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

The matter of public importance we are debating today says that a feed-in tariff will create jobs, revitalise regional communities and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Greens have got a trifecta there. It will not create jobs unless they are heavily subsidised jobs. It will kill regional Australia; it will increase costs for the people who can least afford it. And it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions but at three times the cost of an ETS. That is what the research from the Productivity Commission, Treasury and a number of other sources has said: yes, it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions but at three times the cost of an ETS. So I have to inform the Greens that they have got it completely wrong, as usual.

A gross feed-in tariff is one where, under gross metering, the tariff is paid for the total amount of power produced without any deduction being made, irrespective of how much of that power is used and fed back into the system. A kilowatt per hour is worth about 16c to 21c. When you put it into a gross feed-in tariff, it goes up to 60c. So a gross feed-in tariff that started at 21c is now 60c. But, due to the generosity of the Greens, people who put these photovoltaic cells on the roofs will get it for the power they use and the power they put back into the grid. It is a wonderful system for those who do not have to pay! A 21c product becomes a product worth 60c, and 60c is the rate paid for all the electricity generated under a gross feed-in tariff. There are only two territories—no states—that have agreed with this, the ACT and the Northern Territory. Every state has avoided a gross feed-in tariff like the plague. They will not accept it.

We can all stand here—and Senator Milne is very good at it—and paint a rosy picture of renewable energy. But let us get down to basics. What is renewable energy? Renewable energy costs, and it costs a lot of money, and it will not work unless it is heavily subsidised. Let us go back. Coal power is $40 a megawatt hour of power. Gas is about $50 to $55. Wind is $100 a megawatt hour of power. Photovoltaic cell power is $200. So you have got a $40 product that has to be subsidised $60 before it will work. Even then it only works when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. It does not work all the time. You have to have baseload power there, churning away in the background to back it up, and when the power fails you kick it up a bit. So it is an absolute fallacy.

Senator Milne, it is not true to say that these things will create prosperity. They will cost prosperity, and you know it and I know it. And to go back to renewable energy and to give some detail of what it will mean, say, to the Catholic hospitals, it will cost the Catholic health hospitals and their health department and aged care homes $3 million by 2020. That is renewable energy. Someone has got to pay for it; someone has to pay for renewable energy. And who is going to pay, Senator Milne? Is it going to be the pensioner? Is it going to be the unemployed, the single mother, the battling family, the blue-collar worker? Who is going to pay for your generosity? Someone has to pay these subsidies.

You say it will create jobs. Yes, it has created jobs in Germany and in Spain—but are they going down like a brick! The Wall Street Journal has reported the collapse in Spain’s photovoltaic sector, saying that it ‘has been so drastic that jobs plunged from a peak of 41,700 early last year to 13,900 in the spring of 2009’. It went on to say that Q-Cells, the world’s largest producer, had been exporting huge quantities of cells. In the first half of the year it operated at a €47 profit but then in the second half of the year 500 workers were laid off and they took a loss of €47 million. So, yes, photovoltaic cells, wind and everything else will work. You can create jobs but you have got to subsidise those jobs. They just will not work because they are up there.

The Greens cannot understand this. I think that they can understand it. I do not think that it is very hard to understand, but ‘none are so blind that do not want to see’ and when it comes to green energy there are none so blind as the Greens. They say that it is going to revitalise regional communities. Every regional community of any size—15,000 or 10,000—will have a fish factory or a fish processing works—and I am thinking of Urangan fish works—or an abattoir. There is a little place like Boonah where they have Bunny Bite food processing. Places like that are all going to pick up this tab. Not every town, but most towns, have some form of primary industry processing, whether an abattoir or a fish processing works or a fruit and vegetable processing works, all using tremendous amounts of power. How is it going to revitalise these communities? How is it going to work for the processing works that have 400 people working in the abattoirs, for example, as Senator Williams would know? How is it going to work when already the ETS and the RET will put their power bills up by 50 per cent? Then we throw this in on top of it. It is not going to do anything positive. It is going to cost jobs in regional communities.

If you think you are going to talk a few farmers into putting a few photovoltaic cells on their roofs and spread the cost out to the rest of the community, I do not think that they are so selfish to start with. I know that Senator Brown is going to tell us about the two-hectare piggery where the farmer got out of pigs and put photovoltaic cells on his two hectares in Germany. He may have found a loophole but it did not do anything for the farming industry at all. Where did the jobs go in the abattoirs and what happened to the people who helped on the farm? They are not there any more. So just wake up. This is a nonsense. What is worse, you know it is a nonsense. I can understand Senator Brown, but Senator Milne, you understand that this cannot work.