Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

There's a pattern emerging, as economic inequality explodes, as the cost of living climbs, as the climate breaks down around us and as our ecosystems crumble underneath us. We saw it when the pandemic hit and we are seeing it here today. Whenever the failures of laissez-faire capitalism become conspicuous, socialism starts to look pretty good, even to politicians who dare not speak its name.

And here we find ourselves today. Parliament has been recalled because coal and gas companies are profiteering off the back of a war, and, in a deregulated energy market with mostly privatised electricity suppliers, energy bills have gone through the roof. We need to do something collectively, and the government is moving to cap wholesale energy prices. Importantly, the government isn't planning to put a ceiling on power prices. That's not what this legislation does.

The Greens have been calling for a freeze on electricity bills, and we are providing the government with a mechanism to do this. There's no limit in this legislation to the amount of money the government can allocate to help people pay their power bills. If people have to pay even a single dollar more on their power bills than they currently do, it'll be on the government.

Let's be clear, also, about emissions. The government is not doing what is needed if Australia is to help prevent the breakdown of our planet's climate. Sure, we agree that under this government we are not going off the cliff as fast as we were under the previous government. But make no mistake: we are still going off the cliff. Instead of taxing the coal and gas companies' super profits—and that is actually what the government should be doing: taxing these wartime super profits and using that revenue to provide genuine cost-of-living relief, including by freezing people's power bills—the government is planning to give the coal companies even more public money.

This is the upside-down world of climate and energy policy in Australia. The coal companies make record profits and electricity prices go berserk, and then the government turns around and gives more money to coal companies to guarantee their mega profits. These subsidies, importantly, do not form part of this legislation. I want to be clear: the Greens do not, never have and never will support public money going to the big fossil fuel miners, producers and generators. We will fight, as we always have, to prevent that from happening.

What's also shameful, and a massive missed opportunity, is that the government has yet again passed up the opportunity to fix the utterly broken petroleum resource rent tax. Despite reaping megaprofits on the back of a global boom, many global gas giants are forecasting that they will not pay a single cent in the PRRT. This is what you get when fossil fuel companies take over the nation's parliament. Money talks, and their millions of dollars in donations to the major parties talk very loudly. Make no mistake: the resources industry calls the tune in this place.

Yes, we will be supporting this legislation, but we want to be very clear that even when it passes there will be a long way to go to provide the cost-of-living relief that people who need it the most genuinely need. We have a long way to go before Australia is playing the global leadership role we have to play in addressing the breakdown of our climate. We have a long way to go before we have a parliament that is free from the stranglehold of the resources industry.

I have some questions for the minister. I hope she's able to respond to these questions in either the second reading debate or the committee stage, but I'll place them on the record now. Will the reduction in the wholesale power price mean that some renewable energy producers' revenue will be lower than it otherwise would have been and has any modelling been done on the quantum of any such reduction? What is the estimated cost to the Commonwealth of the planned subsidy to coalmine operators and coal-fired electricity producers? Are there any limits on the rate per tonne of this subsidy or on the total amount of the subsidy? Will the Commonwealth fund this subsidy, or these subsidies, out of an existing appropriation or will it require a supplementary appropriation?

Finally, in the interests of moving along, I move the second reading amendment on sheet 1792 that has been circulated in my name which calls on this Senate to reject all new fossil fuel subsidies. I move:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) notes that:

(i) while this legislation does not include any subsidies to coal corporations, there have been media reports that more than $500 million of coal subsidies are currently under consideration from the Commonwealth and New South Wales Governments, and

(ii) due to the global energy crisis, major coal producers are making billions in windfall profits; and

(b) calls on the Government to reject all new fossil fuel subsidies".