David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate Senator Macdonald on his manful defence of the indefensible, but now the time has come for us to switch the channel from vaudeville back to policy. I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak about the Rudd government’s commitment to renewable energy. This government is indeed committed to moving the Australian economy towards a cleaner and greener future by encouraging the use of renewable energy wherever possible, wherever practicable, wherever viable. This is a vital part of our overall scheme to reduce Australia’s emission of greenhouse gases through the burning of fossil fuels. The other part of our scheme is the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a scheme which the Senate is currently debating, a scheme about which Senator Macdonald and his colleagues have made clear their intent. These are the two chief policy weapons which Australia must deploy if we are to reduce our emissions and accept our fair and proper share of the international responsibility for tackling dangerous climate change. Both these policy weapons are necessary. Neither will be fully effective without the other. As Senator Macdonald and his colleagues well know, what we are debating here at the moment is in practical effect a complementary measure of the CPRS and it is vitally important that both the CPRS legislation and our measures with respect to renewable energy are put in place as quickly as possible.

We have seen today that the opposition are determined to do everything within their power to delay the progress, the consideration and the debate in this place of the CPRS bills. They will filibuster this legislation in the Senate for all they are worth. They are determined not to allow a vote on this legislation this week. They are determined not to allow for these bills to be passed this year. They are doing this partly because they are terrified of the possible political consequences of rejecting the CPRS legislation—and rightly so—but mainly because they cannot agree on their position on climate change in general and the CPRS in particular. There is no ambiguity about the fact that, when it comes to the climate change and global warming debate, the other side can be found on every part of the debate on every side of the street—indeed, meeting themselves coming through the door.

Today we have an opposition leader whose authority has been fatally undermined by his own reckless and irresponsible behaviour. He has made unsubstantiated allegations against the Prime Minister of corruption no less and lying to parliament no less, based on what we now know is a forged email. His cunning plan has blown up in his face with the exposure of this faked email. His authority is now so weak that not even today, let alone on any other day, can he impose on his party or on his senators here in this chamber any decision to support the CPRS legislation, legislation which Mr Turnbull and Mr Hunt know full well is necessary. One might say that the Liberal Party senators and the National Party senators have kidnapped the coalition and dragged it kicking and screaming, with a weak leader at the helm, to a position which is completely indefensible and a position which today it can only sustain through delay and verbal fraud. This is why the opposition is so desperate today to move the debate away from its obstructionism of the CPRS and have us debate renewable energy instead.

It is quite amazing that Senator Joyce should come into the Senate and propose this matter of public importance—Senator Joyce, of course, being one of the most vociferous opponents of the CPRS Bill. He has made it clear that the Nationals will oppose not just the CPRS, not just this emissions trading scheme, but any emissions trading scheme. As he put it so eloquently, the certainty he intends to provide to the Australian business community is the word ‘no’. He and his party here in the Senate have made it clear that he will ignore any decision by the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow cabinet to support an emissions trading scheme. And, I might say, it is now quite clear that, for most senators opposite, the opinion of the opposition leader is of no account.

Senator Joyce would have Australia do nothing to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions—nothing. He would have us go to the Copenhagen climate conference in December with no greenhouse gas emissions targets in place at all. Who is going to listen to Australia’s argument at Copenhagen if our parliament has just voted to do nothing whatsoever about action on climate change? It was Senator Joyce’s party that prevented the Howard government ratifying the Kyoto protocol and therefore wasted an entire decade in which Australia could have made a serious start on reducing our emissions and made an important contribution to the global climate change debate. Now Senator Joyce and his colleagues want to waste yet another decade by blocking the CPRS Bill in the Senate indefinitely. Senator Joyce has no credibility on this subject, and his motion is just part of a broader opposition attempt to distract attention away from its own obstructionist strategy.

Let me now turn to the subject of this motion. The Renewable Remote Power Generation Program is a program to support remote Australian homes, communities, businesses, governments and industry. The government committed $300 million to renewable energy generation in remote and regional areas. More than 7,000 residential and medium-scale projects were approved. These projects, with a total power capacity of more than 10,600 kilowatts of solar, wind and micro hydro, are estimated to save more than 24 million litres of diesel fuel every year. This was a useful program, but it was always a transitional program; it was never an end in itself. The fact that the funding allocated for this program has now run out was never disguised. The program has invested over $215 million in supporting renewable remote power generation, with a further $85 million under construction or approved—a total of $300 million. The program had funds to run until 2011 but, due to the recent spike in demand, these funds are now fully committed. The renewable energy industry has been aware for some time that this program has finite funds and that full commitment was imminent.

The decision to wind this program up was not taken in a vacuum. It was taken in the context of the government’s overall commitment to renewable energy. On 9 June, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts announced the final legislation for the expanded renewable energy target, which will allow for the creation of new solar credits. These solar credits will build on the largest ever investment in solar panels in this nation’s history, with more than 80,000 solar systems set to be installed on Australian rooftops since the Rudd government came to office. The opposition does not like being reminded of this, but it remains the fact that this government has overseen more installation of solar power systems in 18 months—that is, since we came to power—than we saw over the previous eight years of the Howard government. As the minister said, the renewable energy sector has changed from being a cottage industry to being part of a productive and growing green-collar workforce. This government has done more to foster the growth of renewable energy than any other government in Australian history.

It is in that context that the farce of those opposite is truly seen, because not only are they opposing the CPRS—not only are they twisted in knots as they try and debate their own internal position—but, on that side of the chamber, they are not even sure that climate change is happening. Now we have to put up with them coming into this place and pretending, for brief moments every day, that they are in fact green—that they believe in a green future and that they understand what the green and clean future of this country could mean in terms of jobs, job opportunities and new industries. But we on this side are not surprised that the coalition—which is tortured, twisted, divided and led by a man who cannot lead and which has a creative writing team which might be good at emails but is no good at policy—remains a mess.

The previous government had no real interest in renewable energy. The only reason the Howard government ever created this scheme in the first place was that they were forced to by the Australian Democrats as part of a deal they negotiated with Meg Lees to get the GST bills through the Senate. That is the whole sum of your commitment, Senator Macdonald: a deal with the Democrats. Senator Joyce is claiming this scheme as the Howard government’s child, but it was an unwanted child of very dubious parentage indeed. It is particularly curious to see a Nationals senator coming in here and crying crocodile tears about renewable energy. During the recent hearings of the Senate Select Committee on Climate Policy, Senator Joyce’s colleague Senator Boswell—that notorious green—never tired of telling us what a disaster mandatory renewable energy targets would be. He raised this matter with virtually every witness, as Senator Macdonald well knows, inviting them to agree with him that the renewable energy target would have disastrous effects on their industry. Senator Boswell is not only adamantly opposed to an emissions trading scheme but also opposed to government leadership in making the transition to renewable energy. The other side’s colours are well and truly up the mast here. Renewable energy is an alien notion for those opposite. I am very interested to know what Senator Joyce’s position is this minute, because we can be sure that, whatever it is, it will remain complete humbug.