Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It is timely that on the eve of a state election in Victoria we are having a discussion about the need for strong environmental policies to address climate change and to protect our precious biodiversity. We have a situation where in Victoria neither the Victorian Labor Party nor the coalition is prepared to commit to strong action to tackle climate change or to grasp the opportunity to save the remaining habitat of the Leadbeater's possum—through the creation of the Great Forest National Park, for example. In that context, we are reliant on our federal government for leadership.

But we have seen a federal government that, instead of demonstrating leadership, has a vendetta to decimate the dean energy industry. Tony Abbott has been on a personal crusade trying to destroy renewables and to prop up coal. As a result, a number of Victorian renewable energy projects are under threat. The Mildura solar farm has been shelved. That would have been a great boom for the city of Mildura. We have seen dozens of new wind projects being put on hold. The manufacturer Keppel Prince in Portland recently announced that it will have to shed 150 jobs as a consequence of the renewable energy laws in this country going backwards. I visited Keppel Prince only a few weeks ago. What an inspiration. Here we have an entrepreneur recognising the opportunity to create the towers that support wind turbines. We have people who were previously stacking shelves at Woolies and Coles now being trained in welding techniques and in fact becoming experts in their field, becoming very highly specialised and highly trained. Victoria has moved from being one of the leaders in the country to being a laggard on renewable energy. According to the Climate Council report, the government's anti-wind-farm agenda has cost Victoria an estimated $4 billion in lost investment, as well as 3,000 jobs. We have seen new renewable projects basically seize up. The pipeline is now dry because of the uncertainty over the future of the RET. And investment in the sector has plummeted by around 70 per cent over the past year.

We have a solution. I know my colleagues in the Victorian state parliament, as well as the Greens candidates right across the state of Victoria, are advocating forcefully for that solution. We can salvage the clean energy industry in Australia. We can make progress in tackling climate change. And how do we do it? We do it by phasing out dirty coal fired power stations. We do it by banning onshore fracking and gas drilling. We do it by reinstating the Renewable Energy Target in Victoria. And we do it by paying solar panel owners a fair share for generating clean power. That is how we do it. But to do it we have to move beyond this obsession that this government has with fossil fuels. It was only today that Todd Stern, Obama's climate change adviser, said that it is just obvious that fossil fuels have to stay in the ground; if we are to combat climate change, that is where fossil fuels belong.

If Victoria were a country, we would be the world's fifth biggest producer of brown coal. The average age of Victoria's power plants is a staggering 40 years. And that is the average age; we have plants that are older than that. In Victoria we produce the dirtiest energy in Australia. And we produce more of it than we can use. But it is not just coal that is the problem. In Gippsland and parts of the Otways and south-west Victoria we have seen an explosion in the number of exploration and development licences for onshore gas. In Gippsland there are 22 exploration licences for unconventional gas. Lakes Oil, the company now known as Ignite Energy, conducted 23 fracking operations in Gippsland before the 2012 moratorium. In the south-west of Victoria we have 10 exploration licences for gas, mostly tight gas and shale gas. And I have to declare an interest here: some of them are not far away from where I live.

In Bacchus Marsh we see a community threatened by a huge open-cut brown-coal mine. High-impact exploration has now included a number of test drills right next to people's homes. For those who are not familiar with these areas, these are the breadbasket of Victoria. They are highly productive, fertile communities—places like Gippsland, the Otways and Bacchus Marsh—that produce some of the best food anywhere in the country, and they are now under threat from coal and from unconventional gas, including from fracking. At risk is one of the most precious resources of all, and that is water, which stands to be poisoned by coalmining, by drilling and by fracking.

So, what do we need to do about it? Well, the first thing is that we need a ban on new coalmines. We just have to stop this idea—this last-century fixation—of digging big holes in the ground as the solution to our problems. We have to stop this fixation with onshore gas, and particularly with fracking, so that we can make the transition towards a clean energy future. What the Greens are advocating is that we implement a Victorian—a state based—renewable energy target, which will bring renewable sources of power online. Importantly, if we do that we can phase out these dirty brown-coal fired power stations. Hazelwood, Anglesea and one of Yallourn's four units are to be phased out in in 2015 under the Greens' policy. We would retire Loy Yang B and the other three units of Yallourn in 2023.

Anglesea is a coal fired power station on my back doorstep situated in some of the most important heathland anywhere in the world. The opportunity to turn that back to what was one of the most important biodiversity resources in the state just cannot be missed. What would it result in? It would result in 21 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from Victoria every year from 2023 being removed. It would reduce the pollution intensity of Victoria's power system by almost a third. A third of the pollution coming from Victoria's brown coal fired power resources would be gone.

Under the plan, we would see decommissioned power plants and mines replaced by solar farms and a range of other renewable energy projects. It would create hundreds of jobs. There is also huge potential in the rehabilitation of these mine sites. There are jobs that will last for decades. This economic transformation is jobs rich, is good for the economy and it can occur without one cent of taxpayer funding going to the coal generators.

Over recent years we have seen the Napthine and Baillieu governments hand out $1.8 billion in public money to our brown coal power stations. They do not need another cent. We are going to get more people employed in putting solar panels on than in the entire coal mining industry. In fact, that is the situation at the moment. Clean energy is not a threat to employment; it is an opportunity. It is a jobs-rich industry and it is ordinary trades people who are employed in the installation of solar panels on people's roofs from places like Western Victoria right across to the La Trobe Valley.

We have got one million Australian homes and businesses already generating clean power, but they are not being given a fair go from the power companies. So what else do we need to do? We need to make rooftop solar much simpler and more affordable for everyone. We have to allow people to install panels with no upfront cost. Let's get rid of the administrative regulatory barriers that we put in front of people. This is genuine red tape reduction. If the government was serious about reducing red tape, this is exactly where it would start. The Greens would make sure they were being paid a fair share for generating clean power. That is why the Greens propose introducing a minimum one-for-one feed in tariff, so the owners will be paid at least the same amount for the electricity they put into the grid as it costs to get out of it—it is common sense. This will boost the income for many solar panel owners and will protect the over 50 per cent of solar home owners, who would otherwise be left with no guaranteed price of solar when existing schemes close in 2016. Of course nothing would change in those few households who are paid already above the minimum one-for-one feed in tariff.

This is a good story. Cutting pollution means cleaner air, it means cleaner water, it means better health, it means more jobs, it means tackling climate change and it means exporting our brains—rather than the current 'dig it up and ship it out' mentality which belongs in the last century.

We have an election in a few days' time. This is firmly on the national agenda.