Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Chisholm for her question. As I indicated to the House yesterday, the passage of the clean energy bills will unleash a lot of investment in clean energy generation and clean technology innovation. This is going to be critical to future growth in our productivity and our living standards. That is something that is well understood by economists around the world. However, there does appear to be some ignorance of the facts and of the economic benefits, by those opposite, about this. For example, on Monday, the Leader of the Opposition claimed the following:

There is no way on God’s earth that you can have a solar powered steel mill, just as there is no way on this earth you can have a wind powered manufacturing plant and anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.

That is what the Leader of the Opposition said. Unfortunately, this does ignore the facts and the evidence that these types of investments exist. For example, in Germany, BMW are currently building wind turbines at their Leipzig manufacturing plant that will provide the electricity to assemble hundreds of vehicles per day from 2013.

In the United Kingdom, Ford's diesel assembly plant is already completely wind powered—a manufacturing facility completely wind powered. Also in the United Kingdom, a Nissan auto plant currently has—

See this speech in context