Wednesday, 12 November 2025

 David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (23:17): (2087) My matter for the adjournment tonight is for the attention of the Minister for Energy and Resources, and it relates to matters in the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) annual report 2024–25. There is a note at 6.2 on derivative financial instruments, which points to a change in financial assets from 2024 to 2025: in 2024 $68.901 million and in 2025 $525.145 million. An increase from $70 million to $525 million – that is a huge change. The report says:

The contracts, which include future settlements of Contract for Differences and rights to large-scale generation certificates … from/to proponents, have been classified as financial derivative instruments and are measured …

through a fair-value mechanism. What this leads to in the description of valuation techniques on page 233 is wholesale electricity price forecasts, and it goes from, in 2024, the bottom range, $17, to $44.57, an increase of $27.42 – an increase in fact of almost 160 per cent. Likewise, at the top of the range, from $155.02 in 2024 to $257.13 in 2025, an increase of $102.13 – an increase of 66 per cent. These are whopping increases in estimated wholesale electricity prices by the government. If these are even remotely realised – these are government estimates on which they are based, the valuations in the DEECA annual report – there will be a huge surge in energy costs in this state. These are the state government’s own forecasts, its own estimates.

Jaclyn Symes interjected.

David DAVIS: Yes, in the report. That is right. DEECA – whatever you want to call it. The energy department’s report – what it shows is a massive increase in wholesale electricity prices being used here. There is modelling that has been commissioned by DEECA to deal with this. The DEECA modelling in fact has blown the whistle on the forthcoming electricity price rises.

What I am asking the minister for energy to do is come clean on the costs of energy and the government’s own forecasts and stop saying that energy prices are going to fall, when the government’s own annual report says they are going to rise. The government has based its own valuations, through contracts for difference, on the idea that the energy costs are going to rise. The minister needs to stop misleading the community.