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

We are debating an appalling decision tonight, an appalling decision to give away $3.6 million of your, and my, taxpayer dollars, hard-earned taxpayer dollars, for a coal-fired power station. This decision ticks all of the boxes of bad decision-making. There are at least four big reasons as to why it is totally the wrong thing to be doing. I'm going to talk through these in my contribution tonight. Firstly, the last thing that the world needs in a climate crisis is a new coal-fired power station. Secondly, a new coal-fired power station is totally economically irresponsible. Thirdly, it's just a cruel hoax. It's just teasing the North Queensland community with the prospect of jobs and economic development that is just not going to happen. Fourthly, the process of giving this grant is totally corrupt. I want to talk through these and finish up with what we need to do about it, because actions outside this place, sadly, are going to be needed to get ourselves to a place where we can have hope for our future.

You just heard from Senator Canavan. We just heard from Senator Rennick. Sadly, there is no hope that this government, supported by their tinfoil-hat-wearing sidekicks, One Nation, are going to come to their senses. They are not going to listen. Time and time again they have shown that they are not listening to the reality of what lies ahead for our world because of our climate crisis. They have their heads firmly in the sand. They have their fingers in their ears and they are saying, 'La, la, la, la, la, la' as loudly as they can without getting a mouthful of sand.

Let's start with the fact that the last thing that the world needs is a new coal-fired power station. In case someone has just woken up from some Rip Van Winkle-type sleep—they've been asleep for the last 30 years—here are the simple facts: the climate crisis is real, it is happening now and it is caused by the burning of coal, gas and oil. It fuelled the unprecedented bushfires that we experienced last summer that burnt the biggest area of forest in Australia in one summer ever, and the biggest proportion of forest on a continent anywhere in the world ever, killing three billion animals. It was the climate crisis that fuelled the smoke that blanketed our cities for months on end. It is the climate crisis that is creating the unprecedented drought that our farmers have been struggling with. The Nationals, as represented by Senator Canavan, are in denial about the link between the climate crisis and the drought. It is the unprecedented heat that is making these droughts get worse and worse and making it really difficult for us to grow food, destroying the livelihoods of our farmers. It is the climate crisis that is causing the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, and rising sea levels that threaten to wash away huge parts of our cities, pushing animals and plants—whole ecosystems—to the brink of extinction. You get the picture. This is a crisis. It is an existential crisis for humanity and for the world. We are doing severe harm to life, to our life support systems and to ourselves, and we've got to stop.

What do we need to do so that it doesn't get worse? It's very simple: we've got to stop burning coal, gas and oil as soon as possible. There is no time to waste. There is no carbon budget left. Every tonne of carbon released into the atmosphere is doing us and the planet harm. The last thing we need to be doing is building new coal-fired power stations. And, yes, I'll take Senator Canavan's point: we also don't need to be exporting coal for other countries' coal-fired power stations. Labor don't quite get the extent of this climate crisis either. But how does the government respond to this? We just heard Senator Canavan basically saying that everything was fine with burning fossil fuels. Basically, they are just totally in denial. They're saying that it doesn't matter because, in their view, building a coal-fired power station might somehow be good for the Queensland economy.

This of course brings me to my second point: a new coal-fired power station for North Queensland does not stack up. It's cheaper to build renewable power than it is to build new coal. Let me quote economist Frank Jotzo, who specialises in climate and energy policy. He makes it very clear that the high cost of building and running the plant, coupled with the falling costs of other energy sources, particularly renewables, means it's unlikely to be viable. In fact, his expert opinion is:

The average cost of producing electricity from a new coal-fired power plant, if one were built now, might be as high as two times higher than the average cost from wind and solar plants, even if you factor in the cost of smoothing out the intermittency of those plants with energy storage—

that is, the battery or the pumped hydro or the concentrated solar thermal that might be needed, or the hydrogen that might be needed, to store up the energy to buffer for any intermittent factors. He says:

The financial risk of any new coal-fired power plant would be massive. Any new coal-fired power plant would need Government support subsidies and a guarantee that a carbon price would never be applied. It would need to be the taxpayer that underwrites all of this. And it would be the taxpayer that pays the inflated bills for decades to come.

So that is a total fail on economics.

That is why my third point as to why this grant is so bad is so important. Clearly, this grant for a feasibility study is basically just the government tearing up $3.6 million and throwing it into the wind. They are doing it so it looks like they're doing something. They are trying to buy votes and give hope to people who are struggling, who want and deserve some economic security. This is just cruel. This power station isn't going to be built. It doesn't stack up. It's pretending to offer hope, economic security and jobs when they are a mirage.

There is so much more that this government could be doing with this $3.6 million to help transition away from the dirty industries of the past to a clean, jobs-rich economy. It could be doing things like—yes—massive investment in solar and wind, making hydrogen for domestic use and export, carbon farming, environmental restoration, health and aged care, education, investing in public housing and improving the ability to work remotely—like we are sort of managing to do here today—so that people can be living in remote areas and working with other people all across the country. This is where the jobs of the future are. This is what any government looking sensibly and strategically at how to improve the fortunes of a town like Collinsville would do, instead of throwing them a bone that stinks to high heaven. It's a bone that should have been well and truly thrown out last century.

But here is where it gets really stinky. Who are Shine Energy, who have had this $3.6 million windfall just land in their laps? Shine Energy is a company that has no expertise in building coal-fired power stations and a company that has links to the big coal company Glencore, who just happen to be a megadonor to the coalition. How did they get this $3.6 million? It was through a total farce of a process, where the grant was awarded two days before an application was even put in, in a grants program that was invented just to give them the grant. In fact, on 8 February this year, when the country was still burning, Minister Taylor announced that Shine would receive up to $4 million of public money for a feasibility study into a so-called 'low-emission' coal-fired power plant. Yes, you're right—it's for something that doesn't exist. Two days later they were asked to apply—two days after they had been announced as the winner of this public money. It gets worse. The company that would get this windfall gain, Shine Energy, has connections with coal giant Glencore, who donate a whole heap of money to the coalition and would directly benefit from the coal power station's construction. Funnily enough, Glencore have been very actively lobbying the government to support this power station and the coal industry overall.

This stuff matters. This is corruption. People like to believe that Australia has good processes, that we abide by the rule of law. Undermining good processes, trashing good processes, not only leads to corrupt outcomes that favour the rich and powerful, leaving people and the environment in their wake, but destroys trust in government. Trust in government matters. Being in a pandemic makes that very clear. We need to be able to trust that our government is acting responsibly, doing what's necessary to keep us safe. We need trust in our government so that we can have hope for a safe and healthy future. Trust in government is a critical thing. It's critical for a healthy, well-functioning society.

Of course, when it comes to trashing trust by rorting grant programs, the coalition has form. The Senate is still trying to uncover everything that went on with the sports rorts program, a $100 million pre-election rort that was all about buying votes—colour-coded spreadsheets going backwards and forwards to fund projects that suited them, with the then Minister for Sport, Bridget McKenzie, emailing the Prime Minister's office dozens of times about which projects would get approved in which electorates. Of course, during the sports rorts Senate inquiry we've uncovered sports rorts 2 and sports rorts 3, two more pre-election slush funds—sports rorts 2 being the female facilities and water safety stream, $150 million that was funnelled into swimming pools in marginal coalition seats. It was blatant pork-barrelling. And then sports rorts 3, which we uncovered just in the last couple of weeks, was the $45 million pre-election cash splash where 99 per cent of the money went to seats that were either coalition seats or marginal seats, without any requirement for an application and where the funding criteria have been described as 'light touch'—that is, just a nod and a wink between an MP and their mates so they would have an election announcement to trumpet.

I personally know how hard it is when you are in a community that isn't in a marginal electorate. I've lived in one all my life. I was the mayor of one. When you're the mayor of a council that's in a safe Labor seat, the coalition just ignore you when they're in government and Labor just take you for granted when they are. It's incredibly frustrating to see your community miss out because of this corrupt process.

It's the same when we're trying to shift our economy to a clean, green energy future. We are being held back by grants like this one, billions of dollars of subsidies to the mining companies, allowing them to get cheaper diesel than you or I can get. Instead of splashing our money to help out their mates, propping up coal and gas and oil, there's so much they could be doing to invest to recover from the crisis we're currently in. We could be leading the world as a renewable energy giant. Renewable energy projects could mean thousands and thousands of jobs across Australia, particularly in regional Australia. We could be building the sustainable transport and energy infrastructure that we need for this century. We could be building the affordable housing that's so critical for a fair and equitable society. But no; instead the coalition are looking after their mates—big business and big politics working well together—and not serving the interests of Australia. They are devastating Australia, in fact, through their refusal to act in the national interest.

I want to finish by focusing on what we, the people of Australia, can do about it. As I said, we've heard, from the contributions to this debate, that they are not listening. They are listening to their mates; they are not listening to the people of Australia. We need to get more active. We need to get our friends, our families, our neighbours and our communities informed and active, and we need to turf this lot out of office. We can elect a government that the Greens share power in, and we can then be on our way to building a future that doesn't have this corruption as part of it, that is clean and green and fair, and that we can feel hopeful about rather than despairing about. And do you know what? I'm really looking forward to people getting on board, because I'm very confident that the people of Australia will see through this. They will see that the only way out is to turf this lot out and elect a government that is going to work in the interests of people in the community. And I am really looking forward to working with the people of Australia in doing this.