Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull calls for urgent action to resolve a crisis, warning that the measure will be “bitterly resentful”.
Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has called on the Albanian government to work with states to impose controls on gas exports.
Turnbull said the LNG giants would capitulate quickly and find cheaper gas to solve the energy crisis in the eastern states.
“This will mean imposing force majeure on contracts,” he told ABC Radio on Monday.
“The industry will be bitterly resentful … but we have a crisis right now, and we hope it doesn’t last too long.
“The moment they say they will, the gas companies will find the gas … they will agree to offer it at lower prices.”
Turnbull called on the government to work with states and the National Energy Market to impose volume controls and gas export prices over a 90-day period.
“In other words, make sure all the gas we need is available here,” Turnbull said.
Turnbull said the last thing the gas companies wanted was the precedent of imposing regulation.
“But unless you’re prepared to look them down … we’ll have the situation where we’ll have electricity prices or wholesale prices of $ 400 per megawatt hour and more,” he said.
The former prime minister also defended the so-called “gas trigger” created under his government in 2017, which Labor wants to review.
“It was designed to deal with a different problem at a different time and it worked,” Turnbull said.
“It wasn’t useless, it was very useful.”