invented a carbon price that he then vowed to scrap and announced plans to enrich uranium on Australian shores before mysteriously deleting all references to it from his speech and never mentioning it again.
While in government the Liberals proudly legislated to establish an offshore wind industry to secure regional jobs, they now rail against the zones they enabled.
Littleproud once said renewable energy should be confined to “our rooftops and off our coast”.
This is the amount of policy consistency we have come to expect from the alternative government.
The whole thing is a mess. The Opposition Leader can’t even get the amount of waste his nuclear reactors would produce right. Hint, it’s much more than a Coke can, by a factor of about 12,500.
No wonder nuclear, which was once described as “the heart” of their energy plan, has now come off the boil and disappeared from their talking points.
Instead, they now promise “bucketloads of gas” – just don’t ask for any further detail on that.
After three years it’s clear the same people who stopped climate action in Australia for a decade are still calling the shots in the Coalition partyroom.
While this government has been busy fighting for you, Dutton has been preoccupied with keeping the peace in his partyroom. What evidence is there that’d he’d be any better at taming his partyroom than his predecessors?
Their energy policy mess in opposition shows they’re not ready for government. Australians will be worse off under Dutton.
Chris Bowen is federal Climate Change and Energy Minister.
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