There was a moment of stunned silence at a hastily arranged teleconference of energy ministers on Tuesday evening, just hours after the government's long-awaited electricity scheme had been released.
Some of those present at the meeting – described as "testy" by several participants – had requested more detail on the plan. All they had received were two briefing papers – 12 pages in total – and a media release.
PM's policy sell
Amid opposition from State leaders
over the government's new energy policy, Malcolm Turnbull has some work
to do, to get them to agree.
But Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg told the ministers, "You all have everything I have".
"There
was a startling lack of detail and information," Queensland's Labor
Energy Minister Mark Bailey said. "That's a small amount [of detail] for
such an important issue.""What we were given was not undercooked – it hadn't even seen the inside of an oven," said a senior energy official who was on the call.
While Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had succeeded in steering his plan through the Coalition party room, it soon hit the shoals of state and territory opposition.
The 45-minute meeting of energy ministers had begun in chaotic fashion with Frydenberg excusing himself briefly for a Parliament division, and handing over the conference to Kerry Schott, the chair of the Energy Security Board.
"Kerry Schott said the plan was very conceptual and needed a lot of work from COAG," said Shane Rattenbury, the energy minister in ACT's Labor-Greens government.
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| Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull with energy regulators at Tuesday's press conference. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen |
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| Illustration: Matt Golding. |
Finkel held meetings around Australia, journeyed to the US and Europe for research, assembled an expert panel and conducted modelling for a Clean Energy Target, "in a perfectly plausible and practical way", Rattenbury said.
"Now it's been ditched for something pulled together in two or three weeks. It shows how weak this proposal is and how desperate [the Turnbull government] is.
Frydenberg declined to comment on the teleconference, but said the scheme relied on "the best advice from experts".
"We are seeking to implement the [plan] to deliver a more affordable and reliable energy to Australian households and businesses," he says.
Business backing
The proposal has some support from the business community, keen for the end of partisan "climate wars".
"The more we look at it, the more comfortable we are with it," one executive at a major retailer told Fairfax Media.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a respected consultancy, also found the scheme "innovative and elegant", saying it could steer as much renewable energy into the market by 2030 as the 42 per cent share envisaged by the Finkel Review.
And even federal Labor is indicating it has left the door open to accepting a plan that the Prime Minister calls "game changing". Even so, the lack of a regulatory impact statement for so wide-ranging a policy shift is just one of the concerns within Labor.
'Fundamentally opposed'
But it is up to the states and territories to approve any plan since COAG consensus is needed for changes of this scope. A quirk in the way the National Electricity Market was set up means it must also pass through the South Australian legislature.
South Australia's Labor Premier Jay Weatherill has been the most outspoken, telling the media on Thursday, "We're not going to support this because it reduces incentives and support for renewable energy".
"It cuts our state-based renewable energy target and it subsidises the coal industry at the expense of renewable energy," he said. "At a fundamental level, we're opposed to it."
Lily D'Ambrosio, Victoria's Labor Energy Minister, was also highly critical. "[Turnbull's] modelling is dodgy and his claims about reducing power prices [by $100-$115 a year for average consumers] can't be believed," she said.
Ministers from Coalition-led NSW and Tasmania were largely silent in the Tuesday call, several Labor counterparts said. NSW Energy Minister Don Harwin declined to comment.
"He's not really saying anything, and as the energy minister from the biggest jurisdiction, that's odd," one of the officials present on the Tuesday call said. "But it's not like they're cheering about what the feds are doing."
'Monumental' task
The mood of the states and territories wasn't helped, either, with Frydenberg giving them just 24 hours to comment on the modelling the Turnbull government wants Schott and the board to complete by November 13.
Analyst Dylan McConnell from Melbourne University said the proposal suggests the Australian Energy Markets Commission would have to complete a "monumental" amount of work, effectively redoing the Finkel modelling.
Another likely bone of contention for the states will be Frydenberg's request to model the impact of the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme – still little more than an incomplete feasibility of a scheme that could cost $4 billion – while all of their various renewable energy targets have been omitted.
"Assuming Snowy Hydro will be operational in the period is more than optimistic," one Labor insider said. "I get [the need to model] a sensitivity, but in the main policy case, as seems to be implied - [but] that's putting a lot of faith in a project that hasn't passed any assessment phase."
"The government is adamant that the NEG is cheaper than an Energy Intensive Scheme or a Clean Energy Target," he said, referring to two policy options dismissed by the Turnbull government. "You'd think this is the opportunity to prove that claim."
'Awkward'
The manner of the Turnbull government's approach to the energy plan has also raised concerns about the use of public servants. The Energy Security Board, set up as one of the agreed recommendations of the Finkel Review – was on its first public outing.
"It's unfair to compromise these highly regarded public servants to seek a fix to [Turnbull's] own internal issues," one senior state official said. "This work is not part of [the board's] terms of reference."
Bailey, Queensland's energy minister, agrees: "The Turnbull government has put the board in an awkward position."
Links
- 'Innovative' energy policy no lifeline for coal, energy consultancy says
- Labor could back Malcolm Turnbull's energy plan
- Renewables to flatline under Turnbull energy policy
- Turnbull's plan guarantees emergence of a carbon price
- Paris target fades from view as Turnbull prefers political fix
- Energy Security Board Update
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