Australia news live updates: Aemo suspends wholesale electricity market; Labor campaign director explains election win

Another day of monitoring energy flows within and between states.

One thing, though, needs to be cleared up. The Australia Energy Regulator, along with other members of the Energy Security Board, will be meeting with generators to discuss the strained market.

Energy ministers are NOT expected to take part, an AER spokesperson has just clarified with the Guardian. (Clare Savage, AER’s chair, made comments on radio this morning which may have implied ministers would be tuning in, but that’s not the case – for now at least.)

Meanwhile, in the market itself, there are no updates yet of the status of level 3 lack of reserve warnings for each of the five states within the National Electricity Market from the Australian Energy Markets Operator.

First thing this morning, Aemo said it had “successfully directed generators, which hadn’t bid into the market, to be available”.

In another hint of the arm-twisting going on, the regulator said today:

Today, AEMO continues to encourage generators across the NEM through our lack of reserve (LOR) notices in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia to bid their availability into the market, rather than being directed to do so.

(The underlining was in the original statement, to underscore the point, presumably.)

Anyway, ahead of today’s regulators and generators’ meeting Electrical Trades Union has blasted “10 years of regulatory neglect” and called for an immediate review of the regulatory frameworks that make up the Nem.

ETU’s Queensland state secretary Peter Ong said “these warnings of blackouts and supply shortages are symptomatic of private energy companies gaming a system that

has for years had plenty of acronyms and boards but very little actual regulation”. (He’s right they do have a lot of acronyms.) Ong said:

Australia is one of the world’s leading coal and gas producers, yet we have the absurd situation where we are held to ransom by multinational, tax-avoiding, gas companies who export massive amounts of gas at exorbitant prices while withholding supply to maximise profit in eastern Australia. While we also have coal companies exporting large quantities overseas rather than providing it to generate power.

We urge [Queensland energy minister Mick] de Brenni to call on the federal government to undertake an immediate review of Australia’s broken National Electricity Market that is responsible for this ongoing crisis.

Secondly, we call on the state government to use the upcoming budget and energy lan to accelerate construction of public-owned renewable generation and storage assets.