Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

My first question to the minister is: can you come and deliver that speech in my electorate, because my vote will go up if he does that time and time again. The minister doesn't come to Macnamara often. He's welcome to, as much as he wants. Minister, you are more than welcome in my electorate any time you want, mate, any time. But, the real question I have for the minister—he's very confident, this minister, very self-assured and not burdened by self-doubt—is: after all of your time in government, where is your national energy policy? Where is your policy—just one policy!—that will actually set Australia up into the future, that will actually set the framework for Australia's energy market going into the future? There isn't one. They had one. They had an energy policy. It was the NEG. We all remember the NEG, but that NEG went the way of Malcolm Turnbull. They got rid of him, just like they got rid of the NEG.

One thing this government and minister is good at doing is just picking and choosing projects not based on low-emission technology or based on the finances of this particular project but just based on their own ideological war on renewables. The first project that I'd mention is the $4 million they spent on the Collinsville coal fired power station feasibility study—$4 million of taxpayer funds that they spent—and that is not going to happen, and this minister knows it. He knows that they cannot justify building that coal fired power station. They haven't told the people of Collinsville. They're not honest about it with the people of Collinsville. They're happy for this to drag on, but they know that if they were to built this Collinsville coal fired power station then the federal government would be up for billions and billions of dollars in guarantees. But, instead, what's this minister willing to do? Instead of doing the hard work and creating a national energy policy or a framework that creates investment into the renewable energy sector and creates investment to set up our grid, all they are willing to do is throw away $4 million of taxpayer funds just to play a bit of politics with a community that they know is never ever going to have the Collinsville coal fired power station built under this government. They know it.

The member for Dawson has come into the chamber. Obviously they haven't told him, but the minister knows that there is no chance that that Collinsville coal fired power station is going to be built.

Mr Christensen interjecting—

As I said, the minister's welcome in my electorate. It will sink his vote very, very quickly every time he visits my electorate.

The other question that I had for the minister is: where is the Clean Energy Finance Corporation Bill? What happened to that bill? That was a piece of legislation where we were meant to see investment in clean energy in this country, and they came with a whole range of reforms. They wanted to take the clean energy out of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. They wanted to remove the standards which the projects were held to. They wanted to be able to invest in lower-return projects—the great Liberal Party economic managers wanting to invest in projects that don't have a good return on investment! Instead, what happened? The member for New England came into the House of Representatives, introduced a series of amendments and the bill has just disappeared. It has disappeared off the shelf. The great reform of this minister has completely disappeared. I guess the member for New England is credited for stopping the bill. It was a terrible bill. I am glad that the bill hasn't seen the light of day, but where is that bill, Minister? We haven't seen it.

I have another question for the minister. In hearings that we had with the department, it was clear that there was no modelling done by this government on how long it's going to take for Australia to get to net zero emissions by 2050. We know that they aren't commissioning that work, because they're not interested in getting to that target. They don't have a commitment to get to net zero like every state and territory, like all of our comparable countries or like our friends and allies around the region. This government is being left in the past, and is stuck in the past, through ideological wars, so why is there no modelling on how we can get to net zero by 2050? The answer lies in the fact that this government doesn't want to get there. They're happy being stuck in the past, and Australians are going to pay the price for it.

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