Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before I move on to the energy part of my contribution, can I also associate my comments with those of my colleague Senator Dastyari in relation to his speech on the motion to take note of answers.

I want to move to the answers that we received from Minister Scullion to the question from Senator McAllister in relation to energy. Here we had Senator Scullion—who didn't know the context of the quotes by Mr Morrison, his own Treasurer, and who hadn't bothered to be briefed on the debate this week on resources and energy—refusing to take the first question from Senator McAllister on notice and saying that coal fundamentally has to be part of the future energy mix. When faced with the second part of the Treasurer's quote in the supplementary question, he realised that perhaps there was a change in policy and he then deferred to take that on notice. But then Minister Scullion had no answer when asked what the coalition government's position is on coal-fired power; he just took that on notice as well.

For the benefit of those who may be listening around the country, earlier this week the Treasurer, Mr Morrison—who, I have to add, kicked off 2017 by presenting a polished lump of coal in the House of Representatives and said, 'This is coal; don't be afraid'—said, 'Let's not think that there's cheap new coal; there's not,' and that the era of cheap coal-fired power is coming to an end. That's what he said earlier this week. Well, what a change of heart!

I note that the comment from the Treasurer came in the same week that the South Australian Labor government announced that a 150-megawatt solar thermal power plant would be built near Port Augusta. Construction of this exciting new project will commence next year, and the power plant will be operational by 2020. It will produce enough power to deliver five per cent of South Australia's energy needs, the equivalent of powering more than 90,000 homes, and it will be completely emissions free and produce energy at below $78 per megawatt hour.

Solar thermal technology works by using a huge mirror to concentrate sunlight onto a tower that heats molten salts. The heat created is then used to generate steam and, at this point, create power in a similar fashion to a coal-fired power station. Importantly, though, the solar thermal system can store energy for between eight and 10 hours and has no requirement for any coal or gas as a backup. The project will create more than 700 jobs in construction, with 50 full-time workers on an ongoing basis once the plant is fully operational.

The best part of this news, though, is that the South Australian government didn't pick a winner here. It didn't say, 'We love one type of energy,' as the former minister Senator Canavan has harped on about for the past year. It didn't seek to stop a company specialising in any type of energy source from submitting a tender. No, the South Australian government ran a tender process for 75 per cent of the state's power supply, and the company Solar Reserve submitted the lowest cost option over the 20-year tender period. I raise this story from South Australia because it demonstrates that it, as a government, goes through its internal processes on energy policy as it weighs up the recommendation from Professor Finkel to implement a clean energy target.

It's vital that members of the government stand up to those who seek to pick winners, and that those who support a market based economy actually defend the market. I note that this week it appeared that the Treasurer did his best to draw a line in the sand and say to Mr Abbott and Senator Canavan: 'Stop trying to pick winners,' because those winners do not stack up economically. Making these statements might make people feel good, but they drive a wedge through regional communities across our country. The people of regional Australia who work in the coal industry, in power generation and in heavy industry and whose small businesses support these industries right across this country care about reliability, price and sustainability, both in terms of economics and the environment. These people know that we need a technology-blind approach where we set our policy and then let the market decide. But at the moment we have a government with no energy policy. For a number of months, Labor has offered to work with the government to find middle ground. We want to move beyond the years of division and set in place a credible energy policy for Australia's future, to provide security, to provide jobs and, best of all, to try and provide a low-based economical cost basis for members. (Time expired).