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

So, again, just to summarise how we have got to this point: we have got an omnibus bill, a political tactic to aggregate a whole range of unrelated pieces of legislation so that we cannot give to each of those pieces of legislation the due attention that they deserve. This has bypassed the normal Senate committee process. We were denied a public hearing into this bill. Then we saw a handshake deal between the Labor Party and the Liberal Party to introduce a whole new set of measures worth over $1 billion. Now today we have voted on an hours motion that means we have to deal with it right through the evening, while no-one is watching. How on earth is that fair, democratic process when you consider the scale of changes that are included in this bill?

There is $1.6 billion by ending family tax benefit A for families over $80,000. We hear from the Labor Party that they have saved ARENA by cutting half a billion dollars. It reminds me of the surgeon: the operation was a great success; unfortunately, the patient died. That is where we are at right now. The saviours of renewable energy, the champions of clean tech investment, the Labor Party saving renewable energy investment by taking half a billion dollars out of it. We had Bill Shorten during the election campaign trumpeting his credentials, talking about a 50 per cent renewable energy target. His prescription for ramping up our ambition for renewable energy investment is to cut half a billion dollars from one of the agencies that is delivering on that change.

In the preceding week we had ARENA announce a round of 12 large-scale solar projects worth $100 million—and let's remember that that grant funding brings in huge money. Last week the ARENA announcement of $100 million for that round of solar farms secured $1 billion of investment. Let me repeat that: $1 billion of new investment because of the $100 million leveraged through ARENA. And here we are with the Labor Party trumpeting their credentials. 'How good are we? We've managed to save it by cutting it.' Just think of the logic there. 'We've saved ARENA by cutting it to the tune of half a billion dollars.' And it gets worse.

Then we hear that the money is somehow linked to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation through the Clean Energy Innovation Fund. Malcolm Turnbull is jumping up and trumpeting this as 'Mr Innovation' through this new fund, which we now learn is being cut completely, and we have the minister contradicting the energy minister, neither of them knowing how on earth this cut to clean energy funding is going to occur. This has been a farce and the Senate should be ashamed of itself.