Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Sadly, this august chamber that we are so privileged to be part of is not the only place in the world at the moment where careful and rational argument is being defeated by short-term political interests and short-term economic advantage. The fact that this disallowance is before us today, that this grant has even got to this stage, is a clear sign that this parliament and this government have been corrupted. When I talk about corruption—Acting Deputy President Brockman, I heard your contribution with the last speaker—I am talking about institutional corruption. I am talking about big business and big politics in bed together. That's what this is: clear and simple.

Let's go through this. We have this small company, Shine Energy, that wants to get up a project, the Collinsville coal-fired power station in Queensland. Everybody, to a tee, says this project is not economic and is not viable. I could sit here and list as long as my arm the people who have come out and said this, including within the Liberal Party. On the other hand, we have a marginal seat going into a federal election. We have trouble within the government between the coalition partners—the National Party and the Liberal Party. We have senators, including senators in the chamber now, who are totally outspoken about wanting to promote coal. We know this has caused division and concern within the Liberal Party; that's a matter of public record. But we also have a large international coal company—the tax-dodging Glencore, a significant donor to the Liberal Party—deciding to throw their hat in with Shine Energy and become their partner. Why would Glencore do that? They can make good political mileage out of this—a new coal-fired power station on the political agenda. Coal is not going away; it's still potentially a future generator of energy in this country regardless of what the science says, regardless of what the energy experts say and regardless of what the economic experts say. Glencore throw their considerable weight behind this project, and it gives it credibility

We have the perfect storm here. It reminds me of one of my favourite quotes from a favourite Australian author, David Gregory Roberts. He says, 'The only thing more ruthless and cynical than the business of big politics'—and that's what we're in—'is the politics of big business.' When they get into bed together, they're an unstoppable force. The fact that this is even before us today is a farce. It is the most egregious example of the fact that the Liberal Party and National Party in government simply don't care how this looks any more. They are so arrogant that they feel they can get away with providing $3.6 million of taxpayers' money to a company that's got no hope. I agree with what Senator Ayres said earlier. It's actually offering a false hope to the Queensland people purely out of short-term political interests.

I will say very clearly: there are political interests from the likes of Senator Canavan and Senator Rennick. They're the renegades within the Liberal-National coalition that want this kind of project to get up. It might just be a coincidence that the LNP retained this marginal seat and that this project was thrown into the political mix during an election campaign. What a great thing to do politically. It wedges Labor. It puts them on the spot. We know that they're divided on climate policy and coal use. Certainly LNP senators are given a chance to do one of their favourite hobbies, which of course is to pour buckets on the Greens and give a couple of very famous Murdoch publications the opportunity to do the same.

You get to promise jobs and a future for Queenslanders through a coal-fired power station in a marginal seat that desperately needs real leadership and real direction. That's a perfect storm. If that isn't institutional corruption—or crony capitalism; they're both the same thing—I don't know what is. I don't know what crony capitalism is if it's not a big Liberal Party government giving a big international coal company money for a feasibility study for a power station that nobody thinks is viable and for a power source that nobody thinks is viable in an industry that is very shortly going to be filled with stranded assets.

I want to talk a little bit about Tasmania, because it's not just a Queensland debate. What we've seen in parliament in the last week is not just to do with this Collinsville dodgy grant. We saw the government raising issues in the House last week to make the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the CEFC—an agency set up by the Greens and Labor to invest in renewable energy and an agency which the LNP have done everything they can over the last seven years to destroy—and its money available for gas infrastructure and gas investment. Of course, what better way to ruin the legacy than to open it up to investment not in renewables but in fossil fuels? We have seen the initial proposals to, as my colleague Senator Hanson-Young says, take a chainsaw to Australia's already weak environmental laws at a time of a biodiversity and extinction crisis.

Let's frame this up. While we have got this push on in federal parliament through the government to develop fossil fuels under cover of COVID, under cover of a pandemic, around the mantra 'jobs, jobs, jobs, economic recovery', the Liberal state government in Tasmania, in partnership with the Liberal federal government, are saying to Tasmanians, 'Look, at this fantastic project we have, this Marinus Link. We are going to build infrastructure to sell renewable energy to the grid.' Tasmanians don't see what is really going on. They don't see that that pet political project is on the Prime Minister's priority list. The Small Business Council released a report saying the infrastructure wasn't viable and it would actually drive up power prices in Tasmania.

Putting that aside, this pet project is nothing but a fig leaf, a smoke screen, to what this Liberal National Party government is trying to do around this country—that is, not only lock in business as usual but ramp up fossil fuel production and infrastructure. In other words, give this industry that is a significant donor to the Liberal National Party a final leg-up following this catastrophic summer of fires and the third mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in five years, which, 10 years ago, we didn't think that would be possible in my lifetime. We have seen it. At a time when you think you would be going exactly the other way and all working together to transition to clean energy, to a renewable future, and to investing in new industries, new technology, new jobs, what do we get? We get more of the same.

The government are cynically using a pandemic and the fact that we have to grab whatever jobs and whatever investment we can get, when what we should be doing is setting up this country not just for the next decade but for the next 50 to 100 years, at a time of record low interest rates, at a time we could invest billions of dollars in building a new future, not one just that creates jobs and productivity but one that also solves the great dilemmas and challenges of our time, like rising emissions and climate change. We are in the middle of a climate emergency and economic inequality. We went into significant debt after World War II, and a decade of growth dividends retired that debt. We are in the same position now, but what are we getting at a time when Australians are calling out for leadership, at a time when Australians are calling out for a green new deal, for a new way forward? What do we get? We get a $3.6 million feasibility study for a project that no-one thinks is going to be viable—no-one, perhaps, except those whose direct political interests are served: the National senators in this chamber.

This is politics at its worst, and I am genuinely disgusted. I haven't even gone into detail of the timeline that has led to this proposal that is before us today. The fact that the money is even flowing, that the company was invited to apply for it two days after the government had announced they were giving the money to this company because they made this promise in an election campaign—a promise to shore up a marginal seat in order to shore up their own power. Australians will see through this. This will not go well for the government, and my party, even if we're the only ones in this place, will continue to stand up for good governance, for a proper plan and for a vision for this country.