Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a win, win situation, as the parliamentary secretary says. Any speaker that stands up and says how wonderful this scheme is and how it is returning a great return to the taxpayer should also state why they are not prepared to invest their own money in it.

We have seen examples overseas of the dangers and the risks to taxpayers. We have seen in the USA the massive $700 million failure of the Solyndra project—US taxpayers' money flushed down the toilet and wasted. That is what we should be learning from. We have also seen it here. Many people may remember the Bligh Labor government in Queensland's ZeroGen project in which they invested $100 million of taxpayers' money. They said how wonderful this was, how it was going to create all this renewable energy and why the taxpayer should put their money in—and anyone who objected to it was said to be on drugs. We know what happened. That project failed and $100 million of taxpayers' money was wasted. We are in such a dire financial situation that we cannot afford to put any more taxpayers' money at risk. (Time expired)

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