Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move Australian Greens amendment (3) on sheet 7705:

(3) Schedule 1, page 15 (after line 2), at the end of the Schedule, add:

Part 5—Concurrent operation of State or Territory laws

Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000

53 Section 7C

  Repeal the section, substitute:

7C Concurrent operation intended

(1) This Act is not intended to exclude or limit the concurrent operation of any law of a State or Territory.

(2) This section does not apply to a law of a State or Territory if there is direct inconsistency between that law and this Act.

This is the amendment that would delete section 7C from the renewable energy target act, which would allow state governments to have their own renewable energy targets within their own state borders. We know that the Prime Minister has absolutely no ambition for clean energy. We know he wishes there was never a renewable energy target in the first place. And we know this chamber has just voted to slash the RET from 41,000 gigawatt hours down to 33,000.

Yet there are state governments that want higher clean energy ambition. In Queensland, the incoming state government has said that it wants its own renewable energy target. In Victoria, Premier Andrews has written to Victorian Senators begging them to support this amendment and to repeal 7C. At the moment the dead hand of Prime Minister Abbott is stopping the states from investing in clean energy over and above the pathetically weak RET that this parliament just slashed it down to. I just want to quote from that letter: 'The Victorian government is calling on all Victorian senators to support the repeal of section 7C when the RET legislation comes before the Senate. If it is repealed, we have committed to reinstating the Victorian renewable energy target, VRET, to top up the national RET.'

So, here we have a Labor premier urging his colleagues in this place to support this amendment and allow states to have clean energy ambition and to try to undo the dirty work of Prime Minister Abbott and this government in cutting the federal RET. I urge Labor senators in particular to support this amendment and not let Prime Minister Tony Abbott kill clean energy across the whole nation just because he is trying to tell the states what to do.