Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

To set Senator Colbeck straight, the parties in the Senate that work day in, day out, to promote businesses that are investing in renewable energy and energy efficiency are the Greens and the Democrats. Far from being opposed to those companies, we do our level best to promote what they do and to draw to the attention of Australians the number of businesses going offshore because government policy is driving them out of the country. They are going overseas to maximise their profits and roll out of technologies. So let us not hear the lame political comment that we have just heard from the government senator.

The question here is: why does the government resist making mandatory the requirement to implement the identified energy efficiency savings? It is all very well for Senator Colbeck to stand up and say that these companies have identified opportunities for saving energy. Have they implemented them all? Are we seeing progressive implementation? Businesses are not necessarily going to make decisions to become more energy efficient if they can persuade governments to discount power to them. In Tasmania, as most people would know, the big industrial users of energy—Comalco, for example—have bulk power contracts with what was the monopoly hydro—government-owned at that time—enterprise. We had a situation where, rather than take sensible measures to reduce their energy use, the big industrial users instead used political power to drive down the cost of energy so that they could continue to operate at a profit at the expense of the Tasmanian taxpayer. That is what industry has done in the past and continues to do around the country. They have negotiated—in the case of Tasmania—secret bulk power contracts which both Liberal and Labor governments in Tasmania have refused to make public on the basis of their being commercial-in-confidence, even though there was a monopoly supplier and one large company in the case of Comalco.

Now that these bulk power contracts are coming to an end, there is huge pressure and politics being played around energy. So let us not hear this nonsense that companies which suddenly find there are savings to be made in energy efficiency necessarily make the decision to invest their corporate dollar in that energy efficiency. Often they use investment to expand their businesses into other areas and so on.

We want an explanation from the minister as to why the government baulks at going the next step. Having required companies to identify energy savings, why will the government not then require those companies to implement those savings through a mandatory regulated measure? If you take climate change seriously, if you recognise the savings that are to be made from energy efficiency, why will you not accelerate the process? Is it because the government believes—as does Ziggy Switkowski—that climate change is not the major problem facing Australia and that we have 15 to 20 years to fiddle around while unproven technologies suddenly become proven, or does the government take this seriously? Does the government accept that we have to make significant cuts? If so, why are the government baulking at the notion of making mandatory that which they tout as voluntary?