Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Swan for her question. The member for Swan, as an engineer, born and raised in Kalgoorlie, knows Australia's opportunity to be a renewable energy superpower. She dedicated her professional life to solutions to decarbonise Australia and the world, and she's continuing that in this House.

There's an energy transformation underway right around the world, and Australian energy can power it; Australian regions can drive it; Australian resources can build it; Australian entrepreneurs and researchers can design it; and Australian workers can thrive from it—but only with the right policy settings. And the right policy settings are the ones that the Treasurer and I introduced into the parliament today. They have been worked on by the Minister for Industry and Science, the Minister for Resources and the entire cabinet to seize the opportunities for our country.

These opportunities are enormous. Our investment in green hydrogen, for example, is designed to unlock $50 billion worth of private sector investment, by unleashing and unlocking that private sector investment, and to create jobs. The legislation we introduced today outlines the rigourous process and the national interest test, and it also provides statutorily protected funding for ARENA—ARENA, which the previous government tried to abolish and tried to defund on so many occasions. We're locking in that funding.

The honourable member asked me what policies we rejected instead of the policies that we are implementing. Now, of course, those opposite propose a policy which promises jobs decades away—which is a unicorn. I'll take some examples, because what our policy is designed to do is to stop Australian ingenuity and Australian expertise being exported to jobs offshore. Australia invented the modern solar panel and we invented the flow battery. Australians have invented the most efficient solar panel in the world, through SunDrive. They had to decide whether to manufacture in Australia or in the United States. After the release of our policies Solar Sunshot and Future Made in Australia, they have decided to manufacture in Australia. Do you know where, Mr Speaker? On the site of the old Liddell Power Station. They will employ more Australians there than the power station ever did.

But those plans are threatened because somebody else wants to build a nuclear power station there some years into the future. So the people of the Hunter have a choice: real jobs now making Australian solar panels, or fake fantasy jobs decades into the future making nuclear energy. Both can't be true. Either we make solar panels at Liddell now or the opposition gets its way and the site is quarantined for a nuclear plant decades in the future. That's why this Leader of the Opposition presents a real risk to the Australian economy, and a real risk to Australian jobs.