Electricity—Cost-effective and reliable delivery

13 November 2025

Motion

Hon Dr Steve Thomas (10:02 am) without notice: It is with enormous enthusiasm that I move:

That the Legislative Council acknowledges that the Labor government:

(1) has failed to provide reliable and cost-effective electricity to large sections of the Western Australian community;

(2) has failed to deliver a viable plan to deliver reliable and cost-effective electricity in coming years;

(3) has largely wasted the last five years by providing little progress in any viable future energy plan, having delivered negligible new generation or transmission during that period; and

(4) has tried to cover up its incompetence and keep secret the failings of its energy entities to the detriment of the WA community.

Hon Stephen Dawson: Yes—shame!

Hon Dr Steve Thomas: I appreciate the enthusiasm of the Leader of the House in this, and he is resplendent in his blue suit today—well done! It is a Thursday morning and I thought, just to be a little bit different, I would try to be very cooperative, because I am an enthusiastic optimist at heart and someone who believes in the future. I am going to start and finish this presentation with a bit of positivity, and I am sure that members opposite will appreciate that.

Let me start by saying this: the joy in the state of Western Australia is that the Labor Party and the Liberal Party agree on about 80% of energy policy and where the energy system is going to go in Western Australia at a state level, so well done. We disagree on the 20% that the government has got wrong, but for 80% we have some commonality. Just briefly, what does that look like? We all accept that we are going to get out of coal-fired generation in Western Australia, largely because it is uneconomic into the future and we know that it is going to disappear. We are arguing about the timeframes because the government has an entirely unreliable and unworkable timeframe in place. The government is not good at timeframes, and we will come to that in a bit more detail in a minute. We understand that we are going to end up at the same point. We are going to do it probably by 2035 or 2036, and the reason we will do it that way is that we will actually keep the lights on, whereas the Labor Party would quite happily have us stumbling around in the dark. That is important. But we will meet on these things, so that is really good. That is a positive thing. It is positive, because when we talk to industry in Western Australia about the energy policy differentials at a state and federal level, they say that at least it is a constructive debate at a state level and that we will end of up in a reasonably good position. We know where the Labor Party has got it wrong, but at least we are heading down a similar path. Well done, government. That is a very positive component for the first step. I think that is really good.

We will have other sections in common as well. I released the Liberal energy policy in May last year, before the last election. I hope members opposite have a copy—excellent! I hope Hon Dan Caddy has read it, because he might learn something.

Hon Dan Caddy: It's a pretty easy read; it's only one page.

Hon Dr Steve Thomas: I am hoping to educate him. I am an optimist; I believe that he may be educated. Let us look forward to that with positivity.

What did we say at that point? It was that we would keep coal for as long required to keep the lights on and where possible—not all those coal stations can go on—and we would then add additional gas generation. We can imagine the outrage and furore of the Western Australian Labor Party when we said that we would keep coal a bit longer. Oh, we are dinosaurs! We said we would build some more gas. We committed to building 300 megawatts of additional gas. That is in the policy; it should be on about page 4, I think, Hon Dan Caddy. We said we would build some gas. What has the Labor Party said? It has said that it will close coal. Its timeframe is wrong and the lights will go out, but anyway. But what has it said will happen to the generation system in Western Australia? You guys are backing additional gas—well done! They have woken up. That is positive. I think that is a really positive thing. The Minister for the Environment will fairly soon tick off the proposal to add 250 megawatts of gas to an existing gas generator in Perth. Well done; I am going to back the minister on that. I hope he does it with an apology after all the furore from the Labor Party previously. That is great. That is not the only proposal. We were going to keep the lights on in Western Australia. The Labor Party is going to follow the Liberal Party energy policy. It is brilliant! Well done! Congratulations! I think that is great. The government will probably end up extending coal-fired generation as well.

The issue is going to be that we have to have enough dispatchable energy in the system. Interestingly, under the plan that the Labor Party put out, it was going to close down the Muja 6 unit before the state election. That was before it realised that the lights would go out. How did Muja 6 go over last summer, Hon Dan Caddy? It was going flat stick. If the government had closed it under its original timeframe, it would have fallen flat on its, let us say, face, because we are being polite today, President. It would have fallen flat on its face because it would not have managed the energy system. It closed it one month after the election. Ultimately, it is going to close the Collie A unit in October 2027 and the last two Muja units in 2029.

Interestingly, the government has changed its tune on the privately generated Bluewaters. For years, government members have said that Bluewaters will be closed on the same timeframe as Collie A. It sent that to AEMO and AEMO wrote it into last year's energy plan. AEMO—the Australian Energy Market Operator—wrote that closure in. Suddenly, the government had to eat some humble pie and go, "Oh, actually, we're not going to do that. I don't think we're going to manage that." Then the government—the Premier, in particular, and the hapless energy minister—came out and said, "We never actually said that." Unfortunately for the Premier, I have him on Hansard saying that. They said, "Oh no, we actually never said that we would close down Bluewaters coal-fired power station." That provides roughly 215 megawatts in each station, so it is a bit over 400 megawatts if it is going. They said that they did not mean that, so it will continue. It has to. Well done government; it is learning. I am optimistic that the government can learn. It can improve its performance, but it has a very long way to go. Well done. Coal for longer—congratulations. I should charge the government a fee. There should be royalties on this. It is adopting the Liberal energy policy, which is great. There will be additional gas—well done. The government has adopted the Liberal energy policy on that. That is absolutely fantastic. If the government keeps adopting the Liberal energy policy, it might have a chance to keep the lights on going forward. That would be a good outcome, minister. I think that is good, but the government has a long way to go.

Where are we short, and why does the government's current plan fail? It fails because it has wasted the last five years by not getting on with generation or getting the transmission lines in place. How is the whole-of-system plan going? The Leader of the House and I have talked about this in this house. He said that the whole-of-system plan should be out by the end of the year and that it is coming by the end of the year. Honourable members, the first one was in 2020. The Labor Party then announced the closure of coal, so it said it would revamp the plan and that it would come out in 2023. It could not get it out in 2023 because it was just bumbling around in the dark, so we were told that the statutory review was due by the end of September 2025. That is the actual statutory review time. We have talked about this all year. I have asked when the whole-of-system plan would be coming out. Why is that important? It is because the whole-of-system plan will tell us how the energy system will work into the future. The government has released half a transmission plan. All it has done is reinforce the Clean Energy Links. That is fine. It has not even fully funded Clean Energy Link–North. That will be more than $1.2 billion and is probably going to take the government five years to build. Guess what? The government is already past its own timeframes; they have fallen apart.

This was interesting. At the end of September, a few days before the statutory regulatory review of the whole-of-system plan was due out—not just the transmission plan but the whole-of-system plan, which includes generation, storage and all those things—the government sneaked out a little mention in the Government Gazette. It said almost nothing, except that the Electricity Industry Act, Electricity Industry (Electricity System and Market) Regulations 2004 and Electricity System and Market Rules, which were due on 27 September 2025, had been updated. For those who bothered to read this document on the website of the Department of Energy and Economic Diversification—I will seek leave to table some of this in a minute—paragraph 4.5A.2 on page 413 of this 966-page document, under the heading "Whole of System Plan", states:

The Coordinator must prepare and publish a Whole of System Plan by 30 September 2027 and then at least once every five years thereafter.

On page 413 of a 966-page document, the government tried to sneak through the fact that it has not been able to deliver a whole-of-system plan. The Coordinator of Energy sent out an email to a select number of trusted businesses—I suspect he thought they would not actually pass this on—and said that the government had extended it for two years and would not deliver it much before the new deadline. It is seven years since we have seen a plan—seven years to deliver what the energy system of this state is going to look like—and the government has just had to defer it beyond the statutory requirement because it cannot do the job. It cannot plan. The funny thing is that the government is actually going through this transition and closing down coal before the plan is written. Well, it is saying that it will close down all these coal-fired power stations; it will close some of them down. It is like building a house and having no idea what the walls and the roof are going to look like but pouring the foundations anyway. That is really good. It has no idea and no capacity to deliver a plan.

Not only is it not delivering reliable energy, but also it is not delivering a plan for reliable energy. How is it not delivering reliable and affordable energy? This is really interesting; members should note this, because we are going to spend a lot of next year doing this. I am sure Hon Dan Caddy is looking forward to it. Residential and small users in the non-contestable market have increases that are put into the budget; they have been at about 2.5% a year. Everybody says, "We can manage 2.5% a year." There is a bit of screaming, but 2.5% a year is about inflation. What is happening in the contestable market to prop up the failure and the economic losses of this government? Businesses in the contestable market—the market that uses more than 50,000 kilowatt hours a year, 50 megawatt hours a year—get new contracts every two years. Everyone I have seen in the last year and a half to date have had their prices go up by between 25% and 45% on their two-year contracts. If a business has a $100,000 contract for energy for its supermarket to supply vegetables and food to people, its power bill will go up $40,000. Businesses are furious. Here is the cunning of the government, of course. It says that it has kept household energy prices low and that the actual energy bill that people are paying is low, but the farmer who is producing our food is paying 25% to 45% higher if he or she has a cold store, so they have to put up their price, if they can, to match that. The produce then goes to the wholesale market, and they not only have to pay more; their power bill is up by 25% to 45%. The power bill has increased for not only the farmer, but also the wholesaler; then it goes to the supermarket. We have this cascading effect of 25% to 45% up at production, 25% to 45% up in processing, plus absorbing the originals. We get to the supermarket and it is 25% to 45% up and then taking on the two steps prior to that.

I do not know how many members of Parliament shop—I do. I can tell members it is a pretty scary experience. I can tell members that constituents do, too. They go out there and they look around and say, "Holy mackerel!" How many constituents have said to members that food prices are through the roof? They can go and shake the hand of the Labor government for that. Their food prices are through the roof because power prices are through the roof. It is absolutely astounding. I have been to places where the beer is up 50c a drink because they have to absorb a 40% energy crisis.

Hon Dan Caddy: Lucky you're a wine drinker.

Hon Dr Steve Thomas: I am both; do not worry. After 35 years in the veterinary trade, I will drink just about anything, Hon Dan Caddy.

The reality is that beer prices are up, as are vegetables and fruit. I have a producer who stopped one of his production lines because he could not afford the energy costs on a vegetable that had highly competitive pricing. He was competing against imports, but he actually shut down that line. That is food that is not being produced in Western Australia, so the importers get to push up their price a bit further. This is a cascading effect. The government has not managed to provide affordable energy.

I am sure other members will talk about energy reliability. I will tell them they have some disasters on their hands, particularly in places like Kalgoorlie, where the government has been unable to manage for a long time. There is a bit of hope, although I am hearing that the vanadium batteries have a few issues out there, but we will see what happens. We will hold the government to account for that. Service supply in Kalgoorlie is terrible. In the last month, I asked a question about Augusta's service, as supply there is terrible as well. Other members can talk about exactly how bad it is in their own electorates. The government has not managed to provide cost-effective electricity. It has not managed to plan to deliver cost-effective electricity, which is critically important.

We have spoken about it here before. The government has not invested in the renewable energy sources that it says it is going to. Even if we want to believe that all this renewable energy is going to come in, particularly in wind farms, the government is barely buying any. Its plan is for 810 megawatts, and it has not even delivered any of that. If that is the best we can hope for, we are still through the planning and approval stages, and we have been doing that for five years.

Of course, there are massive proposals out there in the private sector for wind generation; that is absolutely the case. There must be 60 gigawatts or 80 gigawatts of it, but here is the amazing thing. I like the Premier. He seems like a really nice fellow, Hon Roger Cook. He went to a meeting and lambasted industry for not signing up to offtake agreements for wind farms and all these proponents out there of these 60 gigawatts or 80 gigawatts. He lambasted industry. The government is not signing up to them!

The government has a cunning plan, right? This is where the government is going to fall over. The government has a cunning plan, and whoever is advising it on this should be sacked. The government is saying, "You have 60 or 80 gigawatt proposals out there. They will all get built and you will not have to invest in that. When you need energy, we'll just buy bits here and there from the wind turbines that are generating." The government has no idea what business looks like. It needs to provide offtake agreements. The Premier has worked this out, and he is lambasting industry for not buying offtake agreements from renewable energy projects, but neither is the government! The biggest purchaser in the state, the government, is not buying them either. The government has this half-baked system in place in which it thinks industry is going buy these, but there is no offtake agreement to deliver them. A lot of these wind proponents go knocking on the doors of businesses, and when businesses ask how much they will produce the energy for, these proponents say that they will get it to businesses for $120 or so a megawatt hour, but not to worry because in 10 years time they will get it down to $60 a megawatt hour. Business says, "That is great. Come back and offer us a contract for $60 in 10 years time because it has no value to us now."

The government has not worked out the price of this, and it has not delivered any significant additional generation capacity. Hon Dr Brad Pettitt and I have agreed on this for a few years. The government has faffed around, waiting for projects to be delivered, but it has delivered next to nothing itself. It is too late now. We are four years away, in theory, from the closure of the last coal-fired power stations. That is longer than the average approval and construction time for wind turbines, even before we get to the delivery of the transmission infrastructure required to connect them. However, we do have a little bit of information on that now. The transmission plan vaguely says that the Clean Energy Link–north project is under construction, and it will think a bit about the Clean Energy Link–south, which is under construction east of Collie, probably with a particular wind project out there. The northern wind projects will be all right, and everybody else will get it somewhere in the 2030s! If the government's plan is to have this in place by 2030, its own plan is out of date. It has not even dropped the whole-of-system plan, and it will be two years before we see that. The government has no idea where this is going to end up.

The government believes its own media releases in which it states that everything is all right because the private sector is going to run in and save the day. I am all for private sector investment, minister. The Labor strategy of privatisation by stealth is a pretty good one—I do not actually mind it. That is what the Labor Party is doing. It will keep transmission lines. It cannot get them out in the North West, though, and that is the other thing. The whole-of-system plan is two years away, but do not worry. The Pilbara transition plan up in the minister's patch is also out of date before it starts. The government put out an expression of interest offer for people to put renewable energy into the North West Interconnected System last week, but it does not have a plan in place to tell people where to put it. It has no idea. There is $3 billion available from the federal Rewiring the Nation Fund. When I asked the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, it said that the state government is driving this and is talking to four proponents.

It was in a question I asked this week—look it up! The government is talking to four proponents, one of which has already had all its major proponents walk away from it. The government is so up to date that BP and crew have walked away from their proposed big hub, but the government is still talking. It has no idea where or how this is going to be delivered. How is the government operating? It cannot even get its bills out in a timely, accurate and efficient manner.

I will finish with this. This issue goes back well before this government, so I am going to finish on a positive note, minister. This issue goes well back before his government—I understand that. But I do not understand why the minister's government kept it secret, because it first found out about it in the first part of the process in December last year. The minister was briefed for the first time, I think, in March this year. The government tried to keep it secret for political purposes. If he, as the Minister for Energy and Decarbonisation, had walked out and said, "We've got a problem. Check your bills", he would have given me no ammunition. As it is, the government has embarrassed itself because it was not honest.