Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Di Natale, you are now really scraping the bottom of the barrel. All night I could not have said it more clearly. Your assertion that we have taken money out of the Clean Energy Innovation Fund to put into ARENA is wrong. I have spelt that out very clearly. The overall capital allocation for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Clean Energy Innovation Fund remains the same. It was $10 billion before today; it will be $10 billion after today.

On top of that, what we have done is to restore $800 million worth of funding, at the request of the Labor Party, to ARENA for the purposes of providing direct grants. This is not funded from any source related to renewable energy; this is funded from other savings in the bill, principally the changes to family tax benefit A supplement arrangements. I have said that several times now. There is absolutely no truth to the absolutely inaccurate assertion that you have made and that Mr Bandt made in the House of Representatives earlier this week. I have been making that very clear all week.