Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I would again note that this is still not my first speech. This annual report of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency for 2016-17 demonstrates—and this flows on well from the debate we've just had about—the crucial role renewable energy plays not just in generating clean energy and reducing carbon emissions but in generating significant numbers of jobs for Queenslanders and for other people around the country and also in driving down electricity prices. That was the debate we've just had, which concluded a few minutes ago. Purely in one year, as this report shows, ARENA's, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency's, projects are now capable of generating 263 megawatts of electricity—enough to power a city bigger than Newcastle in New South Wales.

It does need to be stated time after time that the Australian Renewable Energy Agency is very much an achievement and initiative of the Australian Greens. It would not exist without the work of the Greens in conjunction with the former Labor government.

Let us not forget: we were speaking before about the economic illiteracy of the coalition under Mr Abbott and under Campbell Newman and the LNP government in Queensland. They did everything they could to destroy the renewable energy industry and to destroy all of the jobs and all of the investment that goes with it—to destroy all of the opportunities to drive down electricity prices. But, despite those attempts to deliberately sabotage the renewable energy industry on behalf of their corporate donors, which influence so much of the policies of the two establishment parties, it is a simple fact now that the decarbonisation of our economy, the decarbonisation represented by renewable energy and the cheaper energy prices that are driven by renewable energy, are all driven by economic factors now, regardless of the environmental benefits that go along with them.

Let's also not forget that—along with the cheaper electricity prices, extra jobs and carbon reductions that are proactively created by the Greens-initiated Renewable Energy Agency—we also have the jobs protected and preserved. Every time we hear about new coal-fired power stations in Queensland or digging up massive new coalmines and massively increasing carbon emissions, what we're not hearing about from those that keep pushing those things, on behalf of their corporate donors, are the tens of thousands of jobs in Queensland and elsewhere around this country that will be lost as we continue to have the massive environmental and social harms caused by those projects. There are 70,000 jobs, for example, that rely on a healthy Great Barrier Reef. More and more of those are put at risk from the LNP governments and those that continue to push the agenda of the coal lobby because of those donations. Those jobs existing now that are so crucial to regional economies are being put at risk, so it is worthwhile to have a look at these annual reports and at an agency like the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, because it details in very simple language the very significant number of projects that are already being rolled out. It demonstrates just how many jobs are being put at risk by this coalition government. Because of its incoherent energy policy there is an inability to enable any certainty for anybody wanting to invest down the track.

In contrast, the Greens approach, which we are reinforcing at the state election in Queensland—prepolling in which started today, so people are voting from today in the Queensland state election—is not just about the jobs that go with it but about the cheaper prices. I mentioned earlier the massive profits that electricity retailers are currently generating in Queensland. Let's not forget that, alongside that, at the very same time in Queensland alone, over 21,000 Queensland households have had their power cut off because they couldn't afford to pay their bills. We have people who cannot afford to put food on the table. They have to choose between food and housing prices and electricity prices. That's why an agency like the Renewable Energy Agency is so important, why it has to continue to be supported and why ideologically motivated attempts to tear it down—attempts motivated by massive donations from the resources sector—continue to be resisted. The Greens will continue to resist them and, if we succeed in getting people elected to the state parliament at the next election, we will promote that agenda at the state level as well. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.