Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to also speak on the Clean Energy Finance Corporation Bill 2012 and what is really a complete and utter folly. The clean energy fund is absolute and utter folly and it simply will end up being another slush fund exposed as a complete waste of taxpayers' money. When you look at this fund you see all the hallmarks of the Victorian Economic Development Corporation, which left Victoria in such a disastrous state only two decades ago. I want to take the Senate through some observations that the shadow minister for climate action, environment and heritage, Mr Hunt, has made in relation to this fund. He has outlined that there are four basic things that we need to know about the structure of this fund which are very important. Firstly, this $10 billion fund will create absolutely no new renewable energy. Incredible—it may seem impossible—but this is the fundamental flaw which is at the very heart of this fund. Prior to the creation of the clean energy fund, the Renewable Energy Target was 20 per cent by 2020. And guess what? After the $10 billion will have been spent it is intended that the target will still be 20 per cent.

So then what is the nature and purpose of this fund? And is it, then, merely to displace existing technologies and go to much higher risk technologies that are more likely than not to fail? Therefore it is not surprising that there is some disquiet, even within green stakeholders, in relation to this operation, most importantly because of the distortions in the market that it will create. Here is the thing that surprises me most. What are the terms of reference that ultimately define for us today, before the creation of this fund, what actual benefit, if any, will result as a consequence of this fund?

Is the fund charged with investing in the lowest cost technologies to produce the cheapest emission reductions? No. It is basically there to fund technologies that are uneconomic, unproven and too speculative for the private sector to finance.

What will happen is that we will see $10 billion borrowed on behalf of the taxpayers of Australia so that that money can be given to speculative ventures with absolutely no prospect that they will deliver some environmental benefit at the end of the process. Let us not forget that these will be technologies that the market itself will not be financing because they are high risk. One can make all sorts of assertions about the board of this fund and all sorts of assertions about the skills that the board could have, but no amount of skills of the board is going to insulate the Australian public against what is likely to be a series of untested, untried and likely high-risk technologies, which have all the hallmarks of being complete and utter failures. Of course, all of this will be off-budget and inevitably it will be a lot of money lost.

Cynically, like many of the things this government does, the fund is due to start paying out public moneys only weeks before the next federal election is anticipated.