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

I move:

That section 7 of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Implementing the Technology Investment Roadmap) Regulations 2021 made under the Australian Renewable Energy Agency Act 2011 on 23 July 2021 and presented to the House on 3 August 2021, be disallowed.

Any 2050 plan that relies on expanding coal and gas is a fraud—all the more so when it's done using public money. Public money should be going to schools and hospitals and renewables, not to coal and gas. Everyone now—from John Kerry, who is in charge of climate negotiations for the United States government, to the UN Secretary-General to the International Energy Agency—says very clearly that there is no room for investment in new coal, oil or gas projects if we are to address the climate crisis. They have said that, from this point on, there cannot be new investment or not only will you fast-track climate collapse but you will also end up with stranded assets that produce a product that the rest of the world no longer wants to buy. his message is getting louder and louder in the lead-up to Glasgow. The United States is asking the rest of the world to sign up to a pledge to cut methane emissions. The United Kingdom is asking the rest of the world to sign up to a pledge to phase out coal. But what does the Liberal government do? The Liberal government comes up with a fraudulent 2050 plan that takes public money—money that could be going to schools, hospitals and renewables—and gives it to big coal, gas and oil corporations.

This regulation must be disallowed by the parliament because it is using public money to make the climate crisis worse. There is a reason why, all around the world, corporations and financiers are saying, 'We are not going to be putting money into new fossil fuel projects.' They have listened to the science and they have heard the advice of the likes of even the International Energy Agency, a conservative group representing energy producers right around the world, that there is no room for any new investment. What that means is that the only way that this white-elephant investment in new gas and coal can get up is if the government subsidises it, putting its hands in the pocket of the public and saying, 'We're going to take your money and give it to the big gas corporations'—many of which donate to the big parties but pay no tax here in Australia and send their profits offshore.

The government at least has some idea about the numbers in this parliament, because it knows that it might struggle to get legislation up to turn the Renewable Energy Agency into a funder of coal and gas. So what does it do? The government comes here with a regulation that even its own Senate committee has said is probably illegal. It moves a regulation to say, 'We want the right to take public money away from renewables and away from schools and hospitals and give it to coal and gas corporations.' This government is so desirous of giving money to its coal and gas corporate donors that it is willing to break the law to do it. This regulation will be struck down in the courts, and that is what the government's own scrutiny of bills committee, headed by a government member, has said. With this regulation, if it is allowed to stand, the government is inviting lawsuits that, even on its own advice, it will lose. It is creating a lawyers' picnic in its desperation to funnel money out the door to big coal and gas corporations.

To rub salt in the wound, because the government knows that it may struggle to get the numbers in this place to do that, it is using the Australian Renewable Energy Agency to funnel cash to coal and gas corporations. I've got a hint for the minister. I know he has trouble reading and downloaded documents from time to time, but all he has to do is read the title: 'Australian Renewable Energy Agency' is what ARENA stands for. The clue is in the name. The 'R' stands for 'renewable'. Coal and gas are not renewable. Under no definition put forward by anyone in the world do coal and gas count as renewable, but this government wants everyone here to believe that black is white—that coal and gas are now renewable and that the Renewable Energy Agency should be the vehicle through which to channel public funds to coal and gas corporations. As I said, the government's own scrutiny of bills committee said, 'No, that probably breaches the law.' Well, I'm going to say it definitely breaches the law. ARENA, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, is a success story in this country. It was established in the Greens-Labor-Independent power-sharing parliament of 2010, and it has grown and fast-tracked the growth of renewable energy in this country. To use it and to nobble it to say it now has to fund coal and gas is an utter perversion of the purpose of ARENA.

I notice that the members for Higgins and Wentworth are here in this chamber and I am expecting them to jump up and say, 'No, coal and gas are not renewable and we should not be subsidising the coal and gas industry.' They're supposed free marketeers who think that the market is going to get us to 2050. Well, not if the government puts its hands in people's pockets and says, 'We're going to start propping up coal and gas by calling them renewables' it won't. So I am hoping that those inner city Liberals who say that they support reduction of our emissions will come with us and cross the floor and vote to stop public money going to coal and gas corporations. Even if you think that somehow renewables don't deserve support it's got to be the case that the coal and gas corporations can afford to fund their own research, especially when these multibillion dollar corporations pay no tax in Australia and send their profits offshore. What could possibly be the small-l liberal case for taking public money and giving it to a coal and gas corporation and funnelling it through the Renewable Energy Agency? They're very, very quiet, these so-called modern Liberals and inner city Liberals when it comes to this gas-led recovery, because they know that something is wrong with taking public money, asking their own constituents to subsidise coal and gas corporations for technology that is not yet proven.

If carbon capture and storage could work I am sure that these ultrawealthy coal and gas corporations could've made it work by now. They are making billions of dollars in profits and do not need public assistance. In the last recorded year of income the big gas corporations brought in $55 billion—that's billion with a 'b'—of income and paid zero tax . And now the Liberals are saying as well as these big gas corporations paying no tax, they want their own constituents to subsidise them and give a handout to these big coal and gas corporations and call it renewal energy. If you need any demonstration that the farcical, stage-managed charade going on in the lead-up to Glasgow is nothing more than an excuse to come up with a fraudulent 2050 plan that won't bring down emissions but will allow coal and gas to keep expanding it is here in this regulation. The government's idea of tackling the climate crisis is to make it worse by expanding coal and gas.

There's a reason that the scientists, the United Nations and the International Energy Agency have all said, 'We've got to call time on coal and gas' and why we can't be expanding infrastructure, as this regulation in this bill wants to do. To give you an indication, Mr Speaker, of how serious this is, right now we've been told that the world has to cut its pollution globally by 50 per cent before 2030, which would mean a much higher target in Australia, or we say goodbye to any chance of staying below 1.5 degrees. We're headed for a world where the reef is gone. We're headed for a world where extreme droughts are more than twice as likely to happen here in Australia. On current targets we're headed for a world where by the end of the century—during my daughter's lifetime; during the lifetimes of many kids of people in this House—we will have a 92 per cent decline of productivity in the Murray-Darling Basin. That is where we are going at the moment unless we massively cut pollution globally by 50 per cent—more in Australia—by 2030.

The kinds of gas projects that this government are talking about supporting are going to blow that budget. The Beetaloo Basin in the Northern Territory—a project initiated by the NT Labor government and supported by this federal government—is a carbon climate bomb. According to the NT government if we extract the gas in those NT basins we are talking about a up to six per cent increase in Australia's emissions alone and on top of that is all the toxic damage that is going to be caused when this gas is burnt overseas. So just one set of projects in the Northern Territory adds six per cent to Australia's annual emissions. The government is saying they want the right not only to make it happen but to use public money to make it happen. Public money should not be going to making the climate crisis worse. Government should not be stepping in to subsidise coal and gas corporations at a time when money should be going to renewables. Public money should not be spent in a way that pretty much everyone says is illegal.

The Renewable Energy Agency is called the Renewable Energy Agency for a reason. The legislation prohibits it from funding fossil fuels, so the government should not knowingly march the public into a series of lawsuits to defend a regulation that is illegal. The government may well be willing. The government may be so keen to please its coal and gas donors that it's willing to break the law, but the parliament shouldn't back it. The parliament should stand up for the legislation that is passed and says in very clear terms what renewable energy is. It should disallow this regulation that says black is white and that coal and gas are renewable. They are not. I wonder whether the Prime Minister is going to be waving this particular regulation around if he goes to Glasgow and telling Joe Biden and Boris Johnson that, whatever he might say on the international stage, back at home he's keen to say coal and gas are renewables and that he wants public money to go into them.

We should save the public the money that will have to be spent on the inevitable lawsuits and just disallow this regulation now.

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