Labor says Coalition’s proposal to keep Liddell open until 2022 won’t be taken seriously by electricity company’s board and PM left looking ‘silly and isolated’

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Labor has accused Malcolm Turnbull of bullying the boss of electricity company AGL into agreeing to consider to extend the life of its ageing Liddell coal-fired power station for another five years.



Joel Fitzgibbon, the shadow minister for rural and regional Australia, says AGL has had a well-publicised plan to close the 45-year-old power station by 2022 and transition to cleaner forms of energy.

But after meeting with Turnbull in Canberra on Monday, the chief executive of AGL, Andy Vesey, has agreed to take a proposal to his board to either sell the Liddell plant to someone else or keep it open for another five years, by which time it would be 55 years old.

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The Turnbull government was keenly spruiking the agreement on Tuesday, saying it shows the Coalition is serious about preventing future blackouts and energy price rises.

But Fitzgibbon says the proposal to keep Liddell open until 2022 will not be taken seriously by AGL’s board, and the prime minister has been left looking “silly and isolated”.

“I think Andy Vesey was bullied into taking the proposal to his board and I believe his board will say, ‘No, why are we doing this?,” Fitzgibbon told the ABC on Tuesday.

“Of course when the prime minister stares you down and says, ‘Won’t you at least take this back to your board?’, of course you say yes.

“But I think we all know what the result will be.

“It’s interesting isn’t it, the Liberal party in Australia is now the party of market intervention and the anti-business party.

“You’ve got Craig Kelly and Matt Canavan and others out there demonising Andy Vesey and AGL, but this is the company that’s promising to invest $2bn into the energy sector, largely into future renewables.”

The treasurer, Scott Morrison, said AGL would now be considering the proposal to keep its Liddell power plant open for another five years to 2027, by which time it would be 55 years old.

He also criticised AGL for claiming the power plant was becoming too old and unreliable.

“They would say that,” Morrison told Channel 7. “I’m older than it [is and I am] still doing alright.

“They are the current owners. They have an interest in their position in the energy market. We have to take that with a grain of salt.”

After his appearance on Channel 7, Morrison walked into the Sky News studios for another interview, saying Liddell would also be coming back within 90 days with a plan detailing how it would supply the electricity market with reliable power if it retired Liddell in 2022.

“It’s got to be affordable and reliable [energy],” he said. “We’ve had some bad experiences so far with people saying ‘she’ll be right, mate’ when it comes to this stuff.

“When you’ve got existing assets that are there and can be used, and are providing a lot of jobs and support in regional communities, then we’re not going to allow the rug to be pulled from that, because of either the commercial interests of a large energy company or anything else.”

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Earlier this year, the financial regulator warned that climate change posed a material risk to the entire financial system, urging companies to start adapting.

Last year Sydney silk Noel Hutley warned that directors who didn’t properly consider the material impacts of climate change on their business risked personal liability for breach of duty.

On Monday, the Turnbull government announced it was overturning a ban on government-backed loans to domestic miners because of the increasing unwillingness of Australia’s banks to fund major coal projects.

Steve Ciobo, the minister for trade, says protesters and activist groups have so discouraged Australia’s retail banks from financing “otherwise viable exporters in the coal sector” that the government must to step in to fund a growing “market gap”.