Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you. I want to look at the details of the National Energy Guarantee. The Smart Energy Council has identified five fundamental flaws with the NEG. Firstly, it does not encourage investment in renewables or any form of new generation. Secondly, it doesn't cut coal pollution. Thirdly, it doesn't reduce power bills. Fourthly, it can't be easily changed. And, finally, the government is still dropping in new policies that will make it worse, like the coal slush fund, and it still can't get enough of its party room to even support it through the parliament.

Let's unpack some of these points. The former head of the government's Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Oliver Yates, cut through the crap of the NEG and put it succinctly when he said, 'The only thing Turnbull's energy plan does is to help coal companies to know that they don't have to reduce their pollution over the next 10 years.' This policy entrenches the power of the big three power companies. They are the ones gouging prices and consumers. How will giving them more market power lead to lower prices? The big three all donate to the Liberal Party. This is just them returning the favour and screwing over households and the renewables industry at the same time.

The people won't be fooled twice. They were promised $550 when the carbon price was repealed, and it never came. This $550 won't come either, because there is no evidence that the NEG will reduce power prices. I noted that Senator Reynolds, in her contribution, said that the $550 had now been reduced to $300. The $550 is based on absolutely nothing. We now know it's based on nothing because we now know that the government modelling for the NEG is just a single Excel spreadsheet. So we know that it has no evidence to back up the $550 claim.

But this spreadsheet does show that the NEG will mean a complete stall in investment in large-scale renewables over the next decade, once the Renewable Energy Target comes to an end. The spreadsheet, which outlines all the assumptions behind the NEG, says that only 14 megawatts of new utility-scale investment will be made. That's the equivalent of four new wind turbines over a decade—four, just four. It's an absolute travesty. Meanwhile, coal remains locked in. As the Smart Energy Council says, coal pollution is baked in as the planet bakes.

There is absolutely no evidence from the government on the public record to show how the NEG will cut power bills. It just asserts that it will. On the contrary, we know that the growth in renewable energy because of the Renewable Energy Target is what has been driving down the wholesale cost of electricity. But the NEG is going to shrink investment in renewables. Even the Reserve Bank of Australia, if you want somebody that you could actually listen to on prices, said in its most recent statement on monetary policy that more renewables will mean lower prices. But the Turnbull government insists that power bills will somehow magically fall under the National Energy Guarantee, despite significant new compliance costs and less market information.

The NEG stands in the way of progress, and it does this while the world is on fire. There are unprecedented fires in California, fires in Greece, fires in Britain. I was there last month. The North York Moors are on fire. There are fires in the Glacier National Park; a park once covered in glaciers is now on fire. And there are even fires in the Arctic Circle! Back home, we have large bushfires in New South Wales in August, in winter. The whole of New South Wales is in drought, and much of Queensland and Victoria are too.

Last week in the Australian Financial Review there was an excellent article by journalist Ben Potter which discussed what we all know to be true—that climate change is starting to supercharge extreme weather, including the current drought. He interviewed Peter Mailler, a third-generation grain and cattle farmer, who has sent pregnant cows for slaughter because he can't feed them all and who had a message to the Turnbull government. He said:

First, don't pretend to champion drought-struck farmers if you're not prepared to tackle climate change because the increasing frequency of hot dry weather is compounding the effects of drought. Second, don't talk about giving coal-fired power a free kick in the National Energy Guarantee when a full accounting of its environmental costs will tell you not that we can't afford to close coal plants but we can't afford to run one tomorrow. Thirdly, don't lean on high-risk struggling industries like agriculture for deeper carbon emissions cuts when a stable regulated electricity industry can obviously bear a larger share of the burden.

We are in a climate emergency, so now is not the time for half measures. We need to dump this policy, kick out this mob and put in place a proper energy policy that addresses the climate emergency we face. There are those that say something is better than nothing, that putting in place this fatally flawed policy locks in failure for a decade but that we can fix it later. But that would be denying political reality and is taking a hell of a political gamble.

Unfortunately, at this stage, we are facing the prospect of a conservative, possibly even a One Nation controlled Senate after the next election. If this policy is waved through by the Labor Party, the opportunity to fix it after the next election may well be zero. But, unfortunately, there is a danger that the rot is setting in on Labor and the NEG. It is very disturbing, the suggestion that Labor will support the NEG in the House and then try to say that somehow the real fight is in the Senate. That would be rank opportunism of the highest order. Everyone knows that, if Mr Shorten and Mr Butler vote with the Greens in the House, they can kill the renewable-destroying, dirty coal-loving deal stone dead. We can force the government to go back to the drawing board.

So I say to Labor: now is the time to stand tall. And, if you won't stand tall because it's the right thing to do, think of the electoral mathematics. Remember what happened in 2010 when Julia Gillard dumped action on climate change and went for her cash for clunkers? There was a massive swing to the Greens. You are now facing the same prospect, because we will make sure that every voter knows that you sold out the climate and you sold out renewables.

Seats in inner Melbourne will likely fall to the Greens if you back in the NEG deal that was authored by Mr Abbott and is now being promoted by Mr Turnbull. Seats in inner Melbourne will fall. You will lose McNamara, Wills, Batman if you fail to act on climate change. Now is the time for the Labor Party to stand up. So I call on the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bill Shorten, and Labor to follow through on the sentiments expressed in this motion, follow through and vote against the NEG in the House.