Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

The second thing is they were paying $5.5 billion to brown coal generators with no strings attached. I want to repeat that: they were paying $5 billion to one small sector with no strings attached. That is probably the largest transfer of funds in Australian history to one small sector of the economy within one short period of time. There was $1.3 billion of subsidies to the coal sector when they said that they were clamping down on emissions. None of which made sense. By contrast, the first of our major new expenditure items compares with a $30 billion set of transfer payments from the Commonwealth to firms under the previous government. We spend $2.55 billion, we withdraw a $30 billion set of transfers from the Commonwealth to the private sector, which in almost every case were being done with no strings attached whatsoever.

The second of the significant areas of new expenditure is $525 million over four years for the Green Army. This is a project aimed at achieving two simple things. Firstly, it is about ensuring that there is employment.

An opposition member interjecting—

Actually your side is giving bipartisan support, dummkopf. It is about ensuring that there is bipartisan support—

An honourable member interjecting—

I am pleased to hear that—for a program which provides employment and does good local environmental things. That could be boardwalks, riverbank restoration, riparian recovery, sand dune restoration or protection of threatened species, whether it is habitat restoration or breeding programs—practical things.

The third of the areas in which there has been a significant contribution in this budget is a global figure of more than $500 million for two capital equipment programs—for the acquisition of a supercomputer for the Bureau of Meteorology, which is about better advice with regard to cyclones, floods and fires, and for the acquisition of a new icebreaker, which is critical national infrastructure not just for research but for upholding our position and maintaining our bases in our Antarctica, without which we would place at risk our sovereign claim over the Australian Antarctic Territory. Both of those items were unfunded. They were not given funding by the previous government. Both were overdue. Both have been funded. The final figure will be determined through a tender process, but I can safely say that, between the two, we have provisioned over $500 million. All up, it has been a very effective budget round, against a difficult national backdrop.

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