Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on Australian Renewable Energy Agency Bill 2011 and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2011. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency Bill 2011 establishes the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, known as ARENA—I do not know where they got the 'N' from! ARENA is designed to centralise the administration of $3.2 billion in existing federal government support to the renewable energy industry currently managed by the Australian government and by Australian government funded bodies such as the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy, known as ACRE, and the Australian Solar Institute, the ASI.

ARENA will also assume the work of ACRE in establishing and maintaining links with state and territory governments and, with the ASI, in fostering and developing collaborative research partnerships internationally. ARENA will also be responsible for the policy advice to the Minister for Resources and Energy and Minister for Tourism and will take over and expand the activities of ACRE in this regard.

The bill also establishes the members of the ARENA board, its chief executive officer and its chief financial officer, and sets out how ARENA will operate and be funded. Funding to be provided to ARENA each year is prescribed in this bill until 2020 and will be held by the government until required by ARENA. Around $1.7 billion of the funding allocations to be made by ARENA is currently uncommitted and will be available for ARENA to provide financial assistance for the research, development, demonstration and commercialisation of renewable energy and related technologies, the development of skills in the renewable energy industry and the sharing of non-confidential knowledge and information from the projects it funds.

The Energy Agency (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2011 complements the main ARENA bill by providing the transition and consequential activities that—

Dr Emerson interjecting—

Dr Leigh interjecting—

Can you guys knock it off? I am trying to do a speech here! Thanks. It provides the transitional and consequential activities that need to occur in order for ARENA to take over funding and administration from the existing programs and projects transferring from the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism to ASI and ARENA. The coalition believes these bills create a better vehicle for the delivery of renewable energy technology project funding and support, and the coalition's position with respect to these bills is an entirely separate matter from the position the coalition may adopt on any project ARENA may inherit or later consider or support.

While the coalition does not oppose the establishment of ARENA, as it will allow for streamlining of procedures and for appropriate corporate governance in the sector, this non-opposition should not be taken as carte-blanche approval of some of the programs to be administered by the proposed ARENA. It is a matter of public record that the government has not covered itself in glory when it comes to the implementation and operation of energy projects, including renewable energy projects. There is a long and chequered history of failure, as there is on most things in the performance of the current Gillard and prior Rudd governments on a whole range of programs that they have attempted to administer.

We need look no further than the item that is still before the parliament, the establishment of a carbon tax, to again see a program and a policy that has been all over the place. We now see of course, as a result of a breach of promise, a carbon tax that will be introduced into Australia and will be far deeper, far broader and far more economically damaging than any other tax of its type in the world. It is a tax which will drive up the cost of living, put more pressure on electricity prices and make Australia's energy and resources industries less competitive than their global counterparts.

This is a hallmark of this government, as is the incompetent management of a whole range of programs, including its renewable energy programs, which I will come back to in a moment. There are reams of economic modelling that have shown that the carbon tax will put a significant burden on the Australian energy and resources sector and expose it to disadvantage in terms of competitiveness. Yet the members of the government have shown us, on the passage of that legislation through this House, that they would rather celebrate than think about the damage that it is going to cause to our competitiveness and to this economy.

That carbon tax is designed, they say, to try and lower carbon emissions. In reality, of course, it goes nowhere near driving the sorts of fuel switches and energy efficiencies that we need. At least with the bill we have in front of us there is a structure and a corporate governance and an outcome. You do not see the same thing in the carbon legislation.

We have also seen in recent times this government, through its renewable energy and carbon reduction programs, demonstrate the incompetence that we have grown used to across the board. We saw last week the announcement by ZeroGen that it was in receivership and would soon disappear off the face of the earth, and hundreds of millions of dollars—a good proportion of which have been attributed by this Labor government—will disappear with it for no outcome. I am no fortune teller or visionary with a special gift, but four years ago I warned this House that this project was on the road to self-destruction. In fact, another Labor luminary—none other than Peter Beattie—said publicly and in the newspaper that I was on drugs to suggest that the project was going to fail. I hope, Peter, that whatever you were on then you are not on now, when you see what happened to that project. Another failed federal Labor government-state Labor government program literally evaporates into thin air. With it goes taxpayers' dollars that this government had so unwisely invested in it.

The investment is part of the whole Labor government's smoke-and-mirrors approach to clean energy, where it promises the world but delivers absolutely nothing. Given that ZeroGen is now in receivership and $40 million of federal taxpayers' money—and a substantial amount, perhaps double that, of state Queensland government taxpayers' money—has disappeared and gone down the drain we need to ensure, as much as is possible when you have a Labor government in power, that those sorts of things do not happen again.

That is why the coalition is not opposing this legislation. We hold out some hope, through the structure of ARENA, that they will not appoint their mates to the board of ARENA but will get the expertise they need to ensure that the make-up of the board is men and women who understand the importance of renewable energy projects and understand how to invest money. On the second count, there is no-one on that side who has the faintest idea.

ARENA will be made up of six appointed members plus the secretary of the board and there will be at least one person from the field of renewable energy technology, another from commercialisation, another from business investment and another from corporate governance. There may be, unfortunately, a cross-membership with the $10 billion Greens slush fund that the Labor Party has set up—let us see how this all works, but it is hard to imagine it is going to work well—so the person who runs this country, Senator Bob Brown, can get what he wants out of the project. It is money poured into projects that will probably end up in the same spot as ZeroGen.

We do not oppose this legislation. We understand the reasons for setting up ARENA and will watch very closely as it is done. Whilst it is reassuring that renewable energy issues—and energy in general—are going to be oversighted by this body, it is somewhat disappointing that we have still not seen the framework for Australia's energy in the form of a white paper. We are of the view that it is very difficult to invest in any form of energy, particularly renewable energy, in the complete absence of a policy or structural framework on energy policy going forward. The last energy white paper was delivered by me, as the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, in 2004.

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