Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Hansard source

My question without notice is to Senator Abetz, the Minister representing the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources. Can the minister confirm that the Howard government has slashed renewable energy research programs, closing down the Energy Research and Development Corporation, the CRC for Renewable Energy and the Renewable Energy Commercialisation Program? Isn’t it a fact that there is now almost no federal funding for research into renewable energy technologies? Isn’t this why many world-leading renewable technologies that originated in Australia, like the evacuated tubes for solar hot water, solar thermal concentrators and silver cells for solar electricity, have been forced overseas? Why has the Howard government abandoned Australia’s world-leading research into renewable energy and forced our leading scientists to go overseas?