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

I just wanted it on the record, Minister, before I began that it was Queen Elizabeth II who did encourage the Commonwealth to take action and that I, for one, would never suggest she was part of a left-wing conspiracy. I want to move on to the serious issues that I raised in relation to compensation for coal fired power. I did ask the minister specifically whether the $7.3 billion compensation pertained to a five per cent cut in emissions, exactly how much this would rise to if there were a 15 per cent cut in emissions and what that would rise to if there were a 25 per cent cut in emissions.

I also go to the minister saying that there will be a low-emissions transition incentive that will amend the power system reliability test to allow generators to receive credit for their own investments in replacement capacity, and that not only will they get that but they will continue to receive their remaining scheduled compensation payments at the same time. I would like to know what the quantum of the low-emissions transition incentive is. Is this an unlimited amount of money? This is over and above the compensation we have talked about. Can the minister say what quantum is expected there in addition to the specifics of exactly how much compensation these coal fired generators are going to get if the emissions reductions rise to that which I have suggested?

Is the only justification the minister can offer for this completely unjustified handout to the big polluters that it is about energy security, about keeping the lights on and about keeping the generators producing? The whole point of an emissions trading scheme, surely, is to put a sufficient price on emissions so that gas and renewables are more cost-effective against coal. This surely deliberately undermines one of the central tenets of the whole point of emissions trading. As I indicated before, the share price for coal companies, coal fired generators and electricity generators has reflected the risk of carbon pricing for a long time. You cannot suggest that the same companies who are now generating coal fired power are necessarily the companies that are going to be offering energy into the future. We do not owe them a living. There are a whole lot of new companies that are involved in renewables and that have moved across to gas and so on. They have a right to be in the market, able to compete. As we know, the generators can pass on the costs, and this is getting to a point where the competition is such that gas and renewables take over. What is happening here is that you are undermining all of the drivers for that to happen. So I again would like to ask the minister why she is undermining her own scheme with sandbagging the big coal fired polluters. Can she give me the quantum of figures in relation to those matters?