Colin Boyce (Flynn, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I rise to support the Repeal Net Zero Bill 2025, presented by my colleague the member for New England at the last sitting. Unfortunately, this bill has revolved around an argument that if you don't believe in net zero, you don't believe in climate change. I want to put that to bed right now. Climate change is real and is happening right now. Climate change is variable; the earth's geological history tells us that. The earth's climate has been changing ever since the earth began on Thursday afternoon 4.54 billion years ago. So this debate is not about whether you believe in climate change. This is about the economic cost of getting to a position of net zero by 2050.

We know the government has implemented emissions targets—43 per cent by 2030 and 82 per cent renewable energy by 2030—and my colleagues and I want to know how much this will cost in terms of economics to the Australian people. How much will it affect their futures and their prosperity? The Institute of Public Affairs issued a report recently that said that the Central Queensland federal electorate of Flynn, which I represent, will be the most affected. There are upwards of 16,000 jobs at risk in the mining and resource sector, the agricultural sector, the transport sector and the heavy industries sector, particularly, if we continue to go down this road of net zero.

In the electorate of Flynn, there are 90 projects—wind turbines, solar panels, transmission lines, batteries and all of the associated things that are happening. There's a problem there in terms of economics because, while many of these projects have got their environmental approvals—or, if they haven't, they're in the process of doing that—most of them do not have financial closure. There are a couple of reasons for that. One of them is that the proponents cannot guarantee a minimum net return for the people who are investing. For example, if there's a billion-dollar project—and there are plenty of them—the investors are looking for something like a 10 per cent net return per year. Ten per cent of a billion dollars is $100 million a year, and the problem for the proponents and for the government is that they cannot guarantee that return. The reason for that is that the weather is variable. You cannot guarantee electricity generation through wind turbines and solar panels, because sometimes the wind doesn't blow and sometimes the sun doesn't shine. So they've got a problem.

The way the government has gone about approaching that problem is that they've invented a thing called the Capacity Investment Scheme. Most people have got no idea what it means. In a nutshell, the Capacity Investment Scheme asks the Australian taxpayer to underwrite the minimum profitability of these projects, whether they produce energy or not. In my quest to find out how much this will cost the Australian economy, I've engaged the Parliamentary Library. They have written an extensive brief for me and done a wonderful job, and here it is. Some of the questions I asked them were: What are the cost and budget implications? What is the total estimated cost of the scheme? How will it be funded? What is shown in forward estimates? Are there any off-balance-sheet liabilities and contingency guarantees? The Parliamentary Library answered those questions as best they could, and I will quote from what they've said: 'The government's maximum liability—that is, the expected cost of the CIS and estimated payments under the CISAs—is classified in the budget and not for publication due to commercial sensitivities.' There is no answer; the government will not tell us what they are committing the Australian public and, indeed, the taxpayer to. How much will it cost to actually implement this Capacity Investment Scheme?

Further to that, one of the questions I asked the Parliamentary Library was who was eligible for this—what projects are eligible and so forth. I've learnt that battery projects are now eligible under the CIS.

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