Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great privilege to speak in support of the motion put forward by the member for Charlton. In the motion, he indicated—in quite some detail—the outstanding performance of the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target and it is in that vein that I stand to support his words.

His motion speaks to investment. We have seen total investment to date of $18 billion under the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target. The Clean Energy Council has estimated the potential for another 18.7 billion jobs, 24,300 people directly employed in the renewable energy industry—and that does not even get us started on the assistance this will give us in managing climate change.

It is very hard for me to understand how a government could set about dismantling a policy that is such a global success story, but having heard some of the contributions on the other side of the House I am starting to understand a little bit more about where this push is coming from. I am genuinely shocked to hear some of these contributions, because the people who have made contributions to this debate from the other side are people who are about facts and science. Yet what we have heard today is climate change described as a religion. I am genuinely surprise that in 2014, in this parliament, in Australia, we are having this debate right now.

It is the sort of thing that could only be contemplated by a Prime Minister who, while he no longer describes himself as a climate-change denier, could, at best, be described as climate change ambivalent. His attempts to water-down global efforts to tackle climate change are embarrassing to me and embarrassing to many other Australians. We saw so much of this on his recent trip overseas, where the Prime Minister tried to put together what he called a conservative coalition of nations who are refusing to tackle climate change head-on. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were very few interested parties to join in this crusade. Even the Conservative UK energy and climate minister would not get on board with this. The New Zealand PM, John Key, rejected the conservative coalition and, in fact, Canada's Stephen Harper is the Prime Minister's only friend in trying to undermine international efforts to address climate change.

We have also seen it very clearly in the rhetoric that is being used around this review of the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target. The government has named self-proclaimed climate sceptic Dick Warburton to head the review. There have been many media reports of other people engaged in this review process who have long histories of work in traditional energies, such as oil and gas, which have a significant stake in the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target.

What I find so frustrating and outrageous about the discussion we are having right now is that building a strong renewable energy market in our country is so clearly in Australia's economic interests. The member for Hume has left the chamber, but both of us have a history in management consulting and we know that Australia needs to work to build industries where it has a comparative advantage. I cannot think of another industry that faces this nation where we have such a clear advantage in trying to deal with these issues.

We should be the powerhouse of renewable energy all over the world. We should be exporting the technology we invent in this country to countries all over the world because we have the science capability, we have the culture of invention and, practically, we probably have more wind, more sun and more waves around our country than just about any other country in the world. We also know that this should be where we focus our energies, because Australia has more to lose from climate than just about any other country in the world. Australia is already seeing weather patterns changing; Australia is already seeing agricultural products not delivering the same outputs as normal; in Australia the vast majority of our population lives on the outskirts and rising seas could see some of our cities facing issues of flooding; and Australia will have to step in to help nations around us that will literally be submerged, not in centuries to come but in this century.

Instead of being a global leader on this clear area of comparative advantage, we are becoming a laggard. Recently we saw what I believe is the 140th country around the world put in place a renewable energy target, and yet at the same time we are having a debate about how to get rid of a policy that has delivered already so much for this country. China built more renewable energy capability last year than non-renewal. Almost three-quarters of new energy that was created in the EU last year came from renewable sources. US President Barack Obama has recently announced further investment in his country's renewable energy target. We must have a firm commitment from this government that the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target be retained at the legislated 41,000 gigawatt hours by 2020.

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