Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Centre for Renewable Energy Bill 2009 is broadly supported by the coalition. It is a bill that will establish the board of the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy and the position of chief executive officer of what will become known, no doubt, as ACRE. It creates a central body that is aimed at supporting the existing research, development and demonstration of low-emission and renewable energy technologies to improve their competitiveness. We are treating this bill as non-controversial and administrative in nature and we view this approach to coordinating the various renewable energy programs as appropriate and sensible.

The bill contains a number of provisions that relate to the role of the board in advising the minister on the best ways to promote the development, commercialisation and use of emerging renewable technologies. The functions of the board are contained in the bill and include advising the minister on improving existing program delivery, priority areas for government support and the provision of venture capital funding. The board will comprise a chair, the CEO as an ex-officio member of the board, and up to six other members appointed by the minister. The bill requires that the minister ensures that the proposed appointees to the board have knowledge of, or experience in, a field relevant to the functions of the board.

ACRE will consolidate a number of renewable energy programs including the Renewable Energy Demonstration Program and the Geothermal Drilling Program. The government states that ACRE will ‘complement’ the CPRS and the expanded renewable energy target by streamlining the current fragmented administration of renewable energy programs and support. So, while we agree the centre will support the coordination of renewable energy programs, a worthy aim—and it gives me more confidence that these are to be overseen by the Resources and Energy portfolio rather than other, unmentionable, departments—we do not support the tying of this bill in any way to Labor’s now twice failed CPRS, just as we did not support Labor’s attempts to tie their RET legislation to the passage of the CPRS.

In the context of the work that the Centre for Renewable Energy will oversee, an issue of concern for the opposition is the comparatively low level of government support for geothermal energy. While the government likes to talk up the great potential of this emerging energy source there is little evidence that it is prepared to provide the type of support the geothermal sector needs to realise that potential. The Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson MP, had this to say on opening the geothermal project in my home state, on the Limestone Coast, last week:

Geothermal energy is particularly important because of its potential to supply base-load electricity to the Australian grid from a zero-carbon renewable source.  In doing so, it meets our objectives to increase energy security by diversifying energy sources, reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and to supply 20 per cent of Australia’s electricity by 2020 from renewable sources.

I could not disagree with a word of that. The minister has also often repeated Geoscience Australia’s estimates, such as:

... that if we were able to extract just one per cent of Australia’s geothermal energy, it would be equivalent to 26,000 times Australia’s total annual energy consumption.

I think that appropriately demonstrates the potential of geothermal energy. But, considering that great potential and the minister’s preparedness to talk up geothermal, the relatively low level of funding support the government has thus far provided is perplexing.

Last year the government announced its $4.5 billion Clean Energy Initiative, yet just over $200 million of that funding has been allocated to assisting the geothermal sector. This has included just $50 million to support the all-important geothermal drilling projects and some $153 million to support the development of two geothermal energy plants. By comparison, $2.4 billion was allocated for carbon capture and storage and $1.5 billion for Solar Flagships. The industry advises that the major hurdle to getting geothermal projects off the ground is the all-important proof-of-concept stage. That first stage can cost in the order of $30 million to $40 million per well and, following the GFC, securing initial finance for geothermal drilling is proving extremely difficult. So the clear message to the government is: if it seriously believes in the potential of geothermal energy to provide clean baseload power, it simply has to provide greater levels of support. Without the emergence of major geothermal projects over the coming years the 20 per cent renewable energy target will not be reached.

The need for this government to direct more support towards geothermal is especially acute given Labor’s complete and utter refusal to countenance even a debate about nuclear power in Australia. Here we have the Labor Party proclaiming itself as ‘true believers’ in the theory of global warming and the need to curtail anthropogenic CO2 emissions, yet it is not taking seriously the only two current zero emission sources of baseload power, geothermal and nuclear. Its support for geothermal is relatively paltry and it will not even discuss nuclear power. From our perspective, Labor’s hypocrisy in this matter is truly breathtaking.

When in government, the coalition provided significant support for renewable energy with more than $1 billion of the coalition’s $3.5 billion climate change funding allocated to renewable energy initiatives, including through funding for solar hot water rebates, the Renewable Energy Development Initiative, the Photovoltaic Rebate Program, Solar Cities, the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund and the $25 million to develop renewable energy technology through the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. We established the world’s first mandatory renewable energy target, which stimulated some $3½ billion of investment in renewable energy technologies since its introduction in 2001.

Our climate action spokesman, Mr Greg Hunt MP, worked with the current government to improve the renewable energy target in 2009, including through a full decoupling of the RET from the proposed CPRS, securing appropriate protection for key energy-intensive trade-exposed industries such as aluminium, ensuring protection of existing investment and jobs in the coalmine waste methane power generation industry, providing scope for industries which may be affected by the RET such as food processing, to refer their treatment to the Productivity Commission and tightening of regulations relating to RET eligibility for heat pumps.

Despite the concessions won by the coalition in that matter, we argued then that the RET needed further amendment to ensure that all renewable energy sources could find their place in the renewable energy market. Regrettably, these warnings were ignored by the government and Labor’s mismanagement of the renewable energy target has resulted in market distortions which saw the price of renewable energy certificates collapsing from around $50 to around $30.

In what is now very clearly a short-sighted and cynical political move, the government chose to use renewable energy certificates as a way of offsetting its decision to abruptly end the coalition’s $8,000 solar panel rebate. That has been a major distortion to the market for the certificates. It helped undermine the value of the certificates, putting at risk major new investment in large-scale renewable energy projects, including wind farms. We are pleased that the government has responded to pressure from the coalition, the Greens and the renewable energy sector by proposing major changes to the RET in a bid to restore some balance to the scheme and to provide investment certainty.

For our part, we will closely examine the detail of the government’s proposal to break the RET into two parts—a small-scale renewable energy scheme and a large-scale renewable energy target. Following the debacle of the government’s insulation program, we will need to be satisfied that it has not simply cobbled together another quick fix which could result in further problems such as a significant spike in electricity bills for average Australians. The two-tiered system proposed by the government, from our perspective, has all the hallmarks of a catch-up exercise. It follows the announcement by the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott MP, that a coalition government will create a band within the renewable energy target to be reserved for large energy renewable projects—the over-50-megawatt projects—or for emerging technologies such as solar fields, geothermal, or tidal and wave projects over 10 megawatts. Clearly, there is some comparison between what the government has proposed and what we had earlier flagged.

Also, as part of our direct action plan to tackle climate change, we announced that a coalition government would introduce a range of initiatives to boost renewable energy use in Australian homes and communities, taking advantage of our abundant natural resources, including through 125 mid-scale solar projects in schools and communities and 25 geothermal or tidal power ‘micro’ projects to be established at appropriate venues.

In conclusion, I confirm that the coalition will support this bill. We see the establishment of the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy as a sensible move to provide more cohesion, under the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism, for a range of renewable energy programs. But in relation to renewable energy we strongly urge the government to work closely with the coalition to address the current problems with the renewable energy target so that the scheme is sustainable and provides appropriate levels of incentives for investment in the full range of renewable energy sources.

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

I rise today to support the establishment of a board for the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy; but, as the chamber is aware, amendments have been circulated and I would draw people’s attention to those. I will discuss those in the course of my speech in the second reading debate on this bill, the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy Bill 2009. Renewable energy is something that the Greens are passionate about. It is very clear that we need to make a transformation to a low carbon and then zero carbon economy as quickly as possible. One of the main drivers for that will be not only reducing demand for energy through energy efficiency but also creating additional supply.

I am interested in the remarks from Senator Minchin with regard to the renewable energy target. I regret that all the problems that have subsequently occurred with the renewable energy target were flagged by me in this parliament when the legislation went through. I moved amendments to address them at the time, to move the certificates generated by solar hot water heat pumps and the multiplier on top of the target, but they were not supported by the coalition or the government. All of the problems that I foreshadowed have occurred. Whilst I do support the government finally acting to improve the renewable energy target, I am concerned. I do not support a banding approach because it is essentially a restrictive approach. It will restrict the technologies, the large-scale new technologies, especially if they do not come on stream in time. It will restrict the whole process.

The Greens have argued that we need a gross feed-in tariff on top of a renewable energy target so that there is support for geothermal, for wave energy, for large-scale solar and so on. We need all of those things. We need a renewable energy target which will support wind and we need to have an energy efficiency target so that we can take out all the energy efficiency technologies and put those in a parallel scheme. But we also need a targeted gross national feed-in tariff with separate tariff ranges for all the new and emerging technologies—in particular solar, thermal, geothermal and wave power.

I would agree with Senator Minchin’s remarks in relation to geothermal. These large-scale new technologies which are more expensive than wind are not supported, and they will not be supported under the current regimes as far as I can see. I will be watching that very closely. I would urge the coalition to think again about supporting the Greens’ gross national feed-in tariff regime so that we can bring on some of these new technologies. They are more expensive than wind; I acknowledge that. But we are not going to bring them on unless we organise a regime that supports them and gives certainty to investors in those fields over a long period of time, and that certainty will come from a feed-in tariff because it is not going to be reliant on ad hoc government subsidies which can stop and start and be turned on and off like a tap.

I come to the issue of the board for the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy. The key issue is that there is a bias and a hostility across the energy sector to renewable energy, particularly intermittent supply. There is hostility and has been for a long time. When you get together people who have been involved in the traditional energy sector, they will all stand up and go on and on saying: ‘You have to have coal. You have to have nuclear as baseload supply.’ They have no notional view about distributed energy, about intelligent grids or about managing a whole range of renewables. When I think about what is going on in Europe at the moment with the establishment of a renewable energy grid across nine countries, I just think it is light years ahead of where we are here in Australia. We are not going to get that kind of forward thinking unless we get people who are supportive of renewable energy on the board of the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy.

We are not going to get that unless that board is independent of the government. The minister, Martin Ferguson, does not believe in renewable energy. It is very clear that the remarks he makes are gestures in the field. There is no commitment from the government or from the minister. In fact, he is far more enthusiastic about the expansion of Olympic Dam and the uranium mining there. He is far more excited about liquefying coal as a transport fuel, and carbon capture and storage, which everybody knows is a pipe dream. He is much more enthusiastic about those than he has ever been about renewable energy, and that is reflected in the amount of money that is spent by this government in carbon capture and storage, and supporting oil and gas exploration, the old forms of energy, rather than looking at systemic whole-of-government coordinated approaches to the rollout of energy efficiency and renewables.

It is not well known in the Australian community that there is currently an interim board for the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy. Why am I concerned? I will tell you why: because of the current make-up of this interim board, because as I understand it the interim board is going to be the board once this legislation is passed. I would like Minister Carr, in responding, to confirm whether or not it is the case that the current interim board will become the permanent board. Or, what will be the process for selection? The interim board currently consists of Graeme Hunt, who is the chair. He is a minerals and energy consultant and he formerly headed up BHP-Billiton’s operations in South Australia and was in charge of the expansion of Olympic Dam. Isn’t that great! We have someone who is a competitor to renewable energy—that is, the uranium sector, the whole nuclear sector—on the interim board of the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy. Why would I have any confidence at all that we would have a board enthusiastic about going to distributed systems, about managing intermittent supply and so on, when we have someone there at the moment who was in charge of the expansion of Olympic Dam?

Then we go to a few of the others on the board. Let me talk about Ms Emma Stein, who is on that interim board. She works as a non-executive board director, mainly in the energy, oil and gas utilities and infrastructure sector. So she is a traditional energy person. I have absolutely no doubt that she has very fine skills in that regard. But this is a board overseeing renewable energy. What expertise does she have in that particular field? There is Mr Errol Talbot, as well. Let me talk about Mr John Ryan for a moment. He is currently a member of the Carbon Capture and Storage Flagships Program investment assessment panel as well as being a member of the Renewable Energy Development Program fund committee. But he received his Public Service Medal for his work on the Prime Minister’s task force into the development of uranium mining and nuclear energy in Australia—another one from the nuclear sector on the interim board for the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy.

There are others, of course. I would have to acknowledge Dr John Wright, who is on the interim board. He has got expertise in this field. According to several of his recent speeches he at least has some expertise in the matter. I look at Professor Mary O’Kane. Again, she has laudable skills. She is a former Vice-Chancellor at the University of Adelaide and so on. She has been a board director. I absolutely do not question her skills in that regard, but I do in terms of her expertise on renewable energy.

Why do I say that is so important for people on the board of the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy? Because they are charged to oversee the Renewable Energy Demonstration Program, which looks at the technical and economic viability of renewable energy technologies for power generation through large-scale installations, support for the development of a range of renewable energy technologies for power generation, enhancement of Australia’s international leadership in renewable energy technology for power generation and attraction of private sector investment in renewable energy power generation. These are the people who are going to make decisions about applications for the money that is being distributed under this scheme. People who have no expertise in these technologies are going to be put in charge of overseeing the disbursement of funds for those project applications. That is unacceptable. It is why we have had failure after failure across the renewable energy sector in getting projects up. Consistently, the people who are appointed to government boards by governments effectively do not have expertise in the technologies they are set to oversee or, worse still, are actually hostile to or competitors of those technologies.

Why do I say that? Let me get to some of the other boards we have had in recent times, such as that of the Solar Flagships program. Martin Ferguson, the Minister for Resources and Energy, announced the seven-member Solar Flagships Council to assess the Solar Flagships program in February 2010. Dr Jenny Purdie, who joined Rio Tinto Alcan, is the General Manager of its business improvement technology for the Pacific. She is the Smelter Operations Manager at Comalco. There is also Kathy Hirschfeld, who is Managing Director and Refinery Manager of BP’s Bulwer Island refinery, and so on. And there are people like Mark Twidell who have expertise in the solar industry and Antony Cohen, who is the Chief Financial Officer of Better Place, which has a distributed notional view on transport but has nothing to do with large-scale solar power—but at least it is in the fields of understanding innovation in the sector. The rest are traditional energy people, including Mike Vertigan, who oversaw Basslink.

I do not dispute that these people have expertise in energy, but we are talking about the development of a new field. We are talking about investment in Australia and a vision for renewable energy, for distributed energy. We are talking about a vision for large-scale renewables, which will require intelligent grids to link up intermittent supply. These people have no expertise in that field, and they are the ones who are going to be making the decisions over Solar Flagships. Exactly the same thing happened with the energy white paper. You would think that if an energy white paper was under development it might include expertise in renewables if the future is in a low carbon or zero carbon economy. But, when I go to the committee looking at developing the white paper, who do I find on it? Representatives from Shell, BHP’s uranium division, Santos, Woodside, Rio Tinto, Origin, AGL, Xstrata, the Energy Supply Association of Australia and the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association. Of the non-fossil-fuel representatives, there are the Australian Energy Market Operator; the Chair and Deputy Secretary of the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism, Drew Clarke; the Secretary of the Victorian Department of Primary Industries; the PM’s National Security Adviser; and the CSIRO’s CEO, Megan Clark.

The point I make here is: where, apart from government appointees—people directly under government control in ministerial offices of an energy market operator—are the experts in the field of renewables, particularly large-scale renewables and new technologies? Where are they in the development of the white paper? People afterwards will ask, ‘What is the rationale for decisions that are being made under an energy white paper? What is the rationale for decisions about where the money is going to be disbursed under the Solar Flagships program?’ People equally are going to ask, ‘What is the rationale for the disbursement of funds under the programs that this Australian Centre for Renewable Energy is going to oversee?’ That is my point and that is why I, on behalf of the Greens, am moving two amendments, one of which says that the advice that the board provides to the minister must be tabled in the parliament so that we get to see what this board is recommending to the minister. That is fair given that this board is supposedly independent. The explanatory memorandum says that this board will be independent. If it is independent, what is it doing having the secretary of the department appoint the CEO, having the minister then appoint the members of the board and having the board served by staff who will be employees of the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism?

Here we have a supposedly independent body under the Minister for Resources and Energy with a CEO who is an ex-officio member and up to six other members who are appointed by the minister based on their knowledge or experience in fields relevant to the ACRE board functions. Please, let us have some people on the board who have skills relevant to this field; otherwise, we will have the mess we have had across the sectors, with the industry asking, ‘Why weren’t we consulted? Why doesn’t the government actually understand what the industry needs?’ This has been a problem with the Solar Flagships program throughout. ‘When is the department going to talk to us? When are people going to listen?’ The same has happened with the renewable energy target. Industry has been saying from the start that these problems would occur, and the government would not listen, and now they are expecting the Australian people to believe that a minister with a track record of totally and absolutely slavishly adhering to and promoting a fossil fuel economy is going to appoint to this board people who are genuinely expert in the field when we have an interim board made up of people who do not have expertise in the field and in some cases have expertise in a competitive field or are hostile to the technologies they are meant to be overseeing. You could almost say that it was designed to fail.

That is why the Greens will be proposing a second amendment. The first will provide that the advice of the board be tabled so that people know what the board is advising the minister and then what the minister does will be transparent—it will be apparent if the advice of the board is changed or ignored. At least we will know what advice the board has given and the rationale for it.

The second thing the Greens are suggesting is that it is completely inappropriate for this to be described as an independent board when we have the secretary of the department appointing the CEO from the department and the minister appointing the board. That is not independent. We want this to be a statutory authority; we want it to be independent. We say that, as is the case now, if you have a statutory authority the appointment of the CEO should be made by the Governor-General on the recommendation of the minister. At least there would be a genuine separation of powers going on. All we have here is Martin Ferguson and the government establishing very clear lines of contacts through the CEO and the appointment of the board to make sure that the pet projects of those board members and/or the government get up. There will be no independence and no capacity to scrutinise what is happening on that board.

This is a very serious issue because it is a crucial point in the development of renewable energy in Australia. I will be very disappointed if the coalition does not support these amendments, because they are designed for transparency. They are designed to make sure that we have an independent authority, as the government says it is supposed to be. It is also important that the people involved in the development of new technologies—those involved in putting in project applications for government funding—have some assurance that the people who are overseeing the process actually (a) are interested in the technology, (b) are not hostile to it and (c) may even have some expertise in the field over which they are making decisions about disbursement of funds. How absolutely disheartening for people with expertise, innovation and exciting ideas to put their projects forward and be judged by somebody with no expertise in the field and, furthermore, an interest in nuclear or old fossil fuel style technology who is determined that the new field will not work. I urge the Senate to support the amendments that I will be moving.

Dana Wortley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to offer some brief remarks on the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy Bill 2009. It is becoming increasingly clear that a combination of technologies is required to ensure Australia’s energy security, and that is what the bill before us today aims to achieve. The partnering of renewable energy with clean coal and gas technologies is a key to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. This strategy has clear added benefits for the national electricity market, industry development and community access.

On the issue of human induced climate change, those opposite agree it exists when convenient but deny its ramifications when politically expedient. They would have us believe that the scientific consensus is wrong. Indeed, Senator Minchin has linked climate change to some sort of sinister plot. On Four Corners recently he said that climate change:

For the extreme left … provides the opportunity to do what they’ve always wanted to do, to sort of de-industrialise the western world. You know the collapse of communism was a disaster for the left … and really they embraced environmentalism as their new religion.

This attitude is an attempt to hoodwink the electorate—to incite fear by pressing the old fear button. But I put it to you that the electorate knows better. The fostering and promotion of renewable energy strategies will not de-industrialise the Western world. The Rudd government intends to enable the harnessing of solar, wind and geothermal energy, of which we clearly have in abundance, for the benefit of the environment, the economy and the community. It is that simple.

In my own state of South Australia, we know that renewable energy is the way forward. We have proactively fostered working initiatives such as hot fractured rock geothermal exploration, solar energy in schools and other public buildings, including Parliament House, wind technology, tree planting, the plastic bag ban, feed-in tariff mechanisms and a highly successful refund-of-deposit plan for plastic bottles and aluminium cans.

The South Australian government’s geothermal regulatory and approvals framework, pursuant to the Petroleum and Geothermal Energy Act, proclaimed in 2000, has been extraordinary in its outcomes to date. South Australia has attracted more than 58 per cent of geothermal investment in Australia for the period 2002 to 2013. Because these projects cover diverse geological provinces, testing is occurring over a range of potential sources of energy. Major petroleum exploration and production companies are involved, and the share market shows strong support. The implications are clear. This technology will enable us to reduce emissions, better adapt to the changing climate and deal with the changes that the future will undoubtedly bring in terms of carbon constrained economic settings.

On a more local level, our fiercely hot and dry environment has seen a revival of the backyard rainwater tanks so much a feature of South Australian homes in the past. Many feed into laundries and bathrooms, conserving precious drinking water; some serve the water needs of whole households. Meanwhile, greywater keeps gardens green.

All these initiatives and projects, from major corporate and government investment in geothermal exploration in the Cooper Basin and elsewhere to the commitment of individual householders to water conservation and reuse, help to husband our resources and maintain our increasingly fragile environment. The rationale for these initiatives, big and small, is as clear as it is urgent. Renewable energies are far from the margins of power generation technologies, as Professor Ian Lowe AO, Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Griffith University in Brisbane and adjunct professor at Adelaide’s own Flinders University and the Sunshine Coast has noted. According to Professor Lowe, three-quarters of Iceland’s, half of Norway’s and a quarter of the installed energy capacity of California are powered by renewable energy. Worldwide, related industries employ almost two million people, while grid-connected solar energy is growing by 60 per cent every year. Just imagine the impact on employment potentialities in our cities and more particularly in our regions, not to mention more competitive prices for cleaner power in those cities and regional areas.

As we speak, America and Spain are developing solar thermal power plants to generate electricity. Japan and Germany, which also invests in significant wind energy technology, have made great strides with solar technology, too. In Israel, solar hot water is mandatory. In Denmark, which is smaller than Tasmania, 5,000 wind turbines have been erected. Australia, the hottest and the driest continent on earth, with its astonishing scope of solar, wind, water and geothermal resources, has been left behind. In Australia, only eight per cent of electricity is presently sourced from renewable energy—less than the 10 per cent so sourced in 1997—due to the manifest indifference of the Howard government and the interests it represented. But while those opposite flail around, take the course of greatest expediency and bicker among themselves about the existence of human-induced climate change, we in South Australia are right behind the federal Labor government in its determination to get on with the job right across the country. The benefits are evident, and it is the generations to come who will reap those benefits if we act now.

The establishment of the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy, known as ACRE, is a crucial element in achieving our aim. As my colleague Senator Stephens said in this place late last year:

It is clear that there needs to be a more coordinated focus on renewable energy technology support. That is why the Government is establishing ACRE.

She went on to say that its:

… objectives will be to promote the development, commercialisation and deployment of renewable energy and enabling technologies and to improve their competitiveness.

With these objectives in mind, I now turn specifically to theAustralian Centre for Renewable Energy Bill 2009. The bill defines renewable energy technologies as ‘technologies where the energy is generated from natural resources and which can be constantly replenished.’ Renewable energy technologies include ‘enabling technologies’. Which are ‘those technologies that enable renewable energy technologies to function more effectively within an electricity grid.’ The bill establishes the board of ACRE and the position of its chief executive officer. The board will comprise a range of experts in research, intellectual property, venture capital, science and engineering, commercialisation and other areas whose tasks will be to advise the government about how to support key energy and enabling technologies right down the innovation continuum.

The board’s functions will also include devising and implementing strategies to promote and fund renewable energy technologies; the funding of selected projects and measures; the improvement of current program delivery and the management of new programs; venture capital funding; the targeting of priority areas for government support; and other functions as the minister directs in writing. Not only will the board assess projects and measures referred to it by the government for consideration it will also foster existing links with state and territory government agencies and the private sector and establish fresh links with these with the intention of devising new ways to stimulate investment in the area. A statutory advisory board, ACRE will provide independent advice and adhere to the standards of probity, ethics and governance which are so much a hallmark of the Rudd Labor government.

As I have said, the bill establishes the position of ACRE’s chief executive officer. This position will recruit the leadership team for the organisation. The chief executive officer will be a senior executive officer of the Department of Resources and Energy. The bill also covers matters including ACRE’s constitution, the appointment of board members, remuneration, declarations of conflict of interest, the term and termination of appointments and so forth as well as voting, the conduct of meetings and related matters. The attributes, structures and functions of the board will be capable of amendment or abolition only by the parliament, and ACRE will report annually to the minister.

In closing, I stress that is the Rudd Labor government that has demonstrated the vision our country needs right now to take advantage of our unparalleled renewable natural resources; the Rudd government that has established the $4.5 billion Clean Energy Initiative; the Rudd government that has enacted the renewable energy target legislation; and the Rudd government that will establish ACRE and through that body lead a more effective application of policy and foster the development of innovative renewable energy, with its enabling technologies, for the benefit of the environment, the economy and the community. For the future wellbeing of all Australians, I commend the bill and wish the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy every success.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank all senators who have contributed to the discussion on the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy Bill 2009, which establishes the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy as a key national body responsible for the delivery of renewable energy technology support. I acknowledge the bipartisan approach that the coalition has taken in respect of this bill. However, I would like to respond to Senator Minchin’s comments with regard to government support for the geothermal industry. I am advised that this government has provided the geothermal industry with direct support in excess of $200 million to accelerate the development and deployment in Australia of geothermal technologies. This funding contributes to a total investment in the sector of now in excess of $720 million. The support has been provided in a manner to give the industry the opportunity to prove its technological viability on a commercial scale. I believe this to be a major contribution to the diversity of energy supplies in this country.

As for Senator Milne’s comments in regard to the approach that the government is taking on the establishment of this new national body, I indicate it is a disappointment to the government that Senator Milne chose to delay the passage of this bill by refusing to grant non-controversial status to the legislation last year. It is a disappointment to the government that the Greens take a position of seeking to block government legislation that would actually improve the capacity of this country to deal with environmental challenges. We have seen that in regard to the CPRS legislation, where effectively the Greens have voted with the coalition to block that legislation. It is a disappointment to me that, in regard to these particular measures before us, the Greens are seeking to argue a tendentious political point, on the one hand saying they support renewable energy deployment while on the other seeking to place obstacles in the way of the government as it tries to see that that actually happens. I would like to deal with the specifics of Senator Milne’s amendments in the committee stage of the bill. I indicate to the Senate that the government will not be supporting those amendments. I understand that Senator Milne will be seeking to move them together to allow us to debate them in a cognate manner. I commend the bill to the chamber.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.