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

I thank Senator Xenophon for raising these issues in the committee stage. The Greens have already put on the record quite clearly that we think all the green carbon issues should be dealt with in a parallel scheme, and that remains the case. Part of the problem and the frustration for these companies is that there just are not R&D grants available; nor is there money for commercialising beyond R&D and then moving from pilot to the small or medium scale. The frustration that is being expressed in this amendment is really a frustration about there not being a pathway for so many of these new technologies to get from where they are to where they need to be. The minister talked about the Solar Flagships Program, and that is a classic case of failure for the same reason. You need the money to scale up to small or medium scale to prove that the technology can work before you then ask investors to take you up to the large scale.

When I moved for the inquiry into Australia’s future oil supply and alternative technologies, one of the very impressive groups of people who came before that inquiry were a company called Microbiogen. They were looking at producing second generation biofuels by converting cellulose to fuel using enzymes. They had patented their technology and it was extremely impressive, but they were leaving the country and going to the US. They had already interested US and UK investors. They came before the committee to say that they wanted to do this in Australia but there was just no mechanism for them to do it here. There were coming to the committee not to ask for anything—they had already made the decision to leave the country and they had overseas investors—but to say that they had a technology which was potentially a major breakthrough in going to second generation biofuels. Second generation biofuels overcome the whole issue of displacement of food production land into fuel production, which has been a major problem for biofuels around the world. But Microbiogen had to leave the country.

What I am hearing from Senator Xenophon is just what I hear about so many technologies, whether solar, biofuel or whatever else. The main problem is we do not have an effective mechanism in Australia. I note the minister’s comments about how grants programs may be an effective way of doing this. They might, but they do not exist at the level at which we need them to exist. One of the points Professor Garnaut made in his review, when talking about emissions trading, was that you need to auction permits so that you get a substantial body of funds the government can use to proactively support grant programs and the like.

Senator Xenophon, I cannot support your amendment because I would like to do it differently, but I acknowledge that this is a major hole in Australia and it is why we are losing some of our best brains overseas. We have seen a massive brain drain out of the country in a whole range of new technologies. David Mills with Solar Heat and Power is a classic case—he went to California. Spark Solar say to me that all their technicians and engineers overseas are Australian. The University of New South Wales and the ANU produce fantastic solar experts who end up working for overseas companies. Zhengrong Shi is Australia’s solar billionaire. On and on it goes.

The current renewable energy target is not well enough targeted or high enough and, because of the faults I have mentioned before, will not support bringing on these new technologies. There is no gross national feed-in tariff. That is desperately needed to bring on these emerging technologies. In addition to a RET and a feed-in tariff you have to have a grants program not just about R&D but that actually takes you through to the commercialisation phases. We are going to have to introduce that. It is no good for the government to say they do not pick winners. They do. Carbon capture and storage is a winner that the government have proactively chosen. In my view it is a complete failure, a dud and nothing other than a pipe dream. Either way, the government have chosen it and given it massive financial support that all these other technologies already sequestering carbon in various ways have not been able to secure. I put on the record my support for addressing this hole in public policy, but I cannot support the amendment Senator Xenophon has put forward.

Question negatived.