Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, a lot of hot air, Member for Riverina. But the failure of renewable energy projects is not unique to Australia. In the United States we have seen the $700 million Solyndra project and the Beacon Power and Enerl projects collapse, despite receiving funding from a US program very similar to the clean energy finance corporation concept we are debating here in this House this evening. Then we saw the collapse of the Solar Trust of America, which had a $2.1 billion guarantee from the US energy department. I am sure the US taxpayers are looking forward to paying that back over the next years—as if they have not got enough debt. These overseas failures plus the collapse of ZeroGen and the experiences with the solar farm and Solar Dawn should have sent, you would think, a message to the Gillard government. But so beholden are they to the Greens, so beholden are they to the Independents, that they are keen to push on and play Russian roulette with $10 billion of taxpayers' money.

There are concerns about the impact of this huge amount of money on the existing renewable energy marketplace. Current investment in renewable energy is being driven by a bipartisan commitment to a 20 per cent renewable energy target. It is this target which is driving investment in renewable energy at the moment. Many of these investments have secured finance on a commercial basis with little or no government financial assistance. The fear is that the establishment of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the creation of a $10 billion funding slush bucket will distort the market and undermine existing renewable energy projects. Technologies which are not commercially viable without a substantial government handout will all of sudden be competing with projects which are currently receiving investment using existing technologies. So the government will not only be rolling the dice on speculative new renewable energy projects but could in fact be discriminating against the viability of current projects. The end result will be a lose-lose for all involved, including major renewable energy projects.

I am also concerned at the way the government have appropriated the $10 billion in funding for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Because of the massive debt that this government have racked up in the past four years, they decided to treat the $10 billion in funding as an 'equity investment' in the government's financial statements. By calling it an 'equity investment' the government have been able to remove the funding from the budget bottom line. Given the government's track record, it is indeed a leap of faith to call these projects an 'equity investment'. In an accounting sense, we know that equity is defined as asset minus liabilities, but we all know that based on past performance these projects are likely to be big on liabilities and small on assets. This essentially means they can claim to be delivering a small surplus when really they are spending taxpayers' money like a drunken sailor and that, if you include projects like the NBN and like this one, they will have a huge deficit indeed.

What they are doing here mirrors what the government have done with the National Broadband Network. They are providing funding off-budget so that they can distort a bit of a fiddle, they can distort the financial figures and they can make it look like we have a surplus. It is so small it is not even really a Claytons surplus; it is a mirage.

See this speech in context