In their regular spot opposite each other on Nine News’ breakfast show, the deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, hits back that Dutton is “making stuff up here.”
At the end of last year, our intervention was about getting more gas into the east coast energy market. That’s what we were doing. Peter opposed it. That’s in the here and now. He can bang on about batteries. At the end of day, when there was an opportunity to act he opposed.
Marles emphasised that the interventions into the energy market meant that even though energy prices are going up, they are lower than what they would have been otherwise.
Another appalling piece of misreporting on energy this morning from the iMSM:
Dutton told the Today Show:
We want to see more gas in the system. What the government is doing here is turning off the old system before the new one is ready. That’s what’s driving up prices … and I think the government’s completely underestimating how much families and small businesses are hurting at the moment.
The government’s attacking the gas sector at the moment and reducing the amount of gas into the sector, the system, at a time when there is more demand. If you have got more demand for any commodity and you’re restricting supply, the price spikes.
What is actually happening is this:
- The east coast gas cartel that comprises Woodside, Santos, and Origin (plus foreign partners) are restricting gas supply so much that Labor’s $12Gj price caps have failed.
- Marles and Dutton are both lying about it.
- Gas is trading at $25Gj in NSW and SA, $21.19Gj in VIC, and $22 in Brisbane. These numbers are all available as daily averages from the AEMO here.
The spot electricity price is available at the same place:
Then click Average Price:
You cannot simply average all states in the NEM to get an average price. You must volume-weight it for that. But you can get the average price for each state trailing by 24 hours.
Then you can ask Labor MPs why their gas price caps have failed and what they are going to do about the skyrocketing electricity price that follows:
And ask LNP MPs why they are supporting a gas cartel that is artificially limiting supply given the price caps have only existed for a few months and will have had zero impact on current gas availability.
Not to mention that they no longer exist!
