AGL wants to have its cake and eat it too, says Josh Frydenberg - politics live

Ministers continue to push coal as the future, despite AGL boss Andy Vesey tempering their enthusiasm, as energy continues to dominate the political agenda. Follow all today's developments 11.26pm BST The marriage equality postal survey forms will begin popping up in letter boxes soon, with the mail out due to begin today. The ABS has kept the form simple - it's a mark the box system, which should stop any arguments over whether a tick is a cross or just a squiggle. Michael Koziol has reported on a Fairfax Ipos poll which found of the 65 per cent of respondents who were certain to take part in the survey, 70 per cent planned on voting 'yes.' 11.21pm BST Good morning and welcome to Tuesday.We start the morning much as we have for the past few weeks - with the government consumed by energy policy, but hampered by outside factors.inclined to stick with a previously telegraphed plan to develop gas peaking plant, pumped hydro and batteries, as well as a demand response, to deal with the shortfall in NSW once the plant closes.The key point here is that we have a report from the Australian Energy Market Operator, which indicates that were Liddell to close in 2022, as scheduled, there would be a supply shortfall of 1,000 megawatts in the market. So our first responsibility is to help stabilise the system and ensure affordable power. There's no other option on the table, although AGL does want to work out and work up other options, but the current option on the table is to keep Liddell open or to sell it to another party as Andy Vesey has indicated previously. Continue reading...