media watch, page-47

Got this from the guys on the MEL thread.

Rudd keen on CSG.

http://www.afr.com/p/national/rudd_plan_targets_power_prices_CxfT2zO0JufHK5gJ2fnmCP

Lower energy prices through increased coal seam gas production and changes to the regulation of power prices will be pivotal to a seven-point productivity plan Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will take to the election.

The plan would require business and unions to work together in an Accord-style “pact” to boost productivity beyond the mining boom.

The push to boost coal seam gas will include less environmental regulation, pushing NSW to fast-track approval of two major developments and leaning on the Victorian government to lift an exploration moratorium.

Sources said the renewed push on power price regulation would most likely involve a post-election move to pressure NSW and Queensland to ­privatise their power assets and introduce retail competition.

Cabinet is discussing how to move the fixed carbon price to a much lower floating price on July 1, 2014, a year earlier than forecast.

In his first major speech since returning as Labor leader, Mr Rudd swung Labor’s policy pendulum back towards the business community and alarmed green groups as he identified energy prices as the No.?1 impediment to productivity and said he would look at streamlining the environmental approval process and reduce other ­regulations.

He took a swipe at the tactics of his predecessor, Julia Gillard, under whom relations with the business community plummeted, by saying he had worked hard over the past two weeks to forge a common productivity agenda between unions and business.

“I have done so because I have never believed in class warfare,’’ he said.

Mr Rudd told the National Press Club on Thursday that the “Chinese resources boom was over’’ and that all parties must embrace a new “national competitiveness agenda’’ to achieve an annual increase in productivity of at least 2 per cent.

Concerns on high costs

“Australia is now an economy in transition, a transition from the previous decade of the China resources boom,’’ he said. “To the decade ahead where we must now diversify our economy so that we don’t have all our eggs in one basket.’’

He acknowledged concerns such groups as the Business Council of Australia have been voicing for months about the costs of operating domestically, saying unless his agenda was embraced, “there is a danger that Australia will begin to price itself out of international business’’.

Mr Rudd’s plan adopts two Coalitions policies. One is reducing so-called green tape by streamlining the environmental approval process to remove duplication between state and federal government processes, something Ms Gillard promised and abandoned.

The Australian Financial Review revealed last week NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell wrote to Mr Rudd urging he revisit the issue. Mr Rudd said he had since had discussions with him.

The other is industrial relations changes to respond to “unintended rigidities’’. This includes taking the upper hand from unions when dictating wages and conditions that would apply to new developments, in particular giant resources projects.

“These projects reflect to the world the broader industrial, regulatory and investment circumstances existing in this country. We need to make them work and work well,’’ he said.

Mr Rudd also flagged boosting education, skills and training, embracing new forms of infrastructure funding, improving the operating environment for small business, including facilitating its access to capital, and lifting business productivity. Mr Rudd said the business community must accept its share of the blame.

He cited the lack of trade and investment in the rapidly emerging power of Indonesia as a “classic example’’.

“This is a problem for Australian enterprise, not a problem created by Australian unions,’’ he said.

Gillard made little progress on power prices

The focus was power and gas prices. He said electricity prices were too high by global standards and the government would revisit the issue of gold-plating, where regulation has “allowed excessive rates of return for publicly owned transmission and distribution utilities, which have become cash cows for various state and territory governments’’.

Ms Gillard tried to force reform in the area last year but made little progress.

As well as pushing for privatisation, changes to the carbon price and possibly the Renewable Energy Target are on the agenda.

With people complaining about ­spiralling gas prices, driven largely by export demand, Mr Rudd said “reforms are needed for the supply of competitively priced gas for Australian businesses and households’’.

Government sources said prices would be pushed down by boosting extraction of coal seam gas and cited two stalled projects in NSW, one at Gloucester and one at Pilliga Forest.

BCA president Tony Shepherd welcomed Mr Rudd’s speech and said action was needed. “The first step the government can take to ease this burden is to lower the carbon price to the international level and wind back the RET,” he said.

A spokesman for the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association, Michael Bradley, said “dramatic change’’ was required to boost gas production and lower prices.

“As things stand, the increasing weight of the industry’s inefficient and duplicative regulatory burden, is both driving up costs and actively impeding the industry’s ability to access much needed new supplies,’’ he said.

“In fact, rescinding one of the last pieces of legislation passed during the final sitting fortnight of June – the government’s EPBC Act ‘water trigger’ – would be a good start. It would also be in line with the green tape reduction commitments of recent times.”