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

As I was indicating, what we have at the moment is rhetoric from the coalition about avoiding deficits that would require them to find an additional $50 billion a year in savings. In the Press Club speech the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, said that by the end of a coalition government's term tax cuts 'will be in prospect'. What does that mean? Will be in prospect? Taken at face value, that suggests that there will be no tax cuts for at least four or five years. This policy seems to have lasted less than a day, because media reports then had spokespeople for the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, saying there will be tax cuts within the first term.

I also go to the issue of the clean energy package which passed through the Senate last year and in which there is considerable benefit to Australians, with a $10 billion investment in clean energy—a huge investment in energy efficiency—announced today. I urge people in the community to be aware that there is over $200 million that the community can now apply for for energy efficiency grants that have been announced today as part of that package. The coalition would abolish all of those and yet it is out there telling the community that it supports renewable energy whilst at exactly the same time saying it will not support the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

Interestingly, in that context in Tasmania you have the opposition—the Liberal Party in Tasmania—saying that the government should try to leverage off the Clean Energy Finance Corporation for Tasmania to have a whole strategy in renewable energy. It is quite clear that Mr Groom, the spokesperson, and Mr Hodgman, the Leader of the Oppo­sition in Tasmania, have not spoken to their federal colleague Senator Abetz, because Senator Abetz would be able to tell them that they ought not talk about leveraging off the Clean Energy Finance Corporation when he intends to make sure it does not happen and that Tasmania gets no benefit from it in that circumstance.

Equally, we have Mr Groom and Mr Hodgman out there saying they want a second Basslink. They want to get that out of the Connecting Renewables Initiative, which the federal government has on the go. They are saying, 'We want some of that money for Tasmania.' Meanwhile we have the coalition saying that it has a $70 billion black hole. It is going to sack public servants and somehow it is going to add tax cuts. It is going to get all the benefits, supposedly, of compensation and so on. This is a complete mess from the coalition in terms of an economic policy. No wonder Senator Cash does not want to talk about the coalition's policy; she does not want to have any scrutiny or any accountability for her actions in relation to the economy.

Let me move onto the issue of the mining boom. The Greens supported the resources super profits tax that was broadly in line with the Henry proposals. And we regret the fact that the government backed off the super profits tax, because it would have been appropriate to take excessive profits in the midst of a minerals boom and put them in a sovereign wealth fund in order to help Australia invest in public health and public education—particularly in light of the fact that under the Howard years there was such underfunding of education.

We hollowed out the manufacturing sector. We failed, under the Howard govern­ment, to invest in education and training. We turned this economy into a far less sophisticated economy. We turned it into a quarry economy, and that is why the coalition are now struggling with their economics. They have a situation where they cannot indicate how they intend to make up the $70 billion black hole in their strategy.

I want to go onto the super profits tax and the mining issues because Senator Cash is one of those who thundered against the proposal that the standard petroleum excise would apply to condensate from the North West Shelf. She was one who wanted to make sure that they did not pay an appropriate return—that they did not pay the taxpayers for the resources they were taking, that are owned by the community. There is an appropriate return to be had by the community from the resources of this country, and in the view of the Greens that should be spent on building the new economy—on building diversification and sophistication in the economy, investing in new manufacturing sectors and, in particular, investing heavily in education, training and pure research as well as applied research, because Australia happens to be very good at innovation. Australia happens to be very good at coming up with solutions to problems in particular technological areas. That is why we have such a fantastic global reputation when it comes to the solar industry in particular and the renewable industry. I am very pleased to say that it is because of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the clean energy package that we now see people wanting to come home from overseas, back to Australia, to get behind the transition to the low-carbon economy and create the manufacturing industries of the future.

We are at a stage in Australia and in the world, in fact, where the race is on to make the breakthroughs that are necessary in the technologies, whether that is solar, wind or batteries for electric cars. We are looking at a global race to be first in getting the breakthroughs that will rapidly accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy. That is what the Greens have been working on with the government to try to achieve through the clean energy package. We have seen the coalition oppose it, oppose it, oppose it. They do not want to see a transition to a low-carbon economy; they want to lock in coalmining—a massive expansion of coalmining in Queensland. In fact, they are massive coalmines that will lead to an increase in global greenhouse gas emissions. They talk up cheap energy at the expense of the environment and an acceleration of climate change and global warming. They deny global warming exists for the most part. They want to see an expansion of fossil fuel industries at the end of the fossil fuel age, when our whole competitive advantage in the future depends on us leaving those fossil fuels behind and making the massive transition. It is a fundamental difference of approach. That is where these debates ought to go.

As I was indicating a moment ago, in terms of fairness and income equality, we had here this morning a motion that I brought forward to address the duopoly of Coles and Woolworths, which is absolutely undermining the farm-gate price return for rural communities across Australia. The coalition, the National Party and the Liberal Party, voted it down with the government.