Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

We heard the envy in the voice of the member for Bowman as he talked about the ministerial career of the member for Port Adelaide. He could not disguise that envy. It gives me great pleasure to rise to speak on the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Repeal) Bill 2014, and to follow our shadow minister for the environment. My colleague the member for Charlton said some very good things and I was pleased to go before the member for Melbourne.

We all have one thing in common: we join with the vast majority of Australian people who support renewable energy and support the economic and environmental benefits that flow from investment in renewable energy in Australia.

There are many ways that the Abbott government is taking Australia backwards, whether it is in higher education funding, schools funding or international profit shifting—all of those important issues. But one of the starkest examples of the Abbott government taking Australia backwards is when it comes to renewable energy in this country. The whole world is looking for new ways to power its economies. People in smart countries through Europe, Asia and every continent are trying to work out how to power their economy and how to change their energy mix to get a bigger proportion of renewable energy so they are less reliant on fossil fuels. Some people will dispute the degree of fossil fuels versus renewable energy, but all the smart countries are working out ways to increase the renewable energy component of that mix. Unfortunately, in Australia we are seeing our government heading in the wrong direction again.

I want to talk briefly about an example in my electorate and specifically about solar energy. There is a myth around, when it comes to renewable energy, that it is just the concern of the inner city or the concern of a certain part of the national political and economic debate and there is only a cluster of people around Sydney and Melbourne that care about renewable energy. I know that in my own electorate in the outer suburbs of Brisbane—the northern suburbs of Logan City—people, often people of modest means, are very keen to take up renewable energy opportunities. I had a fantastic meeting last month with the Australian Solar Council. They gave me some really encouraging statistics about my own electorate of Rankin. It is not the wealthiest electorate in the country. It has its challenges in socioeconomic terms. It was encouraging to see that more than 30,000 households in Rankin—42 per cent of the total households in my electorate—have installed solar technology. That is incredible when you consider that the national average for take-up is 22 per cent, so my electorate of Rankin is almost double the national average. That shows how many people in my community care about future generations.

It was also encouraging in the meeting with the Solar Council to have a young fellow, Matthew Butler, from Calamvale Community College join me. He was doing work experience in my office at the time. It did give us a sense and a focus that a lot of what we are doing in the renewable energy space is about ensuring that when Matthew is my age, in 20 or 25 years, the economy he lives in and the country he lives in is increasingly powered by renewable energy. I am proud that my community has embraced solar energy technology. Forty-two per cent of families in Rankin have made that investment and that eclipses the take-up rates in some of the other areas. For example, the take-up in Warringah is about six per cent and the take-up in North Sydney is about four per cent. It shows you that it is clearly not about the money and it is not only the concern of the wealthier parts of the country. I think the people in my community are driven by a better life for their kids. They also know that it is important that as a nation we start to move away from fossil fuels.

Another important issue that gets lost in the debate is that, in the medium and long-term, renewable energy drives down power bills. I think what people are doing in my electorate is that they are making that investment. They understand that they get less bill uncertainty. They know they will have lower bills when they invest in this way. On average, solar cells deliver a return on their investment five to seven years after installation, so people are being very wise with their limited funds to invest in solar cells.

There are a lot of myths about solar power being spread by the enemies of climate science. It is widely claimed that solar cells are driving up the price of power for everyone. The greatest driver of power prices is investment to upgrade and develop the network. Fifteen years of data from the Australian Energy Regulator shows that peak demand occurs in the heat of summer when families and businesses have the greatest demand for air conditioning, and solar power cells takes some of the burden off that network during these times and help lower the peak demand capacity required for the network. The downward trend of peak demand experienced by the market corresponds well with the increased prevalence of solar PV technology. This means that solar power can help lower the price of electricity for the average consumer, which is true even after the costs of feed-in tariffs are taken into account.

I could go on and on about solar energy. I am a big believer, as are my colleagues on this side of the House. The point I am trying to make is that with all these good things going on in renewable energy, whether it is solar in my electorate or right around the country, it does beggar belief that this government want to wind back investment in renewable energy. They want to break the promises they made to the Australian people almost a year ago on their commitment to solar energy and renewable energy. They were pretending that they were not a threat to all of these jobs and all of these advantages. Of course, as with a lot of other things, what they promise before an election and what they do afterwards are very, very different things.

It is not only the economics of households that matter when we talk about renewable energy, as good as they are, but also the economics of nations. The renewable energy sector remains globally one of the fastest growing industries in the world and by far the fastest growing energy sector. The International Renewable Energy Agency's annual review into renewable energy and jobs found that the sector is responsible for almost 6.5 million jobs annually, and there are not a lot of jobs going around the global economy at the moment. Solar PV is the largest contributor to these jobs. According to the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the installed global renewables capacity nearly doubled between 2000 and 2012, and over the last three years the global solar PV industry also doubled in capacity. So there is huge momentum behind solar energy and solar technology as part of the broader gains being made in renewable energy more broadly.

Some of the breakthroughs required to make solar energy more competitive in Australia have been achieved through the work of ARENA and its predecessors. Others have mentioned that ARENA's role is to fund renewable energy projects, support research and development activities and support activities to capture and share knowledge. ARENA is currently funding 190 projects across Australia, across the whole mix—solar, bioenergy, ocean, geothermal and hybrid power technology. For every $1 that ARENA invests, there is more than $1.80 co-invested by industry and business. That is why ARENA does act as a force multiplier for investment in renewable energy technology. And it is not just a driver of innovation, as important as that is. It is also an important driver of employment.

It is estimated that more than 20,000 people are employed in a variety of roles across the renewable energy sector in Australia. We had reports from Professor Andrew Blakers, the director of the ANU's Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems, that the abolition of ARENA could cost thousands of jobs, with these jobs concentrated in rural areas.

It is for these reasons that the opposition will be opposing this legislation—and we have moved an amendment to it—to repeal the Australian Renewable Energy Agency Act. We believe in the science; they do not. We believe in the need for action when it comes to climate change; they do not. We believe in supporting renewable energy, and, unfortunately, they do not.

This attack on ARENA is one part of the suite of attacks that that side of the House is making on the renewable energy sector and in the area of the environment and the economy and climate change. In particular, we have seen lots of reports this week about what the Prime Minister wants to do to the renewable energy target—again, contrary to what was promised before the election. When the RET was introduced by the Howard government in 2001 it had, and ever since then it has had, bipartisan support—until now. We improved the RET. But one of the first acts of this government, unfortunately, was to appoint Mr Warburton—and we all know what he thinks about the RET. The Prime Minister knew when he appointed him, and the Prime Minister is getting the result that he paid for. The Prime Minister has said that he does not want to pre-empt Mr Warburton's report. Well, he has been pre-empting it, in The Australian Financial Review and other places, so we can see what the government intends to do to the RET.

On top of the attacks on the renewable energy target and ARENA, there is a whole range of other attacks that the government is making in this space. Its attack on the Clean Energy Finance Corporation is another.

The government's CEFC abolition bill is sitting on the forward program to be debated in the coming weeks. I have spoken in this place previously about the virtues of this organisation. I worked on it in a former role. I am very proud of the CEFC—I think it is an incredible initiative—and of what it does to catalyse investment in the renewable energy sector in Australia and to create jobs.

The CEFC was set up to encourage investment in clean energy technology. Over the first year of its existence alone, through matching private sector funds of $2.90 for each dollar of CEFC investment, the corporation has catalysed over $1½ billion in non-CEFC private capital investment in projects to deploy renewables and to improve energy efficiency.

The CEFC has performed so effectively that it has been making the government money. The average return on the CEFC investment has been 7.33 per cent, which is pretty tidy when you look at some of the other investment opportunities that are around. Eleven projects in the first year of the corporation's operation achieved a yield above that of the government's five-year bond rate. The direct effect of scrapping this corporation and this program, according to the explanatory memorandum, is an $83 million hit to the underlying cash balance over the forward estimates.

But it goes further than this. A committee inquiry report released yesterday said that abolishing the CEFC would cause an annual fiscal balance loss of between $125 million and $186 million per annum once the corporation reaches an investment base of $5 billion. That is a lot of money for the government to waste. They have got this so-called budget emergency, and yet they are prepared to see some serious dollars go down the drain by pursuing this ideological vendetta against renewable energy.

These attacks on clean energy are particularly bad on top of the government's refusal to accept the market based solution to climate change. We have debated this issue at length over many years, and I have made my contribution to that debate each time.

But I think it is worth noting that we have been, since 17 July this year, the first country in the world to go backwards on climate change—to take action and then to walk it back. I think the glee with which members on the benches opposite celebrated this environmental and economic vandalism was a really shocking image, and I think it will be an image that will come back to haunt them in the years ahead.

The bottom line of this entire discussion is that this government and its Prime Minister simply do not believe in the science or the economics of climate change.

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