Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the following matter be referred to the Economics Committee for inquiry and report by 6 October 2007:An assessment of the benefits and costs of introducing renewable energy feed-in tariffs in Australia, including an evaluation of:

(a)

barriers to the expansion of the renewable energy industry in general and within the electricity market in Australia in particular;

(b)

the likelihood that carbon prices generated by an emissions trading system will be insufficient to overcome these barriers in the near term; and

(c)

options to link the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target scheme (with an increased target) with feed-in tariffs to guarantee a viable return on investment for investors in a range of prospective renewable energy technologies.

I understand the current workload of Senate committees. However, if the other parties would agree to it, I am certainly open to an expression of interest in supporting such an inquiry and changing the reporting date, because I think this is an absolutely critical matter for us to consider. It was obvious to me in the Senate last week that, currently, the government has not given any thought to feed-in tariffs. I think it is essential that we do. I understand the time pressures of today, so I will speak on this as briefly as I can.

If we agree that we need to constrain a rise in global temperatures to below two degrees in order to avoid catastrophic climate change—and, as yet, there is no agreement; there is global consensus but not consensus by parliament—then we need to set deep emission-cut targets. The Greens have said that we need to go with 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050 and 30 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. That is based on the need to reduce emissions globally and on more of an effort by industrialised countries. Those targets are realistic in that context, especially since the CSIRO has said that we need to have emission reductions somewhere between 60 and 90 per cent. We need to have deep targets and, in order to meet those targets, we will need several things. We need to reduce our energy use but, at the same time, recognise that overall we will need more renewable energy as well as energy efficiency. This goes to the heart of the conversation about feed-in laws. We need to maximise the contribution of renewable energy to achieve those deep cuts in emissions.

Currently, the government is considering the Prime Ministerial Task Group on Emissions Trading report on an emissions trading scheme. What is not clearly understood is that an emissions trading scheme on its own will do nothing to expand renewable energy. That is because the permit price is likely to be too low to stimulate the commercialisation of renewable energy generation. It may stimulate some investment in research and development, but it certainly will not go to commercialisation in the short term. If we are to achieve deep emission cuts quickly, we need to rapidly install renewable energy generation. The likelihood is that an emissions trading scheme will lead to conversion to gas and to greater efficiency in existing energy generation but it will not support the renewables. After we use up our energy efficiency options and move rapidly on those, and while we make some conversions to gas, we also need to build up renewable energy generation so that it can take on more of the load. Currently, we have a mandatory renewable energy target, which is good because it provides certainty about achieving those targets as set, but the problem with the current mandatory renewable energy target is that it is way too low. As it was so successful, we achieved the target rapidly and so that has ended the investment in renewable energy. If we are to reach a real target for renewable energy—and the Greens believe we should reach about 25 per cent by 2020—then we need a rapid rollout of renewable energy.

The problem with the mandatory renewable energy target, which the feed-in laws solve, is that only the cheapest types of renewable energy, such as wind, are actually installed. Because there is a target, people will of course invest in the most competitive renewable energy options. So there is nothing currently that supports more prospective options, particularly in some areas of Australia, such as solar, yet in the longer term these may be better options for the country. This is where feed-in laws come in. What is a feed-in law? For the benefit of Senator Minchin, but also for general awareness, a feed-in law is the world’s most successful policy mechanism for stimulating the rapid development of renewable energy. Sir Nicholas Stern also made that clear in his report last year. They are also the most egalitarian method for determining when, where and how renewable energy generating capacity will be installed. These renewable energy tariffs, or feed-in laws, enable home owners, farmers, cooperatives, Indigenous people et cetera to participate on an equal footing with large commercial developers of renewable energy. They permit the connection of renewable sources of electricity with the electricity utility network and, at the same time, specify how much the renewable generator is paid for their electricity. In other words, the utility is required to take renewable energy, from whoever is generating it, from their wind generator—from their home, from their barn or from their warehouse roof—and buy it at a fixed price, for a fixed period. You can borrow money to invest in renewable energy because you know precisely what return you will get on that investment, so banks will lend you the money. That is the basis on which the renewable energy boom has taken place in Europe.

Feed-in laws are not experimental and they are not pilot; they are now being used by many countries in the European Union and they are being used in some states in the US. They have been hugely successful, and particularly successful for farmers who have a lot of roof space by virtue of their facilities. They can actually generate additional sources of income to the traditional farm networks. They are also a mechanism for stimulating jobs in manufacturing and rollout in rural and regional Australia. I will give you an example. Currently we have irrigated cotton at Moree in New South Wales. It is not sustainable in the long term for Australia, a desert nation, to be growing irrigated cotton. At the same time, Solar Heat and Power says that it could roll out 300 megawatts of solar thermal power right now if the price were right. So theoretically a farmer at Moree could switch from cotton growing to the establishment of a solar thermal generation facility on the same area of land. They could do so if there were a feed-in law because that would give them the opportunity to go into partnership with a renewable energy generator, and so on.

Feed-in tariffs can be made differential. So you can say, ‘We think that in the long term this area of Australia has the best wind potential, therefore we will set a feed-in tariff at X for that area.’ It might be less for somewhere else. We are already doing that with solar hot water—in some parts of the country we pay more because we offset more in terms of coal electricity than in other places. This means you can look at areas around Australia with the best potential for solar, the best potential for wind and the best potential for geothermal and set a tariff that will guarantee investment in those renewable energy sectors in those parts of Australia. That has to be good for rural and regional Australia in terms of investment and jobs and it has to be good in terms of putting the manufacturing sector back into communities from which it has been taken because of competition with low-price manufacturing overseas. It is a win-win situation all around.

I cannot see a downside to Australia adopting feed-in laws. It is complementary to emissions trading. It is complementary to MRETs. I certainly do not want to see the MRET lost, as has been recommended by the emissions trading task force. I was surprised when the Labor Party supported the government last week in relation to this and I am concerned that there is a move on to change from a mandatory renewable energy target to a mandatory low-emissions technology target. What that is code for is including clean coal in renewable energy. If that happens, it will completely collapse the market in the long term for those real renewable energy technologies like wind, solar, geothermal and so on. So I certainly hope that the rumours being circulated that Labor is about to abandon the MRET for an MLET are not true, because low-emissions technology is a code word for clean coal. We need to start being very clear about that, actually stop using that euphemism and start calling it what it is. I want to make that very clear.

Some of the hardline economists might say that the problem with feed-in laws is that they rely on picking winners. You have governments and those hardliners sometimes saying that this is a bad thing. But that is precisely what they are doing when they subsidise clean coal, as they do. I would like to remind the Senate that during the 2005-06 financial year renewable energy received $326 million—that is, three per cent of the total subsidy allowance provided to all fuels. In that same year, oil received 76 per cent of those subsidies, worth $7.4 billion, and coal received 17 per cent, worth $1.7 billion. We have already had policy announcements from both the government and the opposition in relation to spending $500 million on clean coal and nothing like that on various renewable energy sectors.

I am strongly arguing here that the overseas experience says that if you want to get significant cuts in emissions then you need to have a combination of energy efficiency and renewable energy as well as the conversion and phase-out of existing energy production in coal and so on. To do that you need all these mechanisms. You cannot rely on emissions trading; it will do nothing for renewables. I strongly urge the Senate to support a reference to the economics committee so that there can be an analysis of how feed-in laws in Australia could be used to cost-effectively roll out renewable energy to create jobs and new manufacturing investment in rural and regional Australia. This would be a win-win all around. We have plenty of overseas experience we can draw on for feed-in tariffs. I think there would be huge excitement in Australia if the community knew that it could go and borrow to invest in renewable energy because it had a guaranteed fixed price over a fixed period of time for the purchase of that energy. It would be a huge boost because, as I said, it is a flexible mechanism whereby you can set different tariffs for different technologies and essentially give a real boost to all of your renewables at the same time. I urge the Senate to support this reference to the committee. As I indicated, I am perfectly open to an amendment to the motion in terms of the date for a report. I am happy to take the reporting time out longer than that proposed because of the workload. But I would be really disappointed if the Senate did not support the idea of sending this to the committee for an evaluation of feed-in tariffs. I will wait to see what other members of the Senate think about this reference, but I urge senators to support it.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sorry to disappoint the honourable senator but we will certainly be opposing this motion. It is premature to be undertaking a detailed cost-benefit assessment of a feed-in tariff before key emissions trading scheme design features are finalised—and I would have thought the honourable senator would be aware of that. The Prime Minister has announced that Australia will move towards a domestic emissions trading system beginning from no later than 2012. The scheme will be national in scope and as comprehensive as practicable. It will be designed to take account of global developments and to preserve the competitiveness of our trade exposed, emissions-intensive industries. A long-term aspirational goal for reducing carbon emissions will be set next year, but we will need to assess very carefully with detailed economic modelling the impact any target will have on Australia’s economy and Australian families.

This is always the difficulty with the Australian Greens. In their almost hysterical paranoia to pursue single-issue matters without looking at them in a global and national sense, they continue to come into this chamber with a narrow focus that does not take into account the long-term aspirations and requirements of the wider Australian community. The Leader of the Greens yesterday embarked on an appalling personal attack on someone who has made a significant commitment to the community. For Senator Brown to engage in that activity yesterday was an utter disgrace. Senator Brown, you used coward’s castle yesterday to attack a man of integrity, and I am afraid that the best description for you in that regard is ‘spineless’. You are a spineless individual who uses coward’s castle to attack the integrity of good people.

There is no reason why we should pay higher energy—

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, on a point of order: the standing orders do not allow that kind of personal reflection on a member, and I ask the senator to withdraw.

John Watson (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Ronaldson, the word ‘spineless’ has previously been ruled to be unparliamentary, so I ask you to withdraw it.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, at your request I will of course withdraw that. I will say—

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Bob Brown interjecting—

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Excuse me, I am on my feet.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Bob Brown interjecting—

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am responding to the Acting Deputy President. You will have your turn in a second. Mr Deputy President, I will of course abide by your ruling.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, on a point order: the backbench senator’s contribution is totally irrelevant to the matter at hand. I think he is talking about comments I made at the press boxes yesterday, not here. So he is right off beam anyway, if that is indeed what he is referring to. But it has nothing to do with the matter at hand, and I ask you to bring him back to the topic.

The Acting Deputy President:

I am not aware of what happened yesterday, so I am listening very carefully.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I ask you to bring him back to the matter at hand.

The Acting Deputy President:

I am sure he will come back.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hope your assurance works out, Mr Acting Deputy President.

The Acting Deputy President:

I am sure it will. Senator Ronaldson.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sure your advice is always gracefully received, too, Senator Brown.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You’d do well to take it.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you want to interject, I am happy to take the interjection. You have just complained that we are not being relevant and then you interject with non-relevant matters. On that basis, I will repeat what I said before: you are a man who is quite happy to attack—

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Address the chair.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Which way do you want it? Do you want this debate or the other one? It does not worry me.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, on a point of order: perhaps the new member is not familiar with the standing orders, but he should be addressing the chair.

The Acting Deputy President:

Senator Brown, I remind you that interjections are disorderly, and they are causing the problem.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I asked you to have the member address the chair. I ask you to rule on that point of order.

The Acting Deputy President:

I am sure the honourable senator will address the chair in his future remarks.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you want to talk about experience, I have been around a lot longer than you, my fine-feathered friend. I can assure you of that. Australia should not pay higher energy costs than is necessary to achieve emissions reductions—in other words, governments need to let the market sort out the most efficient means of lowering emissions with all emissions technologies on the table. This is the problem with Senator Milne’s comments before in which she talked about her views on hardline economists. The market needs to sort these out using all available technologies. It will get the most efficient means of lowering emissions with all those technologies on the table. The Australian government focuses on developing an emissions trading scheme that pulls through technology, rather than securing a plethora of conflicting price signals and red tape. An emissions trading scheme involving forward signalling of progressively more stringent emissions caps will provide incentives to move technologies, including renewables, towards deployment and encourage investment in low emissions technology by investors. This government has invested significantly in renewable energy.

I am mindful of the time and of the need for the Senate to get up at a reasonable time at the end of this sitting week, but I do want to make a couple of comments. For all that we hear from the Australian Greens in relation to this matter, I think the most interesting thing about this debate is: which was the first country in the world to have a greenhouse gas emissions office? Which was the first country in the world to do it and which government introduced it? Senator Milne knows exactly who it was. It was this government. Look at our substantial investment in this area. I would assume that Senator Milne supports the direction in which we have put our funding. We have clearly moved to address the sorts of issues that Senator Milne is referring to. Do I need to go any further than the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, $500 million; the Renewable Energy Development Initiative, $100 million; $100 million as part of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate; and the Solar Cities program? I could go on.

The government’s mandatory renewable energy target has leveraged around $3.5 billion in private sector renewable energy investment to increase renewable energy generation by more than 50 per cent compared with the 1997 level. As I said before, we have invested some $3 billion towards renewable energy. We are proud of our investment in this area, and we will not be lectured by the Australian Greens on our commitment in this area. We will not sit back and be lectured by you. Senator Milne, if you were serious about this matter, you would be acutely aware that this is premature, and you must acknowledge that it is premature. I can only assume on that basis that this is done for cheap political reasons. It will be opposed. It will be opposed on the basis that it is premature, that it cannot possibly achieve whatever it is designed to achieve until all those matters have been discussed and until those issues have been addressed. Until you know what the design features of a key emissions trading scheme are, this is a pointless motion and it will be opposed.

Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Democrats strongly support this reference to the Economics Committee on the matter of feed-in tariffs. I will not refer to Senator Ronaldson’s invective but try to sort out the substantive arguments he was attempting to make. One of those was that this is premature before we have an emissions trading system. This is nothing to do with emissions trading. This is to give an as of right to individuals—whether it is someone with solar panel on their rooftop or whether it is a wind farm or whether it is hot rocks power generation—to feed electricity onto our grid. That is called distributed generation. That means moving away from the big coal fired power stations and distributing energy generation more broadly around this country.

The opportunities to do that were taken away to some extent when we moved in this country to a national grid, with privatisation and restructuring of the electricity sector. There is little incentive for the electricity grid to pick up on those electricity generators who create more energy than they need. That is what this is about. There is nothing new about it. Germany has been doing it for some time and very successfully. It is to remove a barrier to those generators who produce electricity to get it onto the grid and to set a fair price for the electricity that is so generated.

So it is absurd for Senator Ronaldson to say that we have to wait until we have got economic modelling and that it does not take into account the aspirations of the wider community. What an absurd thing to say. Seventy-four per cent of Australians, in a survey just the other day, said that they would prefer to see renewable energy and energy efficiency as the top priorities for government in encouraging reductions in greenhouse emissions. They do not want nuclear; they do not want clean coal. They do want an emissions trading system and they have been wanting one for a while. What they want is an emphasis on renewable energy, particularly energy efficiency. This reference to the committee would provide an opportunity to debate how we could introduce such a scheme into this country. The states have dropped this; they do not want to know about it, which is a great disappointment, because they could introduce a feed-in tariff. For some reason they are reluctant to do so. It does not mean the end of the world economically. It would not necessarily mean that electricity prices would be higher. It is simply saying that we now need to move to a situation where not all of our electricity is generated by big coal fired power stations. We need to move to a situation where there is a much broader range of generation from a more diverse set of locations around the country, whether that is you with your solar panel on your house—in my case, in Port Melbourne—or whether it is another, bigger generation of various sorts in a different location.

So this is nothing to do—and I emphasise this—with emissions trading; nothing whatsoever. In fact, it has links with the mandated renewable energy target and it would facilitate much quicker and better access by those who were part of the MRET scheme if it were agreed on. Conservation groups are interested in energy and in improving our appalling record on greenhouse emissions in this country. There has been a 143 per cent increase on 1990 levels in our greenhouse emissions from electricity generation. This move would go a long way to solving some of the problems for those who would want to bring electricity onto the grid. MRET, as we all know, is not going far enough. Because of its low target, because so many sources of electricity comply, MRET is going to see a fall-off this year in new projects that rely on that target for their viability.

This is an important reference. It is disappointing that the government is not prepared to talk about it. It just means that we at this end of the chamber have to keep bringing it to the attention of government. It would have been good to have had the experts come together so that we could have a report and demonstrate just the point that I have made—that this is nothing to do with emissions trading.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well said, Senator Allison, and, before that, Senator Milne. The motion here is to get information so that the parliament can be informed about feed-in laws, which are working very effectively overseas, particularly in Germany. Senator Ronaldson fled the chamber after his contribution. You have to feel sorry for him; no-one on the government benches has the foggiest idea what this is about. When you get ignorance of that sort, very often it feeds upon itself. Instead of government members trying to find out what feed-in laws are about and how they can improve the energy configuration, stimulate the economy and stimulate small business in particular, their ignorance compounds itself. I would have thought that, when the allocation of the response to this motion from Senator Milne was considered by the government, they could have selected somebody who would at least be able to string together sentences which meant something and were positive. Instead of that, we had a senator in real trouble, totally ignorant of the issues, whose best contribution, perhaps, was to flee the chamber as soon as he could, straight after he had sat down.

I first moved to get feed-in laws in Tasmania back in the 1980s, I think, and you, Senator Milne, would have followed after that. They do work well; they are an important stimulus, particularly to renewable energy. The stories in Germany of the people who gained advantage from these feed-in laws and helped that country reduce its greenhouse gas emissions enormously are legion. It is just a pity that the government not only does not understand this but is determined to remain in ignorance. This is not a motion that says we should bring in these laws—although it should be; we should be way past that and they should be part of the Australian economy by now. It is a motion to enlighten the Senate about the advantages and the problems, if any, of introducing renewable energy feed-in tariffs in Australia.

Senator Milne is to be congratulated for having brought the motion forward. The depth of the government’s ignorance and hostility towards the options available in a climate change challenged world is despairing. We are facing enormous problems, with multitrillion-dollar damage to the global economy and multibillion-dollar damage to the Australian economy. The problems from climate change will flow on to all families in coming decades in Australia, and here we have the government saying, ‘No, we won’t look at options that are working overseas in order to help this country tackle the problem of climate change.’ It is just studied ignorance.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank my colleagues for their remarks in relation to this motion. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the support for this reference from Senator Allison, from the Democrats, because I know that for a long time she has been supporting it. I have heard the Labor Party express support for a range of mechanisms in this regard, but I particularly want to address the remarks made by Senator Ronaldson. Not only is it shocking that a senator in this day and age can demonstrate such a low level of understanding of climate change and the financial mechanisms needed to respond to it, but what is even more shocking is that he is Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Economics, to which this reference was to be referred.

Whilst the government and government members may be congratulating Senator Ronaldson for his strident opposition to this reference on feed-in laws, everyone out there in the community who wants a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, all those people in the renewable energy sector who are desperate for investment and all those that want investment in manufacturing and jobs in their rural communities will be horrified to know that the chair of the Senate economics committee is blocking the potential for that to occur. Everybody interested in the climate change debate, when the Prime Minister tries to tell Australia that he is no longer a sceptic on climate change, will be able to refer to the remarks made today and show that the government remains sceptical on climate change. It does not understand it and does not want to understand it.

If Senator Ronaldson had any idea he would understand the point that was being made. The point that was being made about emissions trading is that the committee and the Prime Minister have said that the price on carbon will be low and will start low, and we know that if you have a low carbon price there will be no investment in renewable energy. The experience overseas has been that emissions trading has done nothing for investment in renewable energy. The point that I was making is that an emissions trading law will accelerate energy efficiency. It will accelerate conversion to gas, but it will not involve real investment in commercialisation of renewable energy, and that is why you need complementary mechanisms.

So when Senator Ronaldson talked about narrow focus he can only have been referring to the government, and when he talked about a refusal to look at the global picture he can only have been talking about the government. In fact, it is the Greens who are looking at a broad, global perspective. For the benefit of the government and Senator Ronaldson, who apparently does not want the economics committee to know how the rest of the world is dealing with this and who does not want Treasury and the government to look at it, I would like to inform them that the following countries have all brought in feed-in laws: Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Republic of Korea, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the US. So it seems as though the Greens are in extremely good company around the world when it comes to addressing the issue of renewable energy.

I note that up until the announcement by the Prime Minister that the government was going to have a task group to look at emissions trading Senator Ronaldson in the Senate had declared himself a climate sceptic time and time again. He stood up here until a couple of months ago and ridiculed the Greens for being concerned about global warming. He was arguing that it was not occurring, that there was not the scientific proof and so on. Now he is trying to suggest that somehow he has got the interests of the wider Australian community at heart.

The refusal to look at this issue of feed-in laws will be seen by the entire community wanting to deal with a reduction in greenhouse gases as sheer and utter ignorance from the government and it will reinforce the view in the Australian community that for 11 years the Howard government has dropped the ball on climate change. Senator Ronaldson may be feeling good about the tone of his remarks addressed to the Greens today, but the feedback the government will get is that the change to the committee system and the government’s ignorance on climate change are things that the community does not intend to reward—and I certainly hope that they will not reward it in the forthcoming federal election. Whatever happens, we cannot allow a chair of a Senate economics committee to be so ignorant about addressing the economics of climate change. That is humiliating for this country, and the government should not even be allowing it. They should be trying to pretend at least that they have a better grasp of the situation. First of all we had the Leader of the Government in the Senate last week demonstrating that he had no idea what a feed-in law was and now we have Senator Ronaldson expanding on that level of ignorance.

The point is that the Greens have been working on climate change and global warming for more than 20 years. We have been talking to people around the world. I have been attending global conferences on climate change for a very long time. And I am not alone in that. There are millions of people around the world working in the same way. The government ought to acknowledge that it is trying to catch up in a matter of a few months on what people have been doing for 20 years. We know that the ANU has sliver cell technology and they are desperate to commercialise that in Australia. It has been commercialised to one level by Origin Energy but will probably have to go offshore, as have Solar Heat and Power to California, as has Vestas in pulling out of Tasmania with wind energy, and as has Dr Shi in going to China.

It should be a matter of concern to the chair of the economics committee that Australia’s manufacturing sector has been hollowed out and he ought to be able to see that there is a real opportunity for investment in manufacturing and jobs in rural and regional Australia in renewable energy. He ought to be able to see that emissions trading does nothing for investment in renewable energy unless the price is high enough, and we know the price is not going to be high enough. As for the argument about the market taking care of it, I point out to Senator Ronaldson that an economist of much more senior status than himself, none other than Sir Nicholas Stern, has said that climate change represents the greatest market failure of all time. The market has failed the planet when it comes to climate change and global warming. We need intervention with market mechanisms plus regulation.

I return to the point I made earlier: once Australia decides what level of warming it is prepared to tolerate it must then decide the level of emissions cuts it needs and on the combination of mechanisms to get there. Emissions trading is one, plus a mandatory renewable energy target, plus a feed-in tariff. I think that the government is completely wrong in its reading of the Australian community. I have spoken to several people who say that they would love to have the opportunity to contribute to the solution to climate change by making it cost effective for them to generate renewable energy, and it is not cost effective for them to do it at the moment. People would love to cover their roofs with photovoltaics. Farmers would love to cover their sheds with photovoltaics. They would like to have a wind turbine on their property—one or two or three—but the capital cost is too great. That is what they say all time.

I am aware that another policy option that Labor has put forward is low-interest loans. My problem with that is that you still have to be in a credit situation to be able to borrow money in order to be able to repay the loans. The advantage of a feed-in law is, because it is a fixed price for the particular kind of renewable energy over a set period of time, you can borrow the money because you know that you can cover repayments in full. It is a fabulous mechanism for allowing people to do it.

In Germany—for the benefit of Senator Ronaldson—local governments have invested heavily in putting photovoltaics on the divide between highways. I notice that even in Victoria the Bracks government is moving to put photovoltaics on the noise buffers of one of its freeways. Anywhere you have a space you can invest in renewable energy providing it is cost effective for you to do so. If the government wants to win an election on climate change then it needs to persuade Australians that there is a capacity for everybody to participate in the generation of renewable energy and get excited about the potential to solve the problem, not tell them that it will actively block—and that is what this is doing—investment in renewable energy by refusing to consider feed-in tariffs and instead talk about its low-emissions technology fund, which everybody knows is overwhelmingly going to clean coal. Even BHP said this week that that technology is 20 years away. This is no response to climate change. We have got until 2015 for global emissions to peak and then to be reduced. Nuclear and clean coal, if ever, will not be on stream until at least the 2020s. So they are not a solution. We need to be using our good sense to bring in market mechanisms and regulation that actually work.

What is more, for a government that is worried about issues like subsidies, the feed-in laws are a mechanism that allows the financing of renewable energy in a way that is not a direct subsidy. So you should be interested in that, but instead of that we have the chair of the Senate economics committee demonstrating that he knows nothing about it and that in fact at heart he remains a climate sceptic. He is getting on board with mumbo-jumbo about emissions trading because he does not even understand that—he has just grabbed a few lines out of the report. He does not understand the connections and what an emissions trading scheme might do, what a feed-in law might do and what a mandatory renewable energy target might do. I express deep regret and, in fact, anger about the fact that the government wants to be so ignorant on addressing climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. It is not about politics; it is about future generations. It is about enabling people to make a difference. All we are seeing is studied ignorance.

In another 10 or 15 years, as the climate deteriorates, we will have more extreme weather events and the droughts around Australia will dig deeper into rural and regional Australia, as we have already seen with the collapse of the Murray-Darling and the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, and as we are going to see with sea level rises and coastal vulnerability. When that occurs and we see the billions that it is currently costing and will cost, then people like Senator Ronaldson and the government members who are supporting him need to take personal responsibility for the actions they are taking now to prevent this country playing its role in reducing global emissions. This is a case of personal responsibility because unlike other things it is going to happen and is happening in our lifetime. So we are all going to be held accountable whether we like it or not. If the government is going to block renewable energy and solutions to climate change, I am glad that the chair of the economics committee can be held up and shown to the other chairs of economics committees in all the countries around the world and it can be said, ‘This is the best the Australian government can do on economics’—roll him out as a speaker.

On that basis, I express regret that the government is not even open enough to the idea of Treasury opening its mind to the possibility of feed-in laws. I have no doubt that we will have feed-in laws in Australia but we will have them later than we should have had them because the government blocked them. When feed-in laws come in, no doubt we will hear the same senators standing up and saying, ‘Oh, if only we had known in 2007 what we know now, of course we would have proceeded.’ Well, they cannot say that because they do know now. The Greens stand here and tell them that this is the experience overseas and this is what we should be doing in Australia. What we are seeing is studied ignorance from a government which remains sceptical of climate change in the face of the greatest catastrophe facing humankind and the ecological systems of the planet. I ask the government to reconsider its position on this motion regarding the reference to the economics committee, and I urge the Senate to support it.

Question put:

That the motion (Senator Milne’s) be agreed to.