Wednesday, 15 November 2023

Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action

Report 2022–23

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (17:21): I want to talk about the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action annual report and the lack of measures for the performance of the SEC.

Members interjecting.

David DAVIS: Yes, the new body that is surging and soaring electricity costs. It is a body that seems to be delivering more costs to consumers, to households and to small businesses and more negative outcomes for consumers and small businesses. In one of these statements on reports sessions before, I pointed out that the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee report directly pointed to the failure of the government to have any reporting measures for this new $1 billion SEC. We have got a $1 billion SEC, we are spending $1 billion of public money and we have no reporting measures. How will this body be successful? How will it achieve its objectives? What precisely are its objectives? All of this is totally unclear in terms of reporting for $1000 million of public money to be spent.

I have given some gratuitous suggestions. I think that it should be about the price of energy and the reliability of energy. We should have basic measures for this new SEC, and what we would want to see is reliable power, secure power supplies, 100 per cent of the time. We would like to see prices falling. Actually what is happening is prices are going up at the moment. They have gone up 25 per cent since this announcement was made, so the costs are greater than they were before. Families are feeling the energy costs. The affordability issues are huge. Businesses are suffering.

The minister has cooking schools for things now. That is all very nice; we wish her well with that. But the truth of the matter is the gas industry strategy that was released the other day has got some really little concerns in that. The government has announced that the SEC will be bound by the competitive neutrality policy. This will mean that the so-called ‘public entity’ – and I will say something about that in a minute – is going to be bound by the same rules and regulations as private entities. Fair enough, but this will mean that the cost structures are not going to be any different from the private bodies as well. It is not clear how it is going to lead to cheaper energy or more reliable energy, a couple of the key objectives that we would want. We would want to see support for renewables. That is all good. We are not opposed to renewables. We see they have got a very significant place, and there is a transition going on, but what are the measurement things? How is the SEC to be judged?

We also know the government has set up a shelf company – a $20 company – with one share owned by the Minister for Energy and Resources and one share owned by the Premier. The shelf company is there to run this organisation. Let me be clear about this: the old SEC structure as a statutory authority is still there. It still reports to the Parliament, and now we are establishing a shelf company, a private company, that will not be accountable to the Parliament in the same way. Will that private SEC be FOI-able? Here is a question: will the private company be FOI-able? I can tell you, it will not be. Will the minister allow us to see the books of the private company and actually find out who has been paid what and how? I do not believe they are going to be transparent with that.

There is $1 billion of public money. They say they are going to take superannuation money and make it $2 billion. Let us just propose that that is true for a minute. How do we track how that $2 billion is going to be spent? How do we track how the $2000 million is going to be spent and what we are getting for it? We actually want to get a good deal for $2 billion – $2000 million – half of it public money and half of it, according to the government, super money. So a shelf company, registered the day before announcements – a $20 company – is going to run the whole thing. It is not going to be the old SEC statutory authority structure that is set up under an act of Parliament; it is going to be a private company that is running it. We will not be able to FOI it.

And what are the measures? I want to see proper measures in place. I actually want to see an outcome where prices are reduced – gas, electricity, whatever source of power is being delivered and wherever it is coming from; renewables. We actually want reliable power to consumers at a price that is lower than now. We do not want the surging costs. I would argue that anyone in this room, anyone in this chamber, in the gallery, outside on Bourke Street, wherever – everyone – knows that energy costs have surged in the last period.