Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

With respect to the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, I am advised that the first-round call for applications closed on 31 March 2006, with 30 applicants submitting proposals for a diverse range of low-emission technology projects worth more than $10 billion. That very good response demonstrates that industry is actively investigating low-emission technologies for the future. Eligible applications were considered by an expert panel, and six grants have been announced so far: $50 million to International Power for its ‘Hazelwood 2030 A Clean Coal Future’ project; up to $75 million to Solar Systems Australia for its ‘Large Scale Solar Concentrator’ project; $75 million to Fairview Power for its ‘Zero Carbon from Coal Seams’ project; $50 million to CS Energy for its ‘Callide A Oxy-fuel Demonstration Project’; $60 million to Chevron for its Gorgon CO Injection Project’; and $100 million to HRL for its ‘Integrated Drying and Gasification Combined Cycle’ project.

Combined, these projects provide for a very strong low-emissions technology portfolio; brown coal, black coal, natural gas and renewable energy are all represented in the grants announced so far. Five of the projects demonstrate pathways to carbon dioxide capture and storage, which positions Australian R&D at the forefront of international efforts to advance what is a very promising abatement activity.

The Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund is on track to deliver very significant low-emissions technologies for Australia. But there is a big difference between the Labor Party and the Liberal Party. We actually take great care with the expenditure of taxpayers’ money. All this money comes from Australian taxpayers. We are not just going to splash it around like the Labor Party would; we want to make sure that all these projects stack up. We want to assess properly every one of these projects to make sure that they warrant the investment of taxpayers’ money. The Labor Party and the Greens just think money grows on trees; we know that. We know this is taxpayers’ money. We are going to make sure all of these projects are properly assessed, that they stack up, that they are fair dinkum and that they have some prospect of success before we advance the money.

The grants have been announced and applied and we look forward to these projects proceeding. That is against the backdrop of some $2 billion of investment of taxpayers’ money in greenhouse gas emission abatement programs over our 10 years. We take the issue of climate change seriously, but we do so against the backdrop of this country being responsible for something less than 1½ per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. We are not so stupid to think that we can just act unilaterally and suddenly change the climate of the globe, which seems to be the basis and the premise on which the Labor Party and the Greens operate. They think we can just unilaterally announce we are going to cut our emissions by 60 per cent in this case, bidded up to 80 per cent by the clowns in the corner, and that will save the global climate. What absolute nonsense. They have no idea how they are going to achieve such cuts, they have no idea of the impact on the Australian economy and they have no idea of what the impact would be on global emissions. We are approaching this issue with due responsibility, as custodians of taxpayers’ money, to invest it wisely in projects that we believe will realise low emissions.