Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence Industry and Support) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise with great concern about the news that's been emerging today about proposals to support or, indeed, launch new coal-fired power stations at the expense of the public taxpayer. This is deeply disturbing. I asked a question in here a few weeks ago of the Prime Minister about comments that were made by the CEO and the chief operating officer of Snowy Hydro that said that not only was there nothing to support in the marketplace the erection of a new coal-fired power station but that any attempt to do so would make the viability of Snowy 2.0 deeply questionable. In fact, 'unviable' was the word the chief operating officer used. This is a government who's photobombed the Snowy 2.0 project and sung its praises but are the worst enemy of the Snowy 2.0 project.

Today, of course, we've also had reports from IBISWorld, which is a global analysis firm, saying that even the NEG that's being bandied around at the moment would not support global investment in Australia or investment of any kind in our energy sector and would, in fact, continue to undermine it because of the lack of credibility of this government on issues to do with climate change and renewable energy. This government needs to take responsibility for future generations and for our business community and our consumers, get its act together on renewable energy and climate change, and do it now before it's too late.