Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Labor, of course, established the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and we're very proud of it. We did it to drive private investment in clean energy, and the fact is that it's been a huge success. The idea of creating something must sound alien to a government whose repertoire mainly alternates between undoing things and, most of the time, doing nothing at all. I say to those opposite that it is worth the effort and they should give it a crack some time. Try and create something. Try and make a positive difference rather than just tearing things down. As the shadow climate change and energy minister said in here yesterday, the CEFC has become one of the world's leading green banks. Even the Prime Minister, from time to time, has described it in those terms.

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation is independent, it funds low-emissions technology and it must make a positive return. It has succeeded in all three. The CEFC has a proven record of leveraging private investment. It has helped drive more than $27 billion in additional private sector investments and returned more than $718 million to taxpayers since its creation. Here you have a vehicle doing exactly what Labor said it would do when we created it. It's created jobs, stimulated private sector investment and produced a return to taxpayers. Good policy! It has helped 18,000 projects, and those 18,000 projects have all created jobs. It is responsible for reducing emissions by around one million tonnes of CO2 a year. But what's the Liberals' response to this? They opposed it from the beginning and they tried to attack it since they came to power in 2013. They have repeatedly tried to abolish it and they have continued to undermine its focus on clean and renewable energy. They've changed leaders a few times but what hasn't changed is the hostility towards the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. We will protect the financial integrity of the CEFC to retain the strict safeguards that ensure it only invests in economically viable projects that continue to provide a return to taxpayers.

But the government's bill undermines that. This bill would undermine the independence of the CEFC. It would hand unprecedented powers to the minister and allow him to undermine the financial integrity of the CEFC's investment decisions. This would be bad for any minister, if you chose them at random, but when that minister is the member for Hume the alarm bells are really ringing. This is a minister who failed to declare a private interest in a company being investigated by his own department. This is a minister who admitted on radio to advocating for his own interests rather than the public interest. This is the minister who used doctored figures in his bizarre war against the Sydney lord mayor, Clover Moore. This is the minister caught up in his own Watergate. As energy minister, he habitually misleads and fails. He says that the country is on target to meet its commitments that they made under the Paris accord. We know that that isn't true. This is the minister who stands in this chamber and tries to take credit for the reductions that we saw in emissions during the period of the Rudd and Gillard governments and, indeed, tried to use the Kyoto credits in order to disguise this government's failure since it came to office. This is a minister who thinks it's a good idea to use taxpayer money for the proponent of a new coal-fired power station in North Queensland—to give them money to do a study on whether their project is going to stack up—and then has the hide to speak about taxpayer funds not being used and how it's 'all about technology'. This is a minister obsessed by slogans and lacking in substance. This is a minister who, frankly, we don't trust with public funds. It is that simple. The record shows that that is very wise indeed.

But this bill allows the minister to choose investments and also removes the requirement for those investments to make a return. Think about this. The party of markets—they would have you believe—wants to remove the criteria in this legislation which requires a positive return for investments. Marry that up with their rhetoric! In his written submission, the former CEO of the CEFC, Oliver Yates, stated, 'The fundamental concern with this bill is that it will threaten the CEFC's successful business model by undermining its commerciality, independence, culture, staffing and highly specialised skills'—an extraordinary indictment.

Labor supports the expansion of the CEFC to help deliver a modern electricity grid, but not for gas generation investments that are neither new technology nor meet the definition of low-emissions technology. Gas power is a well-established technology that does not face financial or technological barriers to investment, which can be addressed by public financial support. Where they have stacked up, environmentally, Labor has been supportive of new gas projects. That's on the basis that it is then a commercial decision, once environmental protections are put in place, over whether they proceed or not. But we know that the largest barriers to further generation are the energy policy uncertainty created by this government and the issue of carbon risk that is being factored in. Grid-firming energy sources, like gas, certainly have a role to play in our energy mix. There's no question that's the case. But that doesn't mean we should pretend it's something that it's not—that it's eligible for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation processes.

The CEFC has demonstrated how successful we can be in leveraging private investment to modernise our energy systems and, in doing so, our economy. It has shown us how we can succeed in the future, but this bill takes us back to the past. It will hold us back from what our future should be as a renewable energy superpower, a renewable energy superpower that is creating jobs, that's creating sustainable jobs and that's exporting renewable energy, such as the project, in the Northern Territory, to export renewable energy to the Northern Territory. There are enormous prospects. There are people, like Mike Cannon-Brookes, who have adopted a vision about our potential to export energy to our north, in particular, to the growing middle class that we see in Indonesia and other countries to our north. We have this enormous potential. But we don't achieve it by this constant undermining.

We don't achieve it either by the sort of energy vision they have of oil and gas exploration off the coast of the member for Robertson's electorate—I note the member for Robertson has just spoken—or the member for Dobell's electorate. I was up at Terrigal Beach with local constituents and community organisations opposing this proposal. The member for Robertson said she's opposed to it. Indeed, the members for Mackellar and other seats on the north side of Sydney say they're opposed to it too. But the government doesn't say that. The government, led by Minister Pitt, think, 'Let it rip!' They think it's a good idea to have potential drilling just five kilometres off the coast—off Manly, off Narrabeen, off Terrigal, off the beautiful beaches right up to Newcastle and Port Stephens. Whenever this government goes anywhere near energy policy, they get it wrong.

There are some aspects of the bill that Labor does support. They are those parts that allow for the CEFC to more easily invest in storage and transmission assets, to support the continued decarbonisation of the electricity sector. The expanded remit to modernise the electricity grid is a step towards Labor's own policy that I announced, in the budget reply, last year to rewire the nation. What we said in October was that we would invest $20 billion to rebuild and modernise the grid, in line with a blueprint that's already completed. The blueprint's there. It's not a blueprint from the Labor Party or the Liberal Party; it's a blueprint from the Australian Energy Market Operator, signed off by all governments, Labor and coalition, throughout the country.

Modernising the grid will provide thousands of new construction jobs for Australians, with many of those in our regions. Importantly, it will revitalise traditional industries, including steel and aluminium, and allow growth in new sectors, like hydrogen and battery production. Fixing transmission allows the market to drive least cost, reliable, new energy production. It is technology neutral in the truest sense. This should be something that is supported by those opposite. Well, we doubt whether they'll do anything more than they've done in the last seven years, which is fumble about, held back by the ball and chain that is the member for Dawson, the member for New England and others, including the minister there.

By establishing the Rewiring the Nation Corporation and keeping it in public hands as a government owned entity, Labor will ensure the grid is rebuilt at the best possible price. The Rewiring the Nation Corporation will partner with industry and provide low-cost finance to build the Integrated System Plan. The result will be cheaper electricity prices for homes, cheaper electricity prices for manufacturing, cheaper electricity prices for businesses and more reliability. Labor will ensure Australia's modern energy grid will be built by Australian workers using Australian suppliers by mandating local supply and local labour, with local apprentices being trained at the same time. We will build an electricity network designed for this century—one which accounts for the rise of renewables as the cheapest new energy source and links them up to the grid. Cheap, clean energy will be our competitive advantage as a nation. That should be our future. Our amendments to this bill are a step towards that future.

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