Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

There have been certain accusations levelled by Senator Fielding and by Senator Milne. It was a difficult decision to support this legislation because it does increase the cost of electricity. As I have said before, if you increase the cost of energy—and it is not four per cent; it is about seven per cent on an increased ETS, when it comes in—it not only impacts on every working family but also gets passed through to every industry. So it was a difficult decision. It was probably one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make, and the thing that pushed us over the line to vote for this was the fact, as Senator Wong included in her speech, that there were millions and millions and millions of dollars invested on the word of the coalition and the Labor Party. These people acted in good faith and took us on our word that we would go down the road of a renewable energy target. At that stage, I do not think anyone knew what it meant, but they went out and invested. Some of those people are National Party customers—the sugar industry, for one, has put millions into the gas.

So what were we to do? Should we have walked away from our word and left these people high and dry? They went out and invested on our say-so. That is not the way the National Party do business. Our word is our bond, and we stick to it. That is the area that we got pushed over the line. Were we going to walk away from people who invested money on our say-so? The answer was that we could not. That does not necessarily mean that I agree with this. I think it increases the price of electricity. I think it increases it on top of an ETS. I think wind power is not only unreliable but dangerous to our birds and all the other things that the Greens stand up for. It just clutters up and is very dangerous for our endangered species. I do not hear the Greens talking about that. I just want to say that we stuck to our word, and that word was, ‘You go out and invest and we’ll cover it.’ Maybe we were right and maybe we were wrong, but at least we stuck to our word.