Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Section 7 of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Implementing the Technology Investment Roadmap) Regulations 2021 should be disallowed. There is no doubt that that is what should happen today. I will pick up on the last words of the Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction. He talked about protecting the mining industry. With respect, the important thing is protecting people and communities, not protecting industries. That is a very important distinction that needs to be made, because the industries themselves do change over time. We've seen that throughout history through the various stages of modernisation of industrialisation. Industries change. What is important is having a plan for people and their communities. That is where we in this place are absolutely falling short.

We are here to discuss a regulation that will categorically impact the mandate of ARENA and really absolutely corrupt it. It is really important for the Australian people to be clear about just what ARENA does. Since being created in 2012 ARENA has invested more than $1.77 billion in more than 600 renewable energy projects. The boon to the Australian economy and the Australian people has been a total project value of some $7.75 billion. It has been the most effective vehicle by which we have been able to support the development of technologies.

The coalition government is incredibly fond of talking about its focus on technologies in how it will achieve emissions reductions. Then why is it corrupting the very body that is achieving the results it is trying to take credit for? The reality is that ARENA is there to support renewable energy, not to put a costume on extending the life of fossil fuels.

We are on the eve of a major global disruption. There's no doubt about it—the world is engaged in a transition, and that is accelerating. We know that the three main sectors—energy, transport and food—are absolutely moving fast. That disruption and transition is accelerating at a pace. We know from the history of every other industrialisation age that that occurs at such a pace that all of a sudden people are left behind if you don't have a clear transition plan on how to manage that changeover.

What's really amazing is the desperation of the government to extend the life of fossil fuels. They go so far as to put forward an instrument that is highly likely to be illegal. It really beggars belief that they are at that level of desperation. A government should never take this course knowingly, and yet the advice is clear that it is highly questionable whether this is a legal path. It really speaks to the dysfunction and desperation within the government. On the one hand they say that they are acting on climate change and reducing emissions but on the other they are extending the life of fossil fuels—of coal and gas.

We need to explain what this regulation is really trying to do. It is essentially saying that carbon capture and storage should be funded under ARENA, because it essentially allows the extension of the use of the fossil fuels of coal and gas. Many people out there are confused and don't understand where the connection is. The best analogy I can give is that it is like a magic pill—we can keep emitting and burning fossil fuels and somehow magically we can offset that with carbon capture and storage. It hasn't worked. We have already invested billions of public funds into this, and it simply does not deliver. If this was a solution it would have already been embraced by the rest of the world, and it has not been. Australia is like the dinosaur of the world, trying to hang onto some magic solution, a unicorn that just doesn't exist. It won't happen.

The other reason the government is using this is that it wants to somehow 'greenwash' blue hydrogen. The public has heard a lot about hydrogen being a very viable energy source to replace coal and gas. But the real question is, which kind of hydrogen? We can have green hydrogen, made from renewables, which has lower emissions and which will have I think a very successful and very productive international market and really could set Australia up to be a renewable energy superpower of the future from an exports point of view. Or we can have blue hydrogen, which is made from burning gas, which is high in emissions and is not attractive to the international market.

The only way you can greenwash that blue hydrogen is to put it with carbon capture and storage and try to somehow, through an accounting trick, say that it is essentially not adding emissions to our global carbon budget. It is all greenwashing. At the end of the day, the solution is clear: we actually need to do the hard work. We need to reduce emissions. There's no accounting trick, no spin, no greenwash that's going to change that fact. We have already used up 85 per cent of global carbon budgets. We must—with urgency, in the next decade—dramatically reduce our emissions. There's no simpler truth that we have to focus on.

This regulation has already been disallowed in the Senate, and it's again in this place. I call on many members in this place, in particular those on the coalition. Week after week I read their op-eds in the papers, telling me and the people in their electorates how concerned they are about global warming, about rising emissions and about how we need to commit to net zero by 2050. But when it really comes down to it, what are their actions? What do they actually deliver for their electorates? When it comes time to vote in this place, that is your moment of reckoning, that is when your electorate knows whether it is just greenwashing or whether you truly believe that you have a responsibility to future generations to meaningfully reduce emissions. It really is time to call 'enough' on the greenwash, on the hesitation.

The minister mentioned organisations that are in support of this, but the irony is that those very same organisations support the implementation of the climate change bill. They want a legally binding framework so we can have a clear audit process on our emissions reduction in Australia. We can't have this system where emissions go up in one sector and we try to show that emissions are going down in another, and we never have an audit process to bring it all to account. We need to balance the books. We are in the red when it comes to emissions in Australia. I know that the coalition are fond of balancing the books. Well, it's well past time for us to balance the books when it comes to emissions.

All those organisations strongly support the implementation of a legally binding long-term commitment and a clear framework on how to get there. So I would urge the government and the minister to focus on the solutions that have support, to focus on the solutions that can bring us all together towards a low-emissions future. There is huge opportunity. The Australian people know there is huge opportunity for us to do that. It's time to put an end to the past, talking about the 2019 election commitments. Seriously, who cares? Since then we have had bushfires ravage our coast. We have had the world's leaders, our international partners and world economies all pivot towards what needs to be done. We have had a clear and present warning from the IPCC about where we are heading. Make no mistake, we are heading to 1.5 degrees by the 2030s. We have a clear message from the International Energy Agency saying that we must stop—no new coal and gas. We must stop. So, seriously, who cares what you promised in 2019? In 2019, no-one promised we were going to lock Australia down because a COVID pandemic was coming, yet the government found the mandate to act on the science—to act on the facts present on the day and take the necessary action. So I call on the government: the facts as we know them now are that we urgently need to decarbonise. It's time to do it. This regulation should be disallowed.

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