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Category: Electricity Energy and Utilities / Industry / Business, Economics and Finance / Federal Parliament / Parliament / Government and Politics

Nationals and Labor MPs teaming up to tackle electricity grid problems

Tuesday, 28 Feb 2017 09:43:24 | Uma Patel And Sabra Lane

The cross-party inquiry will look at modernising the power grid. (Pexels.com)

Two unlikely allies are trying to push aside the political rancour in the electricity debate to find solutions to problems plaguing the grid.

Nationals MP Andrew Broad, who chairs the House of Representatives Standing Committee on the Environment and Energy Coalition, and Labor MP Pat Conroy, the committee's deputy chair, are launching a new inquiry into modernising the power grid.

Speaking to the ABC, Mr Broad said he hoped the cross-party work would "instil some confidence back in the Australian people that Parliament can work".

The Coalition and Labor have both blamed each other's policies for the blackouts in South Australia and New South Wales, but the two backbenchers say they want to work together to adapt the grid to deal with new sources of energy.

"I'm hoping that this will be a first stepping stone to breaking through the partisan gridlock and say this is an example of Parliament working together to help solve the energy crisis we're currently facing," Mr Conroy said.

"At the end of the day, technology is going to take us in a direction that we never thought fathomable with battery technology, with wind, with solar, with stored and pumped hydro but also with clean coal," Mr Broad added.

"But our current grid is not set up for that."

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Mr Broad said he and Mr Conroy were looking for answers from outside politics and were asking the public for help.

"What we want is ideas, this will be quite a technical process, there will be a survey people can fill in. We're talking to a lot of key stakeholders but really we're going to try and learn from what some of the other countries are doing," he said.

The Nationals MP pointed to different approaches in the United States such as a market-based approach or a regulatory-based approach.

The committee will examine how renewable energy is affecting the power grid, but not whether an emissions intensity scheme is appropriate.

Labor has accused the Government of failing to address climate change by not pricing carbon.

The Coalition has accused Labor of pushing for higher energy prices by supporting emissions trading and an ambitious renewable energy target scheme, but Mr Broad said that was not the only issue affecting power bills.

"A lot of that is in the management of the grid and I suppose if we can have a pretty good look at that, we're hoping to have a role that puts downward pressure on power prices," he said.

Nationals and Labor MPs teaming up to tackle electricity grid problems

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