Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Make no mistake as to what this is about: this is about jobs for North Queensland. Any attempt to stop this feasibility study from going forward is another dagger in the heart of North Queensland.

It wasn't more than a month ago that I fronted up to a Great Barrier Reef inquiry because of the punitive regulations put on our farmers in the Great Barrier Reef basin. The Labor Party want to drive a dagger through the heart of the cattle and cane industries. If I were to play a word association game with the words 'cattle and cane' and say, 'Name a state,' what would you think of?

Government senators: Queensland!

You'd think of Queensland. Yet there is nothing that will stop the Labor Party from trying to destroy Queensland, and in particular North Queensland. North Queensland has so much potential. It has got rich land. We're going to build the Bradfield scheme if the Queensland LNP gets elected at the state election—we want to create jobs in North Queensland.

The other thing that really riles me, really grinds my gears, about the disallowance motion is the sheer hypocrisy. It's an election commitment that we want to honour because, as I mentioned before, we believe in democracy. We took this to the election. We gave the people a choice.

Government senators interjecting—

A mandate, that's right. We on this side of the chamber are the party who believe in choice, not like that side of the chamber: command and control. It's the hypocrisy. The fact is that there has been $10 billion put into the Clean Energy Finance Corporation fund—a $10 billion subsidy for renewables. Do we hear the other side of the chamber complain about that? No. That's about 4,000 times the amount of money that we want to put into a feasibility study in North Queensland. Where is the equity?

A government senator: Nowhere.

Nowhere! Of course, we always hear how solar is so much cheaper and renewables are now so much cheaper. Let me tell you this: if I look at the current prices, I see that they have been driven to zero in Queensland. That is totally unsustainable. Do you know why we have such a distorted energy market? Because of the Renewable Energy Target. I stood here six months ago and argued for setting prices for milk. I believe in a fair and level playing field and I'll do everything I can for our dairy farmers, but one thing I will never do is set output prices. I'll always level the playing field on the way in, but we always have to give people the opportunity to reach their potential. But we don't have a coal target. The reason why energy prices have been pushed up—until recently, when energy prices came down in the last three quarters thanks to the magnificent work of our energy minister, Angus Taylor, who, in spite of the unfounded allegations often made in this chamber, has done an outstanding job in driving prices down—is the Renewable Energy Target, which mandates that 33 terawatts of energy has to come from renewable energy. That is price-setting; that is communism. That's why those guys on the other side love price-setting—it's pure communism at its best.

Let's talk about the true cost of renewables. They never want to talk about the hidden costs of renewables. Sure, it might be free sunlight in the middle of the day, but guess what? You've got to transport that energy. This one is a real doozy; it came out a couple of weeks ago. To get renewable energy to make up 90 per cent of the grid, do you know how much money they have to spend to build all the transmission lines?

Government senators: How much?

A hundred billion dollars. Do they count the cost of transmission when they talk about the price of renewable energy? I don't think so. Let's talk about storage. I heard Senator Waters last night: she wants to power manufacturing with renewable energy.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Rennick, it now being 12.45, we're moving to non-controversial government business.