Page 2778 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 16 August 2017
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energy costs, with electricity prices rising by 19 per cent on 1 July. That is a point of real concern for me. This does have a significant impact, particularly on households where they are really counting every penny when it comes to paying the bills. We know that that is quite a number of households across the ACT.
It is important to reflect on why those energy prices went up that much. The Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission were very clear in their decision on this that it was due to rapidly increasing national wholesale energy prices which were a direct consequence of a failure to deal with energy policy effectively at a national level. Over the period of six or seven years that the conservative parties have been in power nationally, we saw first of all an attempt to dismantle the carbon pricing initiative that had been put in place—that took some time—and then no clear and effective replacement policy.
This has meant that we have had a disorderly removal of significant capacity in the national energy market. For example, the unplanned, unprepared for closure of the Hazelwood coal-fired power station in Victoria this year was a travesty, in the sense that nobody did anything strategic to prepare for that moment. I have been of the view that Hazelwood needed to close. Members of my party have argued that for a long time. It was the dirtiest coal-fired power station in Australia. But for a decade at least we have been saying that we needed to plan for this, that we needed a transition strategy both for the energy market and for the local community, to protect their jobs and their town. Instead, our federal government just allowed this to happen willy-nilly, with no clear replacement strategy, no clear national policy.
The Finkel review came out. It highlighted many of these problems. It had 50 recommendations. Our federal government went, “Yes, we will cherrypick 49 of them, but we will leave out the central one because we cannot get our act together on agreeing a policy position.” It is not a focused debate on this issue today, but I highlight that we cannot simply draw these issues out in isolation and say that it is an ACT government issue.
In stark contrast, the ACT government—certainly in my time in this place, since the Greens struck a parliamentary agreement with the Labor Party to reduce our emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 and bring in significant renewable energy policies—has had consistent policy over a sustained period of time. The ACT is now lauded for our energy policy positions, for our progressive thinking, for our strategic approach, for the incredibly low prices that were achieved for our energy supply over a sustained period of time. It stands in stark contrast that this government, over a sustained period of time, has done that work and has positioned the ACT extremely well. It is one example, but one that I think is worth focusing on.
On the cost of living issues, which are where I started this point, we have really dedicated policies in that space as well. The energy efficiency improvement scheme, which has been in place for again a sustained period of time now, has provided support to literally tens of thousands of households across this city to reduce their energy bills on an ongoing basis. It is potentially hundreds of dollars a year for the
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