Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I will speak just very briefly on this. There are two issues of risk and principles. When the clean energy package was agreed to, those people who wanted to come and invest in Australia's clean energy future and begin to build the wind farms and solar plants and investigate solar thermal and geothermal took heart from the package. One of the reasons they took heart from the package was that it said around 2,000 megawatts of coal fired power, the equivalent of Hazelwood plus a bit, would be closed, making space for them in the market. Many of them began to see a future in Australia and, in particular, in Victoria for clean and renewable energy.

Not only that but many people in the Latrobe Valley who I have spoken to have said: 'Now we understand where we're going. There is a prospect that some of these stations will be closed and we can begin now to transition out.' The only uncertainty and risk that has been brought in has been of Labor's own making, because it was Labor who decided not to proceed with something it said it was going to do, which is close these coal fired power stations.

On the question of principle, we would not be here making this amendment if Labor had stuck to the agreement and we had seen power stations like Hazelwood close. We would quite happily have said, 'We do not agree with all the other aspects of it, and perhaps there is some overgenerous compensation, but that is the price we pay because there are some things in it that are good for clean and renewable energy.' We wanted to be in a position where there was an orderly replacement of some of the dirtiest coal fired power stations with clean renewable energy. Labor made the first move and pulled out a key plank of the package, and we are responding in what we think is a very reasonable and measured way to restore the integrity of the package.

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