Turnbull urges gas price, volume limits

Andrew Brown | June 13, 2022

Malcolm Turnbull says the Albanese government should consider bringing in gas price and volume controls for 90 days in a bid to deal with the short-term energy crisis.

The former prime minister said he expected the gas export industry would push back.

But he said the controls – put in place with the backing of the states – were necessary to deal with pressure on supply and prices created by the “perfect storm” of an explosion in the international gas price, outages at coal-fired power stations and a very cold winter.

“We have a crisis at the moment … they should be decisive today as I was,” Mr Turnbull told the ABC on Monday.

“The minute they say they’re going to do it, the gas companies will find the gas and agree to offer it at lower prices.

“Unless you’re prepared to stare them down … we’ll have wholesale prices at $400 a megawatt and higher.”

The former prime minister also defended his government’s implementation of a trigger mechanism designed to shore up national gas supplies.

The mechanism is now being reviewed by the Labor government, following an energy ministers’ meeting last week.

“It was designed to deal with a different problem at a different time and it worked, so it wasn’t useless, it was very useful,” Mr Turnbull said.

“We were being asked to pay more for our own gas than was being sold to people in Japan, so I intervened. It was very controversial at the time.”

The gas trigger mechanism forces gas companies to limit exports if there are severe shortages in the domestic supply.

Resources Minister Madeleine King said nothing was off the table under the review to find ways to solve the current shortage, which is pushing up power costs.

With the mechanism set to expire in January, Ms King said the government had agreed to renew it so it could be used at a later point if needed.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said the current energy market issues were the fault of the previous Morrison government.

“There are things that people have agreed with Chris Bowen on, allowing the market operator to buy and store gas,” she told the Seven Network.

“I’m not sure why in almost a decade in power the previous government didn’t do that. The big problem that we have now is caused by almost a decade of denial and delay.”

Nationals leader David Littleproud said the junior coalition partner wanted to be constructive when it came to the debate surrounding energy.

However he refuted claims from Labor the previous coalition government had overseen nine years of inaction in the sector.

“We were on a trajectory of putting more gas into the system to support the renewables that have come in,” he told Sky News on Monday.

“You do need that baseload power, and that’s why we’re saying let’s have a conversation about what that looks like.”

Mr Littleproud said new technology needed to be explored, including hydrogen and small-scale nuclear, but greater public education and awareness was needed.

“Eighteen months ago, the electorate didn’t see nuclear as necessary because they didn’t need it because we had coal-fired power stations that were producing reliable energy and cheap energy,” he said.

“The nuclear conversation is one that we’re going to have to have at some point … (but we need to) educate before you legislate.”