Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Oh, we have one now. Desalinated water in South Australia. Or there is the Moree solar farm, which needed an investment to underwrite the senior debt and which, by the way, also benefited from an ARENA grant and the Australian Agricultural Company. There are 15 grid connected solar PV units across sites in Queensland. What are the nationals saying about these projects? Absolutely nothing.

The climate change deniers are arguing we can combat climate change by planting trees, which of course would work better if we were not battling constant drought and record heat. As we have heard in Senate estimates, there is a huge pipeline of projects—more than 150 projects under active assessment by the CEFC. The CEO of the Investor Group on Climate Change told the Senate committee that there are about 14 financing organisations around the world now playing a similar role. They are co-investing to finance low-carbon alternatives to meet the two-degree outcome. They are helping to build a robust low-carbon investment market. They are strengthening the capacity of the finance sector to understand and finance carbon-reducing investments. They are supporting investment opportunities in new markets, opening new markets and earning financial returns for governments delivering abatement at negative costs.

So why is it that this government is so determined to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation? I think the budget explains exactly why. Not only did we have the election of the coalition government slamming the brakes on Australia's climate and clean energy progress; we are now going backwards. It is a budget that shifts the burden for pollution reduction from polluters to taxpayers. It is a budget that slashes renewable energy agencies and funding programs that are helping create the jobs and industries of the 21st century. It is a budget that rips hundreds of millions of dollars away from climate science, international climate finance and clean technology research programs. Climate and renewable energy did not even make it into the budget speech. That speaks volumes. Certainty about the future of coalition's Emissions Reduction Fund was not helped by the budget overview saying that the $2.55 billion thought to be for the first four years is all we get over 10 years. In Senate estimates, the minister said that was a misprint. Oops!

The government has reinforced concerns that any climate action is set to be hostage to the vagaries of the annual budget process. How much confidence can anybody—industry, investors, ordinary Australians—have in the now four-year-old promise that, once the ERF is up and running, it will spend an average of $1.2 billion a year? John Connor, writing for ABC Environment, belled the cat:

What's most tragic is that Australia was just starting to get on track. Our greenhouse gas emissions, which had been growing steadily for decades, have begun to decline. Emissions from electricity, the single most polluting sector, fell an impressive 8.7 per cent since 2012. Solar and wind energy tripled in the last five years, while solar and wind jobs nearly quadrupled.

We have laws that price and limit carbon emissions from 60 per cent of the economy; laws that require companies to take responsibility for their pollution. We have independent, non-partisan institutions investing in research and development for the next wave of clean energy technologies. All these steps are necessary to ensure low-carbon competitiveness and sustainable economic prosperity. Ironically, on the same day as the budget, all these forward steps were included in the conservative International Energy Agency's recommended toolkit for energy policies to help avoid two degrees of global warming.

Now the government is intent on winding back those achievements by repealing the carbon laws. Not only will this will give polluters a free pass on their pollution, but it comes, as many speakers will continue to emphasise, at a great cost to the economy: over $12.5 billion in forgone carbon revenue over the forward estimates. As well, taxpayers will be forking out $2.55 billion for the Emissions Reduction Fund, all while the government works out how it is going to ensure reductions from big polluters. Taxpayers are being asked to buy a half-baked carbon pollution policy from government and bin the credible alternative that the Labor government put in place. This is about putting lipstick on a pig.

And, in an effort to silence the dissenters, the government wants to take down the independent agencies. The coalition supported ARENA before the election and promised to keep it going, and what have we got? Another broken promise. ARENA now joins the Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation on the chopping block.

Why should motorists be paying, while miners' fuel subsidies remain? The fuel excise indexation is effectively a price on carbon and it should encourage greater efficiency, but why is it that ordinary consumers will be paying, while miners' fuel subsidies, worth more than $3 billion a year, stay in place? And why cut investment in public transport? Why ditch the logistics and corridor acquisition for the Very Fast Train route, which would have been such a sensible and catalytic infrastructure project?

The coalition promised hundreds of millions of dollars for homeowners, schools and towns for solar power—another broken promise. We have got $2.1 million in the budget for seven solar towns over four years. So make no mistake, colleagues: the government's retreat from climate action and clean energy is going to cost Australia dearly. Australia's prosperity this century depends on the world avoiding dangerous climate change, and that means we have to play our part and be ready for the transition to a low-carbon, ultimately carbon-removing, economy in the future.

With very few exceptions, the budget dodges all of those issues and asks Australians to gamble on a half-formed carbon pollution policy. We know that the government senators are going to argue in this debate that Australia should not have to go it alone. This budget shows that if there is anywhere we are at risk of going alone it is backwards.

Today in TheSydney Morning Herald Bill McKibben wrote a fascinating article:

Prime Minister Abbott's only real concern is protecting Australia's world topping coal industry …

Germany is what the future looks like. The leaders of Canada and Australia—highly educated, sophisticated, and wealthy nations, not to mention some of the most spectacularly beautiful places on earth—are clinging to the past, on behalf of the fossil fuel industries that dominate their governments. Eventually (and hopefully before the planet’s physics are completely out of control) voters in these countries will realise they’re being driven off a cliff.

We are all being driven off a cliff by the fact that this government—in seeking to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, in seeking to repeal the carbon reduction bills that have been before the Senate, and in seeking to undermine the co-investment and the opportunities that are developing across Australia in these new renewable energy technologies and the unimagined potential of new clean energy technologies—is denying Australia's future and is denying our students, our universities, our economies and our communities. That is the folly of the government's position.