Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Australian Renewable Energy Agency Amendment (2020-2021 Budget Programs) Regulations 2021, made under the Australian Renewable Energy Agency Act 2011 and presented to the House on 24 May 2021, be disallowed.

This government is so desperate to deliver public funds to coal and gas corporations that it's prepared to break the law. It's prepared to break the law. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency has as one of its functions and its main function the promotion of renewable energy. The key is in its title. It's the Renewable Energy Agency. Its job is to support the growth of renewable energy in this country. With this regulation, despite what is in the very clear words of the legislation that sets up this very important agency, the government is saying, 'Let's make public money available through ARENA go to coal and gas corporations.'

This isn't something that you have to sift through or pass several public speeches to discern or where you have to follow the money trail back to the corporate donations that they have received from the big coal and gas corporations. It is there in the words of the explanatory memorandum and in the regulation itself. The government, so desperate to prop up coal and gas, now has two programs in mind that it wants to fund with public money. Public money, which could be going to schools, hospitals or renewables, will instead, through this government—if this regulation is not disallowed—be allowed to go to unproven carbon-capture and storage technology and to using dirty, toxic gas to produce hydrogen. The government's fig leaf is that they're calling both of those things 'clean' and 'renewable'.

Let's go through both of those one by one. The first one is the unicorn technology of carbon capture and storage. It basically says that, if you are producing emissions from burning coal or gas, then somehow some technology will exist at some point in the future that might allow you to capture some of those emissions, stick them in a big hole underground and hope for the best—hope there are no dangerous leaks in the future, hope you actually capture all of the emissions, hope it doesn't leak into the atmosphere and blow our carbon budget. By any definition, that is not a renewable technology. That is not renewable. That is predicated on the burning of coal and gas.

The second technology that the government has in mind comes under clean hydrogen. 'Clean hydrogen,' you might say, 'that sounds great! Who wouldn't want to get behind clean hydrogen?' Hydrogen can be produced by splitting water, H2O, and converting it into hydrogen fuel. Then, when you burn it at the other end, it turns back into water. What a terrific idea! It is a terrific idea if you use renewably generated electricity to create that hydrogen. What this government wants to do is use the burning of gas and coal to create hydrogen and then, under the black-is-white approach of this government and this regulation, say that that is somehow clean. Again, you don't have to take our word, the Greens' word, for it. It is there in black and white, in the explanatory memorandum and in the minister's speech, that the government wants to say burning coal and gas in the hope that you might create hydrogen at the end of it is a renewable technology. Coal and gas, when burnt, are not renewable. You get to do it once, and it comes at a massive cost to the planet. It is not renewable.

This regulation—which says, 'We are going to redefine the word "renewable" in a way that no other country in the world has done to include coal and gas'—is not only wrong; it is illegal. It is against the very specific provisions of the act. Section 3 and section 4 define 'renewable energy technology', and, as someone who was there when the Renewable Energy Agency was established, I can tell the House that we very clearly and tightly defined the legislation so that it could not include fossil fuels.

ARENA is a success story. It has helped Australia generate and fast-track renewable energy technologies, whether it's assisting with the rollout of electric vehicles, something that this government has done everything in its power to slow down; whether it's grid management, to ensure that we can bring renewables into Australia's electricity grid in a way that ensures stability of supply; whether it's turning heavy industry green; whether it's green hydrogen or bioenergy; or whether it's crucial areas like demand management, which basically says, 'The cheapest electricity to save is the electricity you don't use in the first place, which is also the cheapest emissions reduction as well, so let's find ways of assisting big energy users to not use energy in the first place.' All of these technologies are technologies that ARENA, through its grant programs, has helped fast track. We know this because ARENA is a product of a shared-power parliament. We had a parliament back in 2010 where no-one had the numbers—not the Greens, not the member for Denison, as he then was, and not the Labor Party. What we did was work across the aisle to drive down pollution in this country and to fast-track the take-up of renewable energy. ARENA was one of the key organisations. ARENA was set up as a grant organisation to provide grants to beginning renewable-energy organisations. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation could come along afterwards, take the concepts that had been proved up and expand them commercially.

From day one this government and the Liberals have opposed the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, and they have used opportunity after opportunity to try and abolish it. This is the same agency, by the way, which the Prime Minister, as he's searching desperately for a fig leaf at the G7, sings from the rooftops about the government's uptake of renewable energy in Australia. It is because of entities like ARENA and the CEFC, which the Greens helped secure in a shared-power parliament. That is what has driven the uptake of renewables in this country, and the Liberals have done everything they can to try and abolish it. They were not successful in abolishing it, so they tried to cut its budget. They had some success with that but they're coming back with a new idea, having been unsuccessful in abolishing it. It's still on its feet, so what do they do now? They say, 'We're going to redefine renewable energy.' They say black is white and that renewable energy includes coal and gas.

Not only is this wrong because it will increase climate pollution if you start using public money, giving it to coal and gas and taking it away from renewables, taking it away from schools and hospitals but there are plenty of other reasons, even if you're not with the Greens on driving down emissions, to support the disallowance of this regulation. We have challenged the government to come up with one piece of legal advice that suggests that this regulation is within power, and they have not been able to come up with one. That is because it squarely is not. It breaks the law. This is the Renewable Energy Agency. The legislation says you can make regulations to promote renewable energy. Carbon capture and storage, and burning gas and coal to create hydrogen, is, clearly, not renewable.

The government knows it doesn't have the numbers in the Senate to pass a piece of legislation to give money to coal and gas. So what has it done? It has decided, instead, to come up with a regulation in the hope that the numbers in a vote on regulation might be more favourable. But if you support this regulation, which is manifestly illegal, if you allow this regulation to continue, whatever you think about renewable energy, you are opening up a legal minefield. You are putting the public on the hook for legal bill after legal bill and challenge after challenge to every grant that is made under this program, including grants that might be made elsewhere, because it is so manifestly unlawful to say that coal and gas are now renewable.

If the government had a piece of legal advice that said there is some new way of defining coal and gas as renewable, I would have expected them to have tabled it. They haven't, because they know that this is unlawful. So the regulation must be disallowed, whatever you think about renewable energy, just out of a straight responsible use of public money. Allowing this to continue, and allowing grants to be made to coal and gas under the guise of it being called renewable, is inviting lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit, which the public will be on the hook for. I say to other members of this parliament on the crossbench, even on the government's backbench: don't write a blank cheque for litigation for something that is so manifestly unlawful when your own minister can't even table a piece of legal advice that says that this is within power. They can't even table a piece of legal advice that says that this is within power.

The big corporations that are going to be lining up to get some of this money are not only donors to the Liberal Party—and, in instances, to the Labor Party—but also are some of the biggest corporations that bring in some of the biggest amounts of money to this country, and they pay no tax! The biggest gas corporations in this country brought in $55 billion in one year, in income, and paid zero dollars income tax. It is criminal that a midwife from Melbourne pays more income tax than a multinational, but that is the situation we have under this government, because those opposite are doing the bidding of their mates. But what could be the possible justification for saying to a corporation that pays no tax but brings in billions of dollars of income, 'You also deserve a public handout'? Again, even if you're not with us on renewables, why are we taking public money and asking people in this country who already pay their fair share of tax to also give a handout to multinational gas and coal corporations that pay zero tax? If you are a multinational goal or gas corporation that pays zero tax in this country, you can pay for your own damn carbon-capture and storage research, frankly. You can pay for your own gas-funded hydrogen if you want to do it, but don't line up and expect a handout from the public purse for it. We should not be giving handouts to billionaire corporations that pay no tax, but that is what this regulation is designed to do.

So there's the renewables argument, there's the legislation argument, there's the responsible-use-of-public-money argument and there's the question of why you would give handouts to big corporations that are paying no tax. Lastly, the G7 have just met. The G7 have realised that countries around the world need to work together to tackle the climate crisis, and one of the things that they have said—and they said this last night—is that by 2025 we need to stop giving public subsidies to fossil fuels; they can stand on their own two feet if they're going to stand. In the face of that communique, the government is right now trying to say, 'We are closing our eyes and ears to the rest of the world and we are lining up to give even more public money, money that wasn't in the kitty beforehand, to fossil fuels.' This regulation gives the middle finger to the G7 and says, 'We know that you are taking action to combat the climate crisis, but we are going to go in the opposite direction.'

There are a multitude of reasons to oppose this regulation. It is going to fast-track our climate crisis, it's going to give money to big corporations that already pay no tax and it's going to put the public on the— (Time expired)

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