Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

We particularly enjoy the interventions of the member for Flinders. As we know, he comes from a political party which constantly champions the cause of climate change. He has risen as a real leader amidst their ranks; hence the decisive policy they took on carbon pollution reduction last week and hence the decisive actions on boosting the renewable energy target when they had the opportunity to do so in government. In fact, his voice has counted for nothing.

Let us look at what companies had to say during the period when those opposite were in office. Look at what Roaring 40s had to say, for example, when they announced in 2006 that they were stopping work at Heemskirk in Tasmania and Waterloo in South Australia because of poor government support and a failure to increase the MRET. In May 2007, they said:

Without an increase in the initial [renewable energy] target level, electricity retailers are reluctant to commit to long-term REC deals which are crucial in financing renewable energy targets. Further substantial investment in the renewable energy industry is unlikely without an increase in the target.

That is the Roaring 40s company. From Pacific Hydro, in February 2007, there was a similar statement. Furthermore, the Vestas Nacelle company’s operations in Tasmania were affected by the absence of sufficient support by the previous government for renewable energy. But this one really gets me: Global Renewables, an Australian company, announced in March 2007 a $5 billion deal to cut greenhouse pollution in the UK because they could not get support for their technology here in Australia. The quote from them at the time is along the lines of:

In Australia there is no incentive to invest in our technology compared to cheaper options … which effectively allow polluting for free. We had to go to a jurisdiction that recognised our contribution to taking greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.

The member for Flinders protesteth too much. This is what these companies had to say not about what the previous government said but about what the previous government did or failed to do. That is the record and it is not just in terms of the individual stories of those individual companies; it is what the cumulative effect of that was, as the honourable member indicated in his answer before, of the overall decline in actual renewable energy generation during the period in which they were in office between 1997 and 2007. Hence the course of action we have before us now with the renewable energy target legislation which we have put forward.

See this speech in context