Labor calls for Kelly to be sacked for ‘scaremongering’

Labor calls for Turnbull to sack his MP from heading his energy committee for saying ‘people will die’ because of renewables.

Liberal Member for Hughes Craig Kelly. Picture: AAP.

Labor environment spokesman Mark Butler has called for Malcolm Turnbull to sack Craig Kelly as chair of the Coalition’s energy policy committee after the Liberal MP said that “people will die” in winter as a result of renewable energy policies making power unaffordable.

Mr Butler said Mr Kelly’s argument that renewable energy policies have created a situation where people cannot afford to keep themselves warm made his position as committee chair untenable.

“It sends a message that instead of taking a sober, evidence-based approach to energy policy at a critical time in the national debate on this question, the Coalition instead intends to continue their four-year-long crusade against renewable energy,” Mr Butler said.

“If Malcolm Turnbull is going to retain any credibility at this critical time of energy policy debate, he needs to act and he needs to sack Mr Kelly as the chair of the Coalition’s energy policy committee.”

Mr Butler said the comments were the latest in a “series of baseless scaremongering” from Mr Kelly, who in parliament last year linked childhood drowning rates to the expansion of renewable energy, arguing the policy had increased the price of swimming lessons due to pool heating costs.

“We know that households and businesses for that matter are experiencing a very serious crisis in energy costs, particularly for electricity, but also for gas,” Mr Butler said.

“But we also know the reason for that, Alan Finkel in his report a couple of weeks ago, the Chief Scientist, only added to a number of different expert reports that say that the major driver of power price increases at the moment is policy paralysis at the national parliament level.”

‘Coal kills, not renewables’

The Greens said it was coal, not renewable energy, that kills people.

Greens climate change spokesman Adam Bandt hit back at Mr Kelly after Labor branded his comments “appalling”.

“Coal kills people. Renewables save lives,” Mr Bandt said.

“Craig Kelly is just another ideologue, hell bent on hastening dangerous global warming. This latest foray isn’t unexpected, but it is certainly unfounded.

“If Craig Kelly and the Trumps in the government have their way, more people will die from bushfires, heatwaves, floods and famine as dangerous global warming accelerates.”

Federal Member for Melbourne Adam Bandt. Picture: AAP

“People will die” because of renewables

Mr Kelly urged the government to scrap renewable energy targets or risk being responsible for an increase in deaths over winter.

“People will die,” Mr Kelly told ABC radio this morning.

“We’ve seen reports only recently that one in four Australian households this winter will be frightened to turn the heater on because of the price of electricity.

“The World Health Organisation made it very, very clear that you increase winter mortality, that means you have more people dying in winter, if they cannot afford to heat their homes.”

Mr Kelly said figures collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics could provide an accurate death toll.

“We can measure what’s called excess winter mortality, which shows how many deaths you have in winter time,” he said.

“Those figures have not yet been released for the last couple of years and when they are we will be able to put a number on it.”

Mr Kelly said it was renewable energy policies which were pushing up the price of electricity.

“There are $3bn this year being paid in subsidies for renewable energy. That pushes up the price of electricity for the consumer,” he said.

You’ve got to be responsible for affordability: Joyce

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce said that although he did not agree with Mr Kelly’s comments that people would die because of the policy, the Turnbull government did have to prioritise affordability above all else.

Mr Joyce said the states were trying to push the government into a position “way outside” of its current commitments.

“It’s all very well for, and I’m one of them, a politician who’s probably doing pretty well, pretty comfortable, doesn’t really have to worry about their power bill, to inflict on other people something they can’t afford,” Mr Joyce told Sky News.

“Now our first focus is going to be making sure that people can afford power.

“I suppose that’s one of the issues that Craig was discussing. Now whether I agree with the idea that we’re responsible for the death of people, no I don’t, but I do absolutely believe that you’ve got to make sure that you are responsible in how you deliver a policy so that you can get affordable power through to people.”

Mr Joyce said he disagreed with Mr Kelly’s view that Australia should follow Donald Trump in opposing the Paris agreement which 19 out of 20 countries at the G20 meeting in Germany last week endorsed.

“Once we come to an agreement, we comply with it, and we’ve come to an agreement in regards to Paris and we’ll agree with it because we’re an honourable country, we do the right thing, and that’s what we’re going to do,” he said.

“It’s not excessive. It’s 26 to 28 per cent by 2030. When you look at other countries, really some of them don’t even have to start complying to these agreements until 2030.”

Renewable subsidies have increased prices: Pitt

Assistant Trade Minister Keith Pitt said he agreed with Mr Kelly that the renewable energy subsidies had affected wholesale energy prices.

“It’s very easy to fit into the market when you’re subsidised to the tune of some $90 a megawatt versus your competitor without, but the reality is we have the mix that we have and we need ensure we have a stable platform,” Mr Pitt told Sky News.

“I’m an electrical engineer, I majored in power systems and this is something from a technical viewpoint I know very well, but the politics are incredibly difficult.”

Mr Pitt said dealing with affordability was key.

“Craig Kelly’s a good friend of mine, I know him well, and I think he’s absolutely passionate about getting electricity prices down in this country,” he said.

“How you go about that, well that’s up to the individual, but I think the point that needs to be made is there’s been a massive increase in things like disconnection for non-payment of bills, we have pretty much the agricultural sector telling us for some years that they just can’t afford the price to pump water onto irrigated crops.

“We’ve had many, many industries across the country now coming to the absolute crunch point, and it does need to be dealt with.”

Queensland hits back at Frydenberg

Queensland Energy Minister Mark Bailey has hit back at his federal counterpart, after Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg blamed state-owned generators “gaming the system” for the fact that Queenslanders have been paying some of Australia’s highest electricity prices.

Mr Frydenberg has told his state counterpart that the clean energy target recommended by the Chief Scientist will not be on the agenda when they meet at tomorrow’s COAG energy meeting, because the Coalition has not yet reached agreement on the matter.

On Monday Mr Frydenberg said consumers were had paid 30 per cent more for their “average wholesale electricity prices” in the first five months of 2017 than other parts of the country.

“Since 2014 in Queensland, the price of wholesale electricity has gone above $5000 per megawatt hour some 30 times,” Mr Frydenberg told ABC radio.

He said the next closest state was South Australia, which had gone above $5000 16 times.

Mr Bailey said Mr Frydenberg was “absolutely wrong”.

“This is the problem: we’ve got a federal industry minister who’d rather play politics than actually get policy done,” Mr Bailey told ABC radio this morning.

“What we’ve got in the last three to four months is in fact wholesale energy prices have been the lowest in Queensland of anywhere in the country.”

Mr Bailey denied that prices had only fallen recently because his government had told the state-owned generators to stop gaming the system.

“No. That actually predated that,” he said.

“What we saw is during the two heatwaves that occurred is we saw the Queensland power system running flat out to keep our power system going, particularly in NSW, where during their heatwave we saw 1000 megawatts, a gigawatt of power, pouring across the interconnector from Queensland to prop up NSW, the Prime Minister’s own state, where they still had load-shedding in industry, but without the Queensland power in the system you would have seen widespread load-shedding in New South Wales.”

Mr Bailey also denied that his government had banked $1.5bn over four years from the generators gaming the system.

“The regulator looked at this specific issue and absolutely found that there was no relation of bidding to prices, absolutely none. So the regulator’s cleared them,” he said.

“That’s something Josh Frydenberg has not highlighted at all, and it’s ridiculous to be quite frank, and secondly, what we saw is that all generators saw increased dividends, private and public during the heatwave, because they were running flat out.

“That’s how the national energy rules are designed, but in Queensland we returned those dividends to consumers by cutting electricity prices.

“In a situation where other states are seeing 19 per cent increases, 11 per cent increases, double digits everywhere else except Queensland, and yet Josh Frydenberg is spending his time beating up Queensland, which is the best performing mainland state when it comes to both wholesale prices and retail electricity prices for consumers. His priorities are entirely wrong.”

Ahead of tomorrow’s COAG meeting, Mr Bailey blamed the previous Newman LNP government for the fact that Queensland has the highest carbon emissions of any state.

“We saw no movement on renewable energy under the Campbell Newman-Tim Nicholls government in three years, and that’s something we’re not going to make the same mistake about, and we’re very clear about transitioning to cleaner energy sources in Queensland,” he said.

“We’ve got 17 large scale renewable energy projects either under construction or committed in our state — $2.2bn of investment, and that’s only happening because we’ve set the 50 per cent target here in Queensland that’s driving investment, giving industry the certainty they need, but that’s not what we’re getting at a federal level, where we’ve just got absolute policy paralysis from a divided government who are not listening to industry and are fiddling while the energy market and the economy suffers.”