Productivity Commission Amendment (Electricity Reporting) Bill 2023

Transparency, accountability and better outcomes for Australians are what Senator Duniam's private senator's bill promises to deliver. Undoubtedly the cost of living is going through the roof, and a large part of that is the increase in our energy prices, particularly for electricity. In fact, to say that they're going through the roof is an understatement. That is how bad things are getting, and they're only going to get worse. Despite the now Albanese Labor government promising 97 times before the 2022 federal election that they would reduce power bills by $275, we've seen the exact opposite. Under Anthony Albanese's leadership, power bills have gone through the roof. But this is really no surprise, is it, when their key energy policies under a best-case scenario will increase power bills and under a worst-case scenario will destroy Australia's energy security. Take, for example, their disastrous Rewiring the Nation plan, which seeks to run poles and wires across the country for which they are currently providing under the budget measure—the non-budget measure, I should say—$20 billion in concessional loans. Not only will it fail to help Australia reduce energy emissions, but it will burden taxpayers for decades to come with significantly higher unnecessary debt, it will weaken supply and system security, and it will increase energy prices. On top of that, to make the cost-of-living disaster that Australians are feeling right now worse, those prices also flow through in the cost of all goods that are made with that energy.

We saw yesterday, with the farmers who were here in Parliament House, that new transmission projects are facing increased opposition from communities in regional Victoria and other areas. For example, the VNI West project, currently planned at $3.3 billion, has already encountered local protests. A KPMG report suggests that a lack of social licence could cause transmission projects to rise by as much as 40 per cent. And here I will commend the great work of Professor Simon Bartlett and Professor Bruce Mountain, who are arguing that not only are the projected costs wrong, but that the routes they are taking are still not nailed down.

In recent years major transmission projects in Australia have experienced significant cost blowouts, raising concerns about the effectiveness of large-scale transmission projects in decarbonising the energy sector. For example, and as I said before, the cost of VNI West, which was initially estimated at $1.6 billion four years ago, this year has risen to $3.3 billion, and the previous estimate, which was only two months prior to that, was $2.9 billion—an increase of 10 per cent. It is unclear what the final cost of the project will be, especially given the potential for construction contingencies over the next decade.

Unfortunately, VNI West is not alone in experiencing cost overloads. Other major transmission projects, including Project EnergyConnect, HumeLink and Marinus Link, have seen significant increases in cost estimates since 2018. These projects have experienced cost increases of 50 per cent, 190 per cent and 250 per cent respectively. Collectively, the cost of these projects, according to Professor Bartlett, has increased by 140 per cent in just four years, with an average annual increase of 25 per cent.

Now, voters are waking up to the fact that a large portion of their electricity bill is made up by what is called a supply charge. Any of you listening at home, turn over your electricity bill and, on the back, you'll see that line 'supply charge'. I know on my bill it's currently $1.60 a day. That is only going to go up significantly over the life of the projects. Sometimes that supply charge is overlooked by consumers, despite the fact that a significant portion of that bill goes towards funding the transmission and distribution infrastructure that transports electricity from generators to the market.

Now, a quick history lesson from my great home state of Victoria. Sir John Monash built the State Electricity Commission. When he designed that, being the great engineer he was, he realised that the fuel needed to generate electricity in Victoria was coal down in the Latrobe Valley. He decided to build the generation there and transmit it up to Melbourne, where the load or the demand was. We don't need to do that anymore. The fuel is everywhere. Sunshine is everywhere. Rooftop solar is dominating the market and is only going to increase and can increase a lot further. So the business case for running poles and wires across our country is disappearing day by day.

Certainly, in Victoria, to build the VNI West purely to save the investments of foreign investors who built the 'rhombus of regret' is unconscionable. Why are people building this? Companies like Transgrid that are building VNI West get a regulated return on their assets because they're monopolies, and they're regulated by the Australian Energy Regulator, the AER, which sets a rate of return on that asset base that is for the life of those projects—20, 30, 40 years. So not only is the taxpayer underwriting this, with the government planning to invest $20 billion in the construction of tens of thousands of kilometres of transmission lines; the total asset base of these companies is likely to range between $100 billion and $200 billion extra. Some transmission is cheaper than others, but the generally accepted cost is $9 million per kilometre for a 550 kVA transmission line. Just imagine tens of thousands of kilometres times $9 million. That's going to be on the back of your energy bill or on your grocery bill.

If the government plans to go ahead with these ludicrous projects, Australians deserve, at the very least, transparency, accountability and basic information about what's going to be on their power bills. Accountability and transparency are lacking right now in Victoria, with Premier Andrews and Minister D'Ambrosio ramming through VNI West—no transparency, no accountability. That is what Senator Duniam's sensible private senator's bill promises to deliver, with more information more regularly. It will also allow governments to better respond to changes in the energy market, and, in the current economic environment, that is more important than ever.

A recent report in the journal Nature Energy showed that up to 140 million extra people could be tipped into extreme poverty worldwide by an energy crisis that has sent prices soaring. The authors of the report said higher energy costs flow through to virtually all other goods and services people required because energy was an essential input for most economic activities and that the indirect costs tended to be even higher in overall terms. I raise this to highlight how important energy price policy is and to show why we must have better reporting mechanisms.

The core objective underpinning this bill is that it would require the Productivity Commission to compile quarterly reports on retail electricity prices, as well as the sources from which electricity is being generated, for each state and territory, and would require the relevant minister to table these reports in parliament. This is hardly new or controversial. The NDIS provides quarterly reports to the disability ministers, with information including statistics about participants in each jurisdiction and the funding or provision of supports by the NDIA in each jurisdiction. Approved aged-care providers are required to submit a quarterly financial report to the Department of Health and Aged Care to enable the department to track, monitor and benchmark the sector. It also provides information for the star rating system, to help senior Australians make informed choices, and it helps with policy, planning and development. The Clean Energy Regulator provides quarterly reports on Australia's carbon market. So we see that, in almost every space of government, agencies and departments provide quarterly reports on a range of different areas to improve policymaking, increase transparency and support Australians through greater access to information.

There is clearly a glaring gap that exists in Australia when it comes to reporting and transparency on energy, and that void is exactly what this bill aims to fill. It makes no sense that we would require departments and agencies to compile reports in almost every aspect of Australian life but not energy prices. While a substantially broader variety of data about energy generation, pricing and usage has been made available to Australians over the past decade or so, through projects like Dr Dylan McConnell's Open-NEM, there still isn't a single source or a single report that Australians can see regularly at a glance. This is something as simple as a full national snapshot of current and past retail electricity prices.

The Australian Energy Regulator has revealed draft electricity price increases of between 20 and 22 per cent over the coming financial year, while Victorian consumers can expect a 30 per cent price surge. This is all despite, as I said earlier, the Albanese Labor government's promise to reduce power bills by $275. We know now that the Prime Minister either lied about that or made up the modelling due to a lack of reporting data, and still isn't being held to account. If this bill is passed—and I commend it to the Senate—it is not just the Albanese Labor government that will be held to account for broken promises and lies to the Australian people; all future governments will be as well. I think senators in this chamber will agree with me that this is a positive outcome.