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

We are facing a severe threat from climate change. That is why the Greens have pushed so hard to cut pollution and make clean energy cheaper. It is why we have worked with the government to bring about the clean energy package, including a price on pollution and $13 billion for clean and renewable energy. It is why we will continue to work hard to prevent the building of any new coal fired power stations in this country. So we are appalled by the latest decision of the government to extend to HRL Limited a further extension of time on meeting conditions for a $100 million grant offered to the company by the Howard government. Building a new coal power station while trying to cut pollution is an incredible case of putting your foot on the accelerator and the brake at the same time.

In 2007, HRL was awarded $100 million, under the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, for their $750 million 400 megawatt power station despite strong concerns about its economic and technical risks from the expert panel reviewing the grant. In fact, the expert panel reviewing HRL's application put HRL in the category of 'not recommended for funding'. HRL actually wanted more than the $100 million but the Commonwealth would not give it to them, which is why a Victorian government grant then emerged. The 400 megawatt power station was supposed to be up and running by 2009. Clearly, it was not. In 2009, HRL's joint venture partner, Chinese company Harbin, pulled out of the project. Harbin were providing $500 million to it. In Senate estimates, the department of energy has acknowledged that HRL have been given an extension on at least three occasions. In 2010, HRL emerged as a 600-megawatt project. But again the federal and state grants continued to be offered. Last year, HRL was set a deadline of 31 December 2011 to meet the conditions of their grants. This date was confirmed by the Prime Minister. Now the government has given them a further six months extension on meeting those conditions.

Yet at the same time, last week, the minister, the member for Batman and the Minister for Resources and Energy, cut a grant to the Moree solar farm project, which failed to meet a milestone on a grant that they have held for the past eight months. Eight months and one milestone missed versus five years and missed deadlines all over the place. Yet the Moree project got the chop while more money was made available for coal fired power stations. The member for Batman, the minister, Martin Ferguson, is proving to be a minister for the 20th century and showing his real priorities. He would rather prop up a serially failing company trying to build a coal power station than support a solar farm.

There are serious questions about the economic viability of this proposal. Even if it could get off the ground, it would only reduce brown coal emissions to the intensity of a black coal power station in New South Wales. It risks entrenching the continued burning of brown coal when it should be replaced with renewable energy. I know that some of the members who follow me may say that the extension has been given because of a VCAT case. But that does not stack up. When the deadline was first set, it was clear that HRL's partial EPA works approval was already going to court and would hold up the project for months. Secondly, the legal approval was just one of three conditions that HRL had to meet. As of October last year, we know that they had not met any of them.

The costs of the HRL project have increased from $750 million to $1.3 billion. However, as delays in executing HRL's contract with the China National Electric Equipment Corporation to build the plant equipment will increase the project's cost it is fair to assume that somewhere in the order of $1.5 billion is reasonable now.

The scientists on the Climate Commission have told us that, if we are to have a better than even chance of defeating runaway climate change, countries like Australia need to decarbonise our economy by 2040 at the latest. That means very simply moving as quickly as we possibly can to having this country powered by renewable energy. To potentially offer a company $100 million to build a new coal fired power station at a time when the Treasury modelling of the climate package says that no new commercial coal fired power stations can be built is putting one's feet on the accelerator and the brake at the same time. That is climate change madness.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the motion moved by the member for Melbourne. Due to the limited period of time that I have, I would like to concentrate on clause 1(e) of the motion, which states 'the Australian community strongly supports public funds being used to support the development of renewable technologies'. That assertion may have well been true in the past, as for almost two decades the Australian public has been bombarded daily with idyllic utopian images of polished white wind turbines rising from manicured green meadows against a pristine blue sky. But the public, not only in Australia but around the world, are beginning to wake up to this dangerous fallacy of using public funds to subsidise so-called renewable energy.

Firstly, wind turbines are a grossly inefficient way to generate electricity. In a sane world, no-one in their right mind would dream of building a wind turbine unless they were guaranteed a huge taxpayer subsidy. And the claim that industrial wind turbines are a renewable technology is a perversion of the language. Like all mechanical structures, wind turbines will eventually wear out. In 20 years time, if not before, our countryside will be littered with useless, rusting, broken wind turbines—a scar and a blight on our landscape, serving as a monument to a time when a generation took leave of logic and reason. Before we rush to spend more public funds on so-called renewable energy, we should take heed of the Spanish experiment, where the socialist government used public funds in an attempt to make that country a leader in renewable energy. The evidence from the Spanish experiment is in. It has proved nothing other than a national disaster and created an economic nightmare. By wasting billions on inefficient, so-called renewable energy Spain has created a vicious circle of declining prosperity and declining competitiveness. Spain now has 23 per cent unemployment, and its unemployment rate for people under 25 is a staggering 48 per cent. Social cohesion is collapsing in Spain. Poverty, homelessness and crime are all on the rise—as are depression, suicide rates and countless personal tragedies. As for the lowering of CO2 emissions—the very reason for handing out these subsidies in the first place—they have increased more than 30 per cent.

The message is clear: spending taxpayers' funds on inefficient so-called renewable energy, or on any other inefficient process of production, is a recipe for destroying jobs, damaging the economy and increasing poverty and hardship. At least the Spanish have woken up. Earlier this year they passed a decree halting subsidies for renewable energy projects. Likewise, Germany has announced that it is phasing out unaffordable solar subsidy regimes entirely by 2017. Last week, in the UK, more than 100 members from different parties wrote to their Prime Minister demanding cuts to the £500 million a year paid in subsidies. In the USA, a recent study has warned that the US government could lose $2.5 billion in loans given to so-called renewable energy projects. Australia must learn from these mistakes.

The greatest hypocrisy of renewable energy and wind turbines—even if you believe that we can and should reduce the temperature of the globe by reducing CO2 emissions—has been shown by two recent peer-reviewed studies which show that fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions are increased, not reduced, by subsidising wind power. The report notes:

… energy users pay twice—

for power generated by wind—

once for the window-dressing of renewables, and again for the fossil fuels that the energy sector continues to rely on.

The second great hypocrisy is that, while our government seeks to prevent Australian coal being used in new, modern, efficient Australian coal fired power plants, we are willing to ship that coal to China for China to roll out a new coal fired power plant every week to use.

As an ex-prime minister once said, 'Global warming is the greatest moral challenge we face'. I say the greatest moral challenge we face is to use logic and reason, and to speak out about the lunacy of diverting our limited and precious resources into hopelessly inefficient forms of so-called renewable energy generation. Our challenge is in staring down those zealots currently engaged in a colossal and dangerous act of self-deception and who will resort to bullying, threats and intimidation against anyone who questions their reckless and wasteful expenditure of public funds.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

First of all, I would like to make some comments on the member for Hughes' speech: windmills, I would say to him, windmills! They have had them in Holland for hundreds of years and they have been a very useful source of energy. People in every advanced human society are moving towards all forms of renewable energy. I found his remarks over the top. Spain does have a huge economic problem, but their economic problem is reflecting on their use of renewable energy, rather than the other way around.

I want to turn to this motion from the member for Melbourne, which I believe is seeking to bypass proper processes in the administration of Commonwealth grants. This reflects the double standards of the Greens. Two years ago, the member for Melbourne was—quite rightly—an active participant in the campaign seeking to have the Commonwealth government waive grant conditions to support the Solar Systems' Mildura solar project. With this motion, he is seeking to have the Commonwealth make decisions on the HRL project. This is inconsistent with his position of two years ago, when he rightly sought to give clean energy every opportunity to succeed. The member for Melbourne needs to be held accountable for these double standards. His motion is not about clean energy; it is a political campaign by the Greens. Let us get some facts on the table. Solar Systems and HRL were awarded grants in 2007 by the Howard government under the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration program. Both projects have had difficulties. Yet now we are asked to waive grant conditions to HRL and move heaven and earth to support Solar Systems while rigorously doing everything we can to halt the HRL project. The government, on the other hand, has been fair and has treated both projects equitably in seeking to apply procedural fairness in giving the projects an opportunity to work through their issues and giving them an opportunity to succeed.

On Friday last week the Minister for Resources and Energy—an excellent minister—announced the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism had granted a six-month extension to the HRL project, giving them until 30 June 2012 to meet outstanding grant conditions, and the minister made it explicitly clear that this will be the last extension for the HRL project. This extension has been made because the HRL-Dual Gas project is currently subject to Administrative Appeals Tribunal proceedings. If that appeal goes against them, that is the law and we will all have to accept it. In the meantime, we have to apply what I regard as fairness to both projects. I would have thought that the member for Melbourne would understand the need for proper administration of grant programs in accordance with proper processes and the importance of not pre-empting judicial processes. Again, in my view, this is a political move by the Greens to grab a headline rather than genuinely support a range of clean energy technologies.

The government, however, understands the need to support clean energy technologies, whether they are solar, CCS or geothermal, as some examples. The government will continue to support clean energy technologies, including through the $3.2 billion Australian Renewable Energy Agency, and will seek to give supported clean energy projects every chance of success, whether they are the Solar Systems Mildura project or the HRL-Dual Gas project. I wish the Greens would put aside their political campaigns against some forms of energy that they do not like and support genuinely clean energy rather than seek to chase a headline in the media.

One of the joys of being a member of the Labor Party is that we believe in egalitarianism. Some bloke working in the Latrobe Valley—a blue-collar worker—has as much right to aspire to a job, economic success and freedom as a person in North Fitzroy who has a PhD and who supports the Greens. One of the great things about this minister, the Labor government and our philosophy in general is that we want to do as Paul Keating said: let everyone drag themselves up; leave no-one behind. This is what applying fair processes is all about—leaving no-one behind. People in the Latrobe Valley are as valuable as people who live in North Fitzroy. This Labor government will not abandon them.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to join the debate and oppose both the content of the motion on funds for renewable energy and the flawed political philosophy surrounding it. It is yet another example of the Australian Greens adopting their 'fairies at the bottom of the garden' approach to the national economy. The views of the Greens would be amusing if they had not signed up to a formal agreement with the Gillard government and did not have so much influence both on the current Prime Minister and on the wider agenda being pursued by the government. I want to reflect for a moment on where Australia would be today if the Greens had been around to oppose every new development.

Let us start with dams. Australia would not have the Snowy Hydro scheme—one of the largest suppliers of renewable energy and often regarded as one of the great engineering feats of modern Australia. The irrigation system that the scheme supports helps to feed our nation and millions around the world. It simply would not have happened if the Greens had held a position of influence. The city of Melbourne, which the member who moved this motion represents in this place, would rely on tank water for its household supplies and industrial purposes because the Greens would never have allowed the construction of the Thomson Dam or any other storage in Melbourne's catchment. But that is just the start of it. Victoria would not even have a reliable baseload supply of electricity because the Greens would have opposed the development of the Latrobe Valley power industry.

Just as the Greens are opposing the HRL project—the subject of the motion before the House—they are opposed to all use of fossil fuels, which obviously includes the brown coal power industry and the generating sector which supported Victoria's development. Given the Latrobe Valley provides about 90 per cent of Victoria's energy needs, it is hard see what development could actually have occurred in Victoria if the Greens had been around to oppose every one of those projects in the 1940s and 1950s. This is where the rank hypocrisy of the Greens is illustrated for all to see. This is a party which is cosying up to the union movement and stealing political territory from the Australian Labor Party by talking about jobs, but it would effectively shut down jobs in any energy intensive industry. The member for Melbourne once worked as an industrial relations lawyer and acted on behalf of the CFMEU in a dispute between Latrobe Valley workers and management. Yet he participates in his party's vilification of the power industry and the communities which support it. And the list goes on. The Greens oppose the live exports industry in favour of boxed meat products, but their carbon approach will actually shut down the Australian abattoirs in the first place.

The Labor Party are continuing to run with the Greens agenda. I am not referring to the previous speaker, but there are plenty in the Labor Party who do. Just last Thursday the member for Wills was in this place tabling a petition calling on the House to withdraw federal funding for the HRL project. In his contribution the member for Wills talked about jobs and belittled the HRL project's potential to create 'just 35' ongoing operational jobs. Given that this government did not create any jobs in the past 12 months, I am not sure that any member opposite is in a position to be such a jobs snob and suggest that some jobs are not worthy or any project does not create enough employment. In any case, whatever the member for Wills has had to say, what he does not seem to appreciate—and the Greens have never pretended to understand—is that the provision of cheap, reliable base load electricity is one of the key competitive advantages of local businesses.

I will take up the previous speaker's comments in relation to the Latrobe Valley power station workers in just a moment. Last week the Minister for Resources and Energy was in the Latrobe Valley and he gave at least the impression of understanding how important the brown coal sector will be for the Latrobe Valley in the future. The minister was there supporting a $100 million project for carbon capture and storage. In his speech there were a couple of noteworthy points. First of all, the minister did not mention 'dirty brown coal' or 'big polluters' at any stage when he was in the Latrobe Valley. Yet we come into this place and we hear it every day of the week. Every day in this place during the great carbon tax debate, I heard members opposite vilify the very same workers that the previous speaker referred to in the Latrobe Valley, describing them as 'working for those dirty brown coal power generators' and vilifying them and the work that they have done on behalf of the Victorian community.

I do not actually believe the minister supports the carbon tax, in any case—though perhaps I am reading him wrong. He does not believe in the carbon tax because he knows it is a job killer in regional areas, like the Latrobe Valley, and he knows that it will only make things worse in the manufacturing sector.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member interjects. In his speech the minister waxed lyrical about the future possibilities of brown coal if the research and development related to CCS proved successful. He also announced the extension to the time frames of the HRL project. So while the member for Melbourne and the member for Wills come in here and attack the use of cheap and reliable base load energy from fossil fuels, the minister responsible is getting on with the job of actually securing Victoria's future energy needs and recognises the potential to keep using brown coal into the future.

I fear that it is only when the lights go out and the last manufacturing job is exported offshore that Australians will begin to understand how dangerous the Greens' policies are for the future of our nation. I oppose this motion and I condemn the Australian Greens for their hypocrisy and I call on members opposite to stand up for Latrobe Valley power station workers and actually do the right thing and abandon the carbon tax.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the difficult things for me in any debate about energy is that we have to cast any discussion about this matter as though we are either entirely for existing forms of energy or we are entirely for newer forms—that there cannot be in some way, shape or form an intelligent use of alternative sources of energy that complement each other. It is simply a fact of life that, given coal reserves in this country, we will be dependent on coal for some considerable period of time.

I note that in discussion around this resolution there will be elements that will focus on opposition to certain parts of the resolution. My support for renewable energy is not just from an environmental perspective but also from an economic perspective. It is a statement of fact that, in our reliance on fossil fuels, we are relying on a finite resource. At some point in the future these resources will dwindle to such an extent that we will be required to use other forms of energy in a way that will accommodate a growth in energy use—which continues to increase year in and year out because of our lifestyle and because our economic development requires an ability to tap into reliable and constant forms of energy—and we need to be able to do it in a way that is efficient.

Anyone who supports renewable energy is not just an environmentalist but is also thinking, as we all do, from an economic perspective about an efficient use of resources. As a resource, particularly a finite one, becomes more and more expensive—because we are unable to find abundant sources of these resources—it is incumbent on us all, from the perspective of looking at what happens from environmental degradation but also from the perspective of the efficient use of resources, to find other ways to supplement energy generation. That is why I speak in favour of renewable energy. It is important that in the course of the last 12 months, and particularly in terms of the contribution made through the debate on putting a price on carbon, we have also seen as a result of putting a price on carbon that there will be impetus provided to look at smarter ways of generating energy that are also cleaner.

I am proud of being a member of a government that has not only introduced a carbon price from this year but will also through the renewable energy target provide a cross-subsidy of more than $20 billion to the renewable energy sector over the period. It will also, through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, invest about $10 billion in renewable energy—$10 billion to find cleaner ways of generating energy and to use energy more efficiently through the application of technology. That will be done through a combination of loans, loan guarantees and equity investments and will also create the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, ARENA, to consolidate $3.2 billion in government support for research and development and also demonstration, deployment and commercialisation of renewable energy. We are doing this for a variety of reasons, including obviously for the immediate impact of what we are doing in relation to introducing a clean energy future. A carbon price is part of that. It is also important that the sooner we start embracing renewable energy the better it is in terms of future generations, because, frankly, not doing anything on this is in effect cost-shifting to future generations, requiring them to deal with the economic impact of having dwindling finite fossil fuels to meet our energy requirements.

In saying that, my deep concern is that, in setting up the loans and the loan guarantees, there is certainty for business. My opposition to the member for Melbourne's motion is the concern that, while obviously we want to have the efficient use of government funding, we want to be able to do that in a way that does not arbitrarily remove grants from businesses that have secured them. It is my understanding that the minister has granted an extension of time, and it is the final extension of time, to HRL to deal with this. But as we find that renewable energy and renewable technologies do from time to time meet community opposition, and other factors as well, there will be a requirement for us to be flexible to work through an infant technology or a newer way of generating energy. My concern about this motion is that it arbitrarily removes funds supporting one applicant who had been awarded this under a previous government. We need to be smarter about the way in which we work with industry to achieve a goal that we all support: generating more renewable energy.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is interesting that the Greens are pushing Labor, the party it does a good job of controlling most of the time, to reallocate a $100 million grant to develop renewable energies. Usually when Greens leader Senator Bob Brown says jump, the Prime Minister replies, 'How high?'

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member will be careful not to cause reflections on the Prime Minister.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The member for Melbourne has a lot to say, considering he is the only Green among the 150 members of the House of Representatives. Senator Brown has way too much influence in national politics, given that the Greens make up just 10 of the 226 representatives in the two houses of parliament. The way he and his lot carry on, you would think he was running the place.

The trouble is the Prime Minister and the government are letting them. Just before the 2010 election the recently appointed, not elected, Prime Minister told the Australian public, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.' Then, with Senator Brown front and centre, she went back on her word and announced, just five short months and one week later, that there would be a carbon tax. Making the carbon tax double-cross, the Prime Minister said there would be a smooth transition in its implementation. But in the supposed clean energy future of the Prime Minister, Labor and the Greens, carbon will have a $23 a tonne price at the beginning, which will go up and up and up; jobs will be lost overseas when our industries cannot compete with countries in which there is no carbon tax and energy is produced using far more emissions than here; and Mr and Mrs Average will be hit hard every time they buy the family groceries, fill up their car or get their electricity or gas bills. This is all thanks to the Greens and the undemocratic power they seem to be able to wield over a Prime Minister who does anything and says anything merely to keep her job. Meantime, the temperature—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member has been told. It is not appropriate to keep reflecting on the Prime Minister as such.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens demanded an end to the 150-plus year tradition of cattle grazing in Victoria's alpine high country and the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities caved in. Now, graziers are not permitted to take their cattle—which used to do a fantastic job of eating the grass, which would otherwise become a fire hazard—into national parks. These parks will in time become a tinderbox and the tragic fires that blackened Victoria in the recent past, taking lives and destroying properties, will sadly reoccur, all for the sake of giving in to the Greens, who would have this country return to pre-First-Fleet conditions, given the chance.

The Greens want all the water in the Murray-Darling to flow down the system and out to sea, without giving farmers a chance to grow the food to feed this nation, and a good many more as well. This is a dangerous party with radical ideas. It is not an environmental party. It has a social agenda to change the shape of how our nation, certainly regional Australia, does things.

There are significant faults with the member for Melbourne's proposal. I do believe that the government is kidding itself if it honestly believes that China is not continuing to build dirty coal-fired power stations. The government is delusional if it accepts that. Australia has enormous reserves of coal, and the emissions of our power stations are low compared with those of China, which has one of the world's fastest growing economies and no plans to introduce a carbon tax.

Australia's energy needs will only grow into the future, providing of course that the carbon tax and Labor do not virtually shut down our manufacturing and mining sectors. The Greens' obsession with renewable investment is not backed up with results. Wind turbines, in most areas, do not do the job they are purported to do and are credited with. Often they are a con, something that is certainly a visual impact but little in the way of power creation. They often are physically damaging and are psychologically damaging for those unfortunate enough to live close by.

If the Gillard-Brown government wants to spend an investment that has been set aside by the coalition to help this nation it ought to be ensuring that the $5.8 billion budgeted for water-saving infrastructure in the Murray-Darling starts to hit the ground. Such a move would also have positive environmental implications. The water such investment would save would go a long way towards fixing the perceived problems in the Murray-Darling.

At present we are more than half-way through the consultation period on a bad draft, which would devastate regional communities. For what? All for the sake of wetlands regenerated by recent flooding, and those wetlands have always dried off in times of drought. We have a plan based on a disastrous decade-long drought, yet there are ridiculous and wasteful calls for over-bank watering of wetlands, which have lasted millennia due to the continual cycle of drought and flooding rains.

The Greens are not to be trusted with their demands on the government, and getting Labor to reinvest HRL Ltd's $100 million grant is a reckless idea in itself. This is a government that cannot handle money. Its fiscal record is a litany of waste and over-runs. Having Labor transfer grant money and put it into another scheme hatched by the Greens is asking for another school halls fiasco or a pink batts disaster. How anyone can trust Labor and the Greens to deliver any good? People cannot. The sooner we have an election the better. (Time expired)

Debate adjourned.