Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, that was a great judgement on the Prime Minister's part. Let's placate Senator Bernardi and everything will be fine. How did that work out for you? Danny Price, the Prime Minister's old energy adviser, said that decision alone has made the Liberal Party 'the party of increasing electricity prices and reduced energy security'. Of course, they are opposed to all of those things and they are opposed to renewable energy. They have no policy beyond 2020. There will not be a project built beyond 2020 under this government's policy framework. They have this pathological thing about renewable energy. They are happy to come in and stroke a black rock, but have a pathological hatred of renewable energy. They have not yet started talking about the health impacts that the former Prime Minister was so worried about when he rode past that wind farm on Rottnest Island, but I would not be surprised anymore if this Prime Minister started talking about those things as well.

They run the prices scare campaign. In spite of the fact that the Warburton panel—a panel certainly led by climate sceptics—said that the expansion of renewable energy puts downward pressure on wholesale prices and in spite of modelling across the world that increasingly says that new solar and new wind are the cheapest forms of new generation, they still run this. They do not care about the jobs impact. There were 3,000 jobs lost in renewable energy since this government came to power. If we had kept pace with jobs growth around the world in this industry, we would be 11,000 jobs better off in this industry than we are under the Liberal government. As I said, and it is a small point: renewable energy is the only way we are going to achieve the Paris targets that the Prime Minister signed us up to.

They do have one policy of course—the only policy they have come up with in more than three years in government—and that is to build new coal generators. To be fair, it is not the Prime Minister's policy; it is the member for Warringah's policy. No-one had talked about this for years until the member for Warringah penned an op-ed a few weeks ago. Then, lo and behold, playing the Prime Minister like a violin, it ends up as the centrepiece of the National Press Club speech from this Prime Minister. Never mind that the industry says, put simply: 'You cannot finance coal.' Never mind that the Climate Institute says it would require at least $26 billion in taxpayer subsidies. Never mind that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, a government owned corporation—which is apparently going to underwrite this—said they would not support that and that it would be massively risky for taxpayers. But he has placated Senator Bernardi and he has placated the member for Warringah—and that, apparently, is the only driver for energy policy at a time of crisis for this government.

This government is presiding over a crisis that is spreading across the nation. Well into its fourth year in power, this government still has no answers to the question: how do you deliver affordable, reliable supply that will start to cut our pollution? This minister unfortunately is very long on opposition but utterly bereft of an answer to deal with this crisis.

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