Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

and where there will be no requirement on any single person or any single company. There will be no requirement to reduce emissions. There will be no cap on emissions. There will be payments to polluters.

Why would the so-called Minister for the Environment want to introduce such a policy when the obvious difficulties with it are there for everybody to see? For example, how on earth could we be persuaded of the additionality of the measures that will be brought in and funded under the ERF? How on earth could we be persuaded that that is good value for taxpayer money? How on earth could we be persuaded that the same companies that are benefiting from the ERF would not be taking the same mitigation actions as they otherwise would be were it not for the taxpayer subsidising them?

Of course, the biggest question of all when it comes to the Emissions Reduction Fund is: why replace the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, a spectacularly successful policy, with an Emissions Reduction Fund where taxpayers pay polluters? Why not keep the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, a commercial lending operation where moneys are lent to people who want to take action to mitigate pollution and want to reduce emissions? And it is a win-win because the Clean Energy Finance Corporation runs at a profit. Money is made by lending money on appropriate terms to companies that want to reduce pollution and mitigate emissions. Why not have a Clean Energy Finance Corporation instead of this ridiculous ERF policy that has been universally panned? No-one in this place and no-one outside this place thinks that this government has any credibility whatsoever when it comes to the environment. We have seen the lack of credibility. You just have to look as recently as yesterday when the bizarre application to the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO was quite properly knocked backed by the World Heritage Committee.

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