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

I think what Senator Xenophon has recognised is that the deal that was done between the government and the coalition transfers billions of dollars to coal fired generators, for example, and there is no guarantee whatsoever from those coal fired generators in relation to jobs. We have had many people in the coalition running around telling coal communities that the way to save their jobs and save those communities is to give billions of dollars to multinational corporations when there is absolutely no justification whatsoever for transferring such a vast amount of money across to those coal fired generators. There is absolutely no justification for it in economic terms. It is rent seeking in the extreme, and there is nothing in the deal between the government and the coalition that says those multinational corporations owe anything to their workers.

I disagree with Senator Xenophon in requiring them to maintain exactly the same workforce because, as I understand the plan, if you are going to reduce emissions and you are going to transition to different industries, you might well have a different energy generator who is producing renewables or something as opposed to a coal fired generator. So the issue here is to guarantee communities keep the jobs, have the training and so on and do not just get dumped.

The concern I have, and that Senator Xenophon has clearly articulated in this amendment, is that the government and the coalition have agreed to a plan with five per cent emission cuts. The coal fired generators get $7.3 billion for nothing. There is no justification for it. It is simply because they did a better job than other people in stirring up coal communities, saying that they would shut down, that the lights would go out if they did not get this money, with no justification whatsoever because, as I have said so many times in here, the risk associated with a carbon price was factored into their share price calculation. They have known this was coming for 20 years, and now they can take the money and run—and just watch how some of them do it.

When we come back here in five years time, we will find that $6 billion was taken out of the pockets of the community in compensation and transferred straight across to multinational corporations, laughing all the way to the bank, because at no stage has either the minister or the coalition put on the record what is the economic argument for giving to coal fired generators compensation for the loss of their asset value when that is the whole point of a carbon price—that is, to put a price on carbon such that you bring on alternatives to coal fired generation.

The issue here should have been that this money is not going to coal fired generators but going to the communities in which coal fired generators are located so that there is an industry policy with money so that the structural adjustment in those communities could occur. But, no, that money is not going to the communities. That money is going to the coal fired generators, and just watch them cut and run. And, when they do, all the people who negotiated this deal with the money, the billions, going to them, will say, ‘Oh, they shut down.’ What Senator Xenophon is saying is they should at least have been required to provide a plan of how they are going to cut their emissions.

I would correct the acting minister, Senator Ludwig, who said the point of this scheme is to reduce emissions. The coal fired generators are not going to reduce their emissions out to 2034. They are not going to reduce their emissions. In fact, the deal between the government and the coalition requires the coal fired generators to keep on generating electricity at huge cost to the atmosphere because there will be no carbon capture and storage in that time frame. It requires them to do that or they lose their compensation. It is why it has this ridiculously perverse outcome whereby Western Australia is considering re-commissioning old decommissioned coal fired power plants. It will keep Hazelwood operating, the plant in Victoria long overdue for closure.

What the government and the coalition have done with this scheme is to say, ‘Keep on pumping out coal fired power,’ and that was clearly canvassed on Business Sunday at the weekend. There were any number of analysts saying: ‘What has happened here is that they’ve been paid to keep on polluting rather than being paid to stop polluting, and the communities should have been paid with an industry policy that set up new renewable energy technologies in the Hunter Valley, in the Latrobe Valley and so on. We should’ve gone directly to transfer the benefits to communities, not to multinational corporations.’ So I have got a great deal of sympathy with what Senator Xenophon was trying to do, which was to link the compensation to some jobs guarantees, which are not here. But I cannot concur with the idea that they must retain the same number of employees, because if a scheme worked effectively you would have a transformation out of dirty electricity into the new green jobs in the renewable energy sector and in all the technologies associated with that. In my view that is how the plan should work.

Nevertheless it is an attempt by Senator Xenophon to force some transparency on the multinationals so that they just do not take the money and run, and we still do not have an answer on that from the government. The $7.3 billion that they negotiated for coal-fired generators is for a five per cent reduction. I asked the government to calculate and come back to me with a figure for a 15 per cent reduction in emissions and then a 25 per cent reduction in emissions, but we have not had those figures floating around because I am sure the government and the coalition do not want the Australian people to know just exactly how much they would be prepared to pay multinational corporations, with no economic justification whatsoever. As Professor Garnaut indicated, there is no justification for giving compensation for loss of asset value to coal-fired power stations. We did not do it to the tobacco industry, we did not do it to the asbestos industry and we ought not to be doing it for coal-fired power.