Colin Boyce (Flynn, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the member for Wide Bay's motion that notes that industrial-scale reckless renewable energy proposals and their associated transmission lines are economically, socially and environmentally untenable for many reasons.

I have spoken many times on this topic, and now it's starting to become a big issue in many rural communities across Australia. People are becoming painfully aware of the enormous footprint that these renewable energy projects and associated transmission lines will have on the general countryside. Add to that the environmental damage, the social implications, the economic cost, the lack of consultation and the realisation that government policy supporting these proposals has been deliberately designed that way so that these communities cannot stop these projects, regardless of the consequences that these small communities will have to endure.

Central Queensland is playing host to many of these developments—wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, transmission lines, pumped hydro and so on. There are literally dozens of these projects in various stages of the approval process across Central Queensland. What really concerns me are the eternal questions asking, 'What are we achieving by doing this?' and 'What is the economic cost?' I would like to concentrate on these two aspects in my contribution today.

Last year, Minister Bowen gave a speech that declared that Australia would have 82 per cent renewable energy by 2030, that 22,000 solar panels would need to be built every day between then and 2030, that 40 wind turbines would need to be constructed every month from then to 2030 and that 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines would have to be built to connect all of this infrastructure to the grid. I am yet to read anywhere or hear from any of the so-called experts in the know that this is remotely possible. The practical reality of delivering the government's obsession with renewables has been lost.

Nearly every day that I sit in parliament the government gives us their rhetoric on how renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy—it happened today in question time—yet people's power bills continue to rise to unaffordable levels. The government made an election commitment to reduce people's power bills by $275, and they have delivered nothing except an increase in power prices. Furthermore, the climate change and energy minister is proposing to increase, fivefold, taxpayer funding of these renewable energy projects. The estimated cost is $1.5 trillion by 2030, in the hope of achieving this unachievable goal of 82 per cent renewable energy by 2030. What this will achieve is higher energy prices for the consumer and more subsidies to foreign owned companies who own these projects and produce the components required to build these projects. As far as the climate or the weather is concerned, it will achieve absolutely nothing.

Australia has very large resources of coal, gas and uranium. They are among the cleanest and most economically viable in the world, and we should have the cheapest power in the world, yet this mindless argument of renewable energy is crippling Australian business and industry and is driving that production offshore to places like China, where no such climate or energy policies like Australia's exist.

The cost of living is probably the single biggest issue that concerns most Australians. Families are struggling to pay their electricity bills, secure their mortgages, pay their insurance, buy their groceries, fuel their motor vehicles, educate their children and so on. These cost-of-living pressures are directly related to energy policy, the safeguard mechanism policy and the whole 'net zero carbon by 2050' debate.

What amazes me is that many people have not yet joined the dots. For example, the safeguard mechanism imposed on industries like the cement industry has forced the price of concrete up. Companies are passing on their costs to the consumer. A house becomes more expensive to build, and therefore an existing house becomes more expensive to buy, making it harder for somebody to save up for a deposit for a house. Wind turbines require several hundred tonnes of concrete to make the footings, making them more expensive to build and therefore requiring more subsidy from the government to achieve their build targets.

Make no mistake: the unrealistic renewable energy targets, the safeguard mechanism and the 'net zero carbon by 2050' debate are all interrelated and will ultimately deliver economic pain for the Australian consumer and deliver no environmental outcomes for the planet.

See this speech in context