Competition and Consumer Amendment (Australian Energy Regulator Separation) Bill 2025
Senator WATERS (Queensland—Leader of the Australian Greens) (18:34): The Australian Energy Regulator manages the energy network transformation as we shift from last century's centralised polluting machinery into a decentralised smart network of clean technologies and households in charge of their own energy. This transition is going way too slow to avoid colliding with a three-degree world, and this legislation, the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Australian Energy Regulator Separation) Bill 2025, won't change that terrifying course that we're stuck on.
Despite knowing in detail how devastating a three-degree increase in temperature would be—and they know because of the climate risk assessment report—there doesn't seem to be any enthusiasm from the government to use their numbers in the House and work with the Greens in the Senate to put in place policies that would rapidly drive down emissions. If Labor hadn't spent every moment since the election approving gas projects for Woodside, granting their fairytale CCS projects major project status and inviting them to the Economic Reform Roundtable, the government could have actually been setting a decarbonisation agenda so that the AER could really get to work in transforming our energy system.
We need the AER to help get homes and businesses to disconnect from gas, while managing the shrinking customer base and ensuring that low-income households aren't unfairly punished. We do welcome the bill for that reason. But, unfortunately, the AER has plenty of time to work out how to deal with this inevitable gas death-spiral because the government isn't lifting a finger to electrify homes and businesses.
They see no urgency to slowing down Australia's fossil fuel—in particular, gas—use. They've got no policy prescriptions for how they'll reach their 2035 climate target, and so instead they have to rely on their Future Gas Strategy, which only looks at how to develop more and more gas fields. Not once does this strategy look at how to reduce gas demand, because there are no donors in the electrification industry giving money to the Labor Party.
The government couldn't even bring itself to support the Climate Change Authority's recommendation to end gas connections for newly built homes. That's the first step on the journey to remove gas from our networks, and they can't even agree to that. If the government doesn't even have the courage to do the lowest cost, least intrusive gas policy, then we are all in deep, deep trouble.
We need the AER to do lots of important things and make important changes, but they can't do it without government ambition. We need smooth and fast connections of renewables to the grid so projects aren't just sitting idle. We need to integrate electric vehicles into our energy system so we decarbonise our transport as well as our energy sectors.
We need farmers and councils and households to be able to sell clean energy to their neighbours. We need them to enable demand response of industrial uses of energy, to limit network costs and reduce energy use. But, most of all, we need the government to set the direction and the urgency of this work.
These are all complex and delicate issues that the AER is responsible for. This bill would give the AER authoritative control over the resources and the people needed to do those things. The Greens will support this bill so that the AER are ready to go if the government ever decide that they're serious about doing this transition in the tiny timeframe that we have left to us.
The bill will also remove the governance risks that currently arise from the split responsibility shared with the ACCC. Now that the AER will have direct control over its resources, after this bill passes, it will be accountable to its own board in how the resources are used. I can't imagine how anyone would think of this as a controversial bill, and yet it was opposed by the coalition in the last parliament just because it involves energy policy.
In fact, this bill was recommended by three reviews that occurred under a coalition government: the Vertigan review of 2015, the Finkel review of 2017 and the Energy Security Board review of 2020. They couldn't implement even the most basic of changes to the energy system because of the rock-throwing cave-dwellers who wield power within the Liberal and National parties.
This bill in and of itself won't help reduce emissions, which have not come down for five years, but it will empower the regulator and give them the certainty to make these important decisions in the transformation to zero emissions, even if they are constrained by the government's take-it-as-she-goes approach. We need the government to actually do the things necessary to make the transition, and, in order to do so, they need to stop taking the donations from coal and gas companies, they need to stop dishing out approvals to the coal and gas companies like confetti and they need to help households adopt clean energy and make sure we can all have a safe future.