According to the Australian Energy Regulator, the last quarter of 2024 recorded the second-highest number of extreme electricity price spikes ever, with prices exceeding $5,000 per megawatt hour. This is what happens when baseload generation is not in the mix. Coal, when operated continuously, delivers power at around $50 per megawatt hour—reliable and affordable.
Senator Ayres responded by doubling down on the government’s plan to “modernise” the system, dismissing concerns about cost and reliability. Instead of addressing the real issue—keeping affordable baseload power in the mix—the Minister ridiculed critics and pushed for more renewables, calling opposition arguments “too silly for words” and driven by “imported ideology.”
When will this government stop forcing Australians to pay record electricity prices and run our coal generators properly?
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: My question is to Senator Ayres, representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Mr Bowen. Minister, is coal powered electricity generation intermittent energy or base-load generation?
Senator AYRES (Minister for Industry and Innovation and Minister for Science) : Well, here I am. Senator Roberts’s question really does bell the cat in terms of where One Nation and their almost coalition partners over here in the National and Liberal parties really are on some of these climate and energy questions. If I go directly to Senator Roberts’s question, the unreliability of our current aging coal-fired power fleet is, as I cursorily read in the newspaper, what I think Minister Bowen was referring to. What is going on every single day is that there is an unplanned outage of one or more of these facilities. That unplanned redundancy causes additional cost, puts pressure on industry and reminds Australians that, under the previous government, with all of that uncertainty and all of that policy failure—I’ll come back and let you know, Senator Roberts, if I get this wrong—I think 24 out of 28 coal-fired power stations announced their closure. And what do we have from the Liberals and Nationals? Relitigation the same old nonsense that held Australia back—a $600 billion nuclear power plan and Mr Littleproud saying, ‘We should sweat these assets.’ If you went to some of these power stations in New South Wales, you would know that the only people that would say you should sweat that asset would be someone who had never been to one. (Time expired.)
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, a first supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: Coal power is base-load generation. It’s designed to run continuously, and when operated continuously electricity generation from coal is reliable and affordable. It only becomes intermittent and expensive when the generator is deliberately turned on and off all the time to give preference to what is really intermittent power: solar and wind. Minister, why is the government’s energy policy set to deliberately destroying base-load power—coal?
Senator AYRES: I suppose there are a number of responses, Senator Roberts. The first is that coal-fired power stations fail when there is a breakdown or planned maintenance. Now, planned maintenance is a good thing because you’re improving the capability of the asset. When an asset like that has gone on for so long that it can’t continue to function reliably—
Senator Canavan: Thanks for your TED talk.
Senator AYRES: Old ‘Koala Canavan’ over here!
The PRESIDENT: Senator Ayres, withdraw that remark.
Senator AYRES: I withdraw. But that is the problem. So we are moving to modernise the electricity system, to deliver the lowest-cost and most reliable approach—the Australian approach—and we won’t be deterred by imported ideas about political means and weird ideologies about the future of our electricity system.
The PRESIDENT: Thank you, Senator Ayres. Senator Roberts, second supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: According to the Australian Energy Regulator, the fourth quarter of 2024 saw the second-highest number of extreme electricity price events ever, with prices exceeding $5,000 per megawatt hour. This happens when baseload power generation is not in the mix. Instead, when run continuously, coal can run electricity at just $50 per megawatt hour. Minister, will you give Australians suffering from record high electricity prices are break and run our coal generators properly? (Time expired)
Senator AYRES: What this government will do is continue to modernise our electricity system in the interest of industry, in the interest of households, in the interest of future industry, because what we require in this country is additionality—more generation capacity and more transmission capability. The coalition and One Nation campaign against energy generation capability around Australia, wandering around complaining, whether it’s about koalas or that somehow offshore wind projects will be bad for whales. There are whales who go up and down the eastern Australian coast, dodging container ships and bulk carriers. Are they somehow going to door themselves on a stationary offshore wind tower? It is too silly for words. It’s too silly for words, sillier than a two-bob watch, and it’s imported, weird ideology coming from overseas that’s being used to try and stop progress right here in Australia.
The PRESIDENT: Thank you, Minister Ayres.
We don’t need these useless windmills and solar panels because Carbon Dioxide, a trace gas 0.04% of the atmosphere cannot possibly be the major driver of the climate plus human emissions 0.0005% are virtually invisible.
It is time to let all Australians know how their electricity bills are calculated and that on that basis, their electricity bills will continue to increase significantly for at least 10 to 15 years due to the “100% renewables” transition that the Labor Govt is pushing in a futile effort to reduce CO2 emmission (plant food)..
Once aware, there should be such an outcry that the Labor Governrnent may well be “forced” to reverse course on this insane push to 100% renewables.
I believe Australian’s electricity bills are made up of approx 35% in wholelsale electricity cost, approx 50% in paying off all subsidies capital expenditure on the electricity grid for repair or new expeniture (e.g. Renewables” rollout etc) and approx 15% other.
Even if the wholesale price could be halved the massive cost of the renewables push appears will more than offset any reduction in wholesale electricity price and bills will continue to increase signifcantly. Labor will not met emmission targets by 2030 let alone 2035 and in contuning to push the transition they are destroying Austalia.
People are struggling with electricity costs now what will it be like by the next election.
What a dismal failure by Senator Ayers to answer any of the questions. Do we pay him to sprout rubbish? What we need is people who can and will answer questions.