Turnbull's new approach to electricity: smoke and mirrors

No modellers forecast that prices would double from their 2015 $40 per MWh to current prices of $80 – You get what you pay for!!

In turning to the ACCC, Turnbull is relying on an institution with a predilection for the sort of intervention he favours and led by a long-standing ALP careerist.

In its report on the electricity market the ACCC has some useful proposals:

• Break up AGL and force it to sell the Liddell facility, which it wants to close so that high wholesale prices are ensured
• Cease subsidising roof top generation (though only from 2021 and not immediately)
• Re-establish low cost generation, the market provision of which subsidies to its competition have undermined, by tenders for a long term government contract; (though it wants all current significant operators to be ineligible)
• Scrutiny of new transmission links (in contrast to the Australian Energy Market Regulator's Integrated System Plan which foreshadows the building of 30 plus new linkages to new wind/solar regions).

But the ACCC's market meddling is less productive in other measures, including those which foreshadow:

• Forcing retailers to offer a "low priced default" tariffs, the oversight of which would mean price controls
• Preventing retailer/generator linkages – these are simply a different way of contracting to defray risk and are therefore pro-consumer
• Funding for qangos to provide customers price advice and for "efficiency audits"
• Increased bureaucratic oversight over electricity contracts.

The fact is that Turnbull cannot be trusted to carry out the changes he is hinting at when they undermine his basic philosophy. He will torture words and devise seemingly ameliorative policy platforms. But these will simply be superficial actions to dampen criticism while he continues towards his objectives.