Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Treasurer and the Minister for Resources and Energy launched the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy just one month ago, on 28 October 2009. This was indeed a very big day for Australia and for our shared future. The Centre for Renewable Energy is part of the Rudd government’s $4.5 billion Clean Energy Initiative. Its purpose is to facilitate investment in clean energy alternatives to the point of commercialisation. It consolidates several progressive programs that this government has already invested in separately and creates a one-stop shop for those with a view to investing in the nation’s future energy supply. Programs consolidated within the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy are the $300 million Renewable Energy Demonstration Program; the $15 million Second Generation Biofuels Research and Development Program; the $50 million Geothermal Drilling Program, which is a very big initiative in my home state of South Australia; the $20 million Advanced Electricity Storage Technologies Program; the $14 million Wind Energy Forecasting Capability Program; the $18 million Renewable Energy Equity Fund; and the $150 million for new initiatives including funding from the formerly proposed Clean Energy Program.

The purpose of theBill currently before us is to create the Australian Renewable Energy Centre board, establish its functions and processes, and create the position of its chief executive officer. This is pretty simple and pretty straightforward stuff but the public should be aware of the significance of this bill. It may be pretty simple and straightforward but it is a bill of significant importance. The substantial step forward that this parliament is making on behalf of the nation is in creating such a centre, because the options are extremely stark and of the deepest, most widespread and all-pervading consequence. Reduced to its simplest terms the fact is that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are affecting our climate. Some in the opposition say, ‘No, they’re not,’ but beyond that the debate quickly becomes bizarre and unproductive; a point that I will touch on directly. We all know of the posturing that has been going on in this place over the last year.

In short, there are those who are prepared to act on the global scientific consensus regarding our atmosphere and how it affects us—and there are those who are not. Those who are not prepared to accept the overwhelming scientific consensus that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are affecting our climate are a mixed bag of industries, industrialists and their lobbyists, publicity seekers, political adventurers, fearful conservatives, conspiracy theorists and so on. There are many conspiracy theorists out there. Then there are those who are just plain silly. For example, one senator the other day said that he likes carbon; he said, ‘We eat it, so we should want more in our atmosphere, not less.’ He also said, ‘Plants need carbon dioxide so we should give them more for their health. The more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere the better.’ Clearly, he is a senator who likes a little science—but only a little bit of science. Another senator just a day ago informed us that all the scientists have got it wrong: ‘The world isn’t warming, it’s cooling.’ Another senator who presumably wants more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere not less.

Some are saying that an international agreement on greenhouse gases will subvert our constitution, overthrow our governments, dash our nation state status, and make us all, including Australian parliaments, subservient to and run by faceless European bureaucrats. These are some of the outrageous things that we have been hearing. The highest level of the alternative government of this country has declared that the nerds of the world have taken over and that scientists are now radical left wing revolutionaries on the verge of overthrowing global capitalism. How alarmist! Less dangerous individuals say that we might expect to experience increased climate variability, but that people radically increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere surely cannot have anything to do with it. One scientist employed to confuse the community’s climate change education got on TV and said something along the lines of: ‘It would be nice to grow wine grapes in northern England, so if there is global warming it will be a good thing. Who doesn’t like wine grapes?’ Who indeed.

Finding a consistent argument, a stable position amongst those who are resisting actions, including those relevant to the bill we are debating here today, is a pretty difficult and terribly tiring task. The opponents of action, the types of action that this bill is designed to facilitate, have come out with the biggest load of disparate, puerile rubbish that I have ever encountered. But I am glad that the Australian public saw through all the flak and voted at the last election for the policy of taking science seriously, taking the observable facts seriously, and of course taking action in response to those facts seriously, changing our world and what we do to this world into the future, extremely seriously. The Australian people voted for a policy of combating climate change. Some members of the Australian parliament should get over their loss and acknowledge the fact and act in accordance with the public’s wishes.

This I am glad that the Leader of the Opposition has done, to his credit. As he said this morning, how can any 21st century party not have a position on climate change? This was the Leader of the Opposition. What we are working towards is of course the minimisation of harm to the environment in which we live and on which we rely. Beyond the global science, beyond gaining a position on some sort of equilibrium within our environment, we are actually looking at an astronomical shift in technology, a shift that will mark a new period in human existence.

Mr Deputy Speaker Thomson, the uptake of new technologies and new sources of power will replace to an extent over time some sources of power that have been around since pre-Victorian times, using new methods instead of those that marked the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution hundreds of years ago. This is the era that we are approaching. We have had radical changes in communication technologies, almost inconceivable changes, within the period of our lifetime. We have had radical changes in medicine and improvements in our understanding of the makeup and sustenance of life within one lifetime. But people seem intent on us relying on the humble, old systems to power our mega-cities, our hospitals, laboratories and operating theatres, our global digital communications networks and our homes.

Human inventiveness is so much more than this. The assistance delivered by this government and this minister and coordinated by the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy open up energy options of enormous potential for this country. A vast variety might be explored and some developed up to commercial scale. We have scientists developing algae for the extraction of oil for biofuel at the South Australian Research and Development Institute located at West Beach, right in the middle of the electorate of Hindmarsh. A little over a week ago they officially opened their bioreactor, a plant to grow the algae they have painstakingly selected from thousands of alternatives for its high oil content. The bioreactor will help them develop their technology to the point of the construction of a demonstration plant in Adelaide’s western region in my electorate. This is one area in which people are working, inventing and creating—using, in this case, little more than seawater and sunlight over unproductive land for the sustainable production of oil for fuel.

The benefits of projects such as this to my electorate, to South Australia and to Australia as a nation and beyond are potentially enormous. Natural resources such as our ocean and sunlight; our interior, which contains huge hot rock resources; our latitude; and our exposure to wind and currents are the things with which we are blessed, things that offer us so much potential in this area. I want to commend the people exploring these options and doing the research and the pilot projects—the scientists, the engineers, the start-ups, the investors—who collectively paint a picture of a dynamic and exciting future for all of us now and into the next period of human development. I commend the bill, its purpose and objects, to the House.

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