Following Labor passing its new energy bill during an extraordinary sitting of Parliament on Thursday, there have been many predictions about what it will mean for Australia.
Will the package help solve the energy crisis? Or will it turn Australia into a “Soviet-style” nightmare? Will it scare off fuel investors, or will it inspire confidence in them? Will power bills go up or down? Crikey takes a closer look at some of the forecasts made over the past 24 hours.
The federal government
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Parliament on Thursday the new energy plan is a combination of “immediate action and future reform”.
The new legislation will put a 12-month price cap on new contract sales of gas by producers, “designed to provide short-term relief from the current energy crisis”, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said.
There will also be a 12-month price cap on domestic coal.
The package also includes the appropriation of $1.5 billion to ease power bills, money that will be administered by the states and territories.
“This legislation will take some of the pressure off power bills,” Chalmers said.
Chalmers told Parliament the measures were estimated to reduce “the impact of forecast electricity prices next financial year by 13 percentage points”.
He also claimed they would reduce inflation in the next financial year by half a percentage point.
The opposition
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton opposed the package and said it wouldn’t help bring down power bills.
“The fact is that power prices will continue to go up and up and up under this Labor government because they have no idea what they’re doing,” he told reporters.
However, had the government agreed to split the bill, the opposition would have supported the bill relief portion because “there’s a package of support there”.
“But we don’t support a market intervention which is going to disrupt investment into our country,” Dutton continued.
“We don’t support market intervention which is going to result in higher power prices, less supply of gas into the system, and less Australian jobs.”
Dutton said he believed intervening in the energy market would chill businesses, “who will be looking at the sovereign risk that’s created out of this and questioning whether they will invest”.
The Greens
Greens Leader Adam Bandt told Parliament ahead of the bill’s passing: “Today is the beginning of the end for gas.”
He said it was “time to hold these greedy coal and gas corporations to account”.
Bandt also said the legislation would give the government the power to “freeze power bills”, something the Greens have been pushing for.
“Government can step in and stop those price rises,” he said. “If we are going to be giving compensation to ensure that people’s power bills don’t go up, which we support and were the first ones out there calling for it, let’s freeze power bills at pre-crisis levels and put a windfall tax on those greedy coal and gas corporations to pay for it.”
The Greens also claimed a win on reforms to household electricity, which will be part of next year’s budget after the party struck a deal with the government.
The Greens want households to get support transitioning from gas to electricity as part of that deal.
The fossil fuel industry
According to the industry, the plan will put Australia through a “Soviet-style” process of nationalisation that will necessitate gas rationing by next winter.
Businesses will flee the country because doing deals in the energy sphere will be as difficult as it is in “Argentina, Venezuela or Nigeria”, Santos chief executive Kevin Gallagher said, according to The Daily Telegraph.
“Every business owner in Australia should be alarmed,” he said.
In comments made a few days earlier, Woodside chief executive and Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association chair Meg O’Neill agreed the plan would prompt gas rationing and power shortages.
“We need to unlock gas supply now … no one wants to see energy shortages and gas rationing,” she said, according to the Australian Financial Review.
The unions
Daniel Walton, the national secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union, said the “doom-laden predictions of the gas industry” and opposition would not come true.
“Here’s my prediction for what will happen as a result of this apparently terrifying new legislation: the price of gas and coal will fall, consumers will feel relief, and the manufacturing industry will gain the confidence to keep operating and investing in Australia,” Walton said.
