Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I come to this matter of public importance debate on this rare occasion when a party has submitted a genuine question of importance. Too many of these debates are mere attempts at partisan time wasting, but this matter—the urgency of climate change and the need for renewable energy—is both genuine and pressing.

In 2007, we all recall Lord Nicholas Stern published the widely publicised Stern Review, which noted a 75 per cent chance that global temperatures would rise by between two and three degrees above the long-term average. That report was indeed a watershed. Here was an economist making an economic prediction that the benefits of early action on climate change far outweigh the costs and that mitigation and adaptation later down the track would be far more expensive than early action. Revisiting his predictions recently, Lord Stern made the admonition that:

Looking back, I underestimated these risks. The planet and the atmosphere seem to be absorbing less carbon than we expected, and emissions are rising pretty strongly. Some of the effects are coming through more quickly than we thought then.

Meanwhile, this matter of public importance refers to the World Bank, which has warned that a four-degree temperature rise will have dangerous consequences for the world. Jim Yong Kim, the new President of the World Bank, warned that there would be water and food fights everywhere as he pledged to put climate change on top of the agenda for his term.

In light of all of that and the issue of this matter of public importance, that is why the government is acting so strongly on climate change and why it has been at the forefront of the Gillard Labor government's agenda. That is why renewable energy is so vital to that. The carbon price is about encouraging renewable energy. The carbon price is, in fact, a key pillar in driving investment in renewable energy. It is through the carbon price that renewable energy suppliers and consumers will have a clear market advantage. They can produce energy more cheaply, relative to carbon-intensive power supplies, and can be selling at the market rate, which creates strong profits and opportunities for reinvestment.

That is also why the government has created the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. The objective of that corporation is to overcome the capital market barriers that hinder the financing, commercialisation and deployment of renewable energy, energy efficiency and low-emissions technologies. The CEFC will invest in firms and projects utilising these technologies, as well as manufacturing businesses that focus on producing the inputs required. So it not only will invest in carbon capture and storage technologies but also has that long-term potential for new jobs in the manufacturing sector and in the renewable energy sector. It is intended to be commercially oriented and to make a positive return on its investment; it is not intended to compete directly with the private sector in the provision of financing to the clean energy sector. Instead, it is intended that the CEFC will act as a catalyst that is currently not available to private investment for clean energy technologies, and thereby contribute to cleaner energy and reducing carbon emissions. Capital that is returned from investments will be retained for reinvestment by the CEFC, with the board to determine the quantum of any dividends payable to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

That leads me to the next body of the investment and the forward-thinking visionary approach that this government has taken to the issue of renewable energy, and that is in the creation of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, ARENA. ARENA is an independent statutory body tasked with the objectives of improving the competitiveness of renewable energy technologies and increasing the supply of renewable energy in Australia—another really important factor. Coming from a state that has a strong base of renewable energy in this country, I simply cannot believe that Senator Joyce talks down renewable energy investment. Part of Tasmania's image is this image of it being a clean, green state, having clean air, pristine wilderness and environment—and one of the most fantastic things about our state is our clean water. All of those things come back to the fact that we are a state built on a renewable energy base. He talks, then, about wind farms and goes on with this diatribe about wind farms being unsightly and something that the people do not want and all of that. Well, I can tell you that in Tasmania we are about to build our second major wind farm in the north-east of the state—Musselroe Wind Farm—which will complement the one in the north-west of the state, which is known as Woolnorth. This will provide an incredible percentage of renewable energy for our state in the wake of the times when our hydro dams are not full enough and we have to import dirty coal power from Victoria on the mainland through Basslink. We will be able to rely more, as a state, on our renewable energy base through the creation of Musselroe and Woolnorth. That is a very good thing for Tasmania and would be a very good thing to see replicated and is, I know, being replicated across the rest of the nation to build our renewable energy stocks through the support that has been created in the legislation that we have provided, the creation of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the creation of ARENA.

How can he then come in here and see that as a bad thing? Just because it happens to be a wind turbine, just because the actual apparatus of the thing that is creating that renewable energy is something Senator Joyce simply does not seem to like, he seems to think he can bring the rest of the nation with him in his unaesthetic vision of a wind farm. It is simply ridiculous. I actually encourage Senator Joyce to come to Tasmania, have a look at our wind farms, have a look at Woolnorth and have a look at some of the individuals who have decided to actually put a wind turbine in their backyard—people like Mr Nichols, who owns Nichols Farm and is very well known in Tasmania for his good Nichols chickens. I can see senators from Tasmania there agreeing with me, perhaps, on Nichols chickens—we probably all share the fact that we eat them and enjoy them. But we all know that they come from Nichols Farm. Mr Nichols has a wind turbine in his backyard and he is very much a supporter of renewable energy and the fact that he is creating his own energy for his business in doing so. I am simply astounded by Senator Joyce's view that talking down renewable energy, in the sense of his dislike for wind farms, is somehow a good thing for this nation—it just really baffles me.

We have invested, as I have already outlined, in a huge way when it comes to ensuring that this country has a good, strong renewable energy base for the future. Another area where we have done that is the Clean Technology Innovation Program—that is a $2 million program and it is a competitive, merits-based grants program. One of the companies that have recently been awarded a grant from that program is a company in Tasmania called Saturn South. Saturn South's employees work all around the country and are regularly collaborating and conferencing over the National Broadband Network on their actual product. They received $115,000 last year in support of a new project to help families and businesses save energy and reduce power costs. The Saturn South hardware is a device that can plug into the switchboard of a home or a business, and once installed the device acts as a power meter and switch, turning off discretionary loads—such as hot water systems—to control the level of demand for power. This technology is actually part of Hydro Tasmania's King Island Renewable Energy Integration Project— (Time expired)