Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to make some comments in relation to, in particular, my home state of Tasmania and the renewable energy target changes that are being proposed in this legislation. It is interesting that Tasmania is 86 per cent generated, in terms of its hydro and other clean energy sources. I know South Australia is close to catching up, but we have had a dominant position in the market in generating clean energy, and that is why the clean energy package that both Labor and the Greens delivered—obviously the position of the Greens in the balance of power helped get us a price on carbon—has been a boon for Tasmania. Because we generate clean power and those businesses did not pay a carbon price, they got to keep the increased margins when they sold into the National Electricity Market. The money that has been generated by clean energy in Tasmania has been essential to providing services to schools, to paying for our healthcare workers and nurses, and for our essential services. The dividend paid last year from Hydro Tasmania to the Tasmanian government was $260 million, from the price on carbon. There was more money prior to that and hundreds of millions of dollars more were forecast. That is gone.

Senator Lambie talked about the job-destroying, wealth-destroying Greens in her previous speech. I want to highlight that she voted against the carbon price. She voted for its removal and the damage that has done to Tasmania. Not only did it directly take revenue out of the coffers of our Treasury, where it is most needed. It also put sovereign risk on the table. It also introduced significant risk into future expansion plans for Hydro Tasmania. The only thing Hydro Tasmania has left going for it is the renewable energy target, which she is also going to attempt to dismantle. Hydro Tasmania has said they could cope with the loss of the carbon price, because that really was something that was flowing straight to the government and the people of Tasmania, but the renewable energy target was essential for the future.

I want to read some job statistics, because it seems that Senator Lambie has been listening to the big dirty polluters in Tasmania. I have been to visit them. For example, I spent a day at Comalco in Bell Bay. I met the management and the workers and I had a very enjoyable day. We agreed to disagree on many things, but I listened to what they had to say and they listened to what I had to say. It is clear to me that they are doing their job. They are trying to make more money for their shareholders. They are trying to get the lowest price possible for the power and electricity they use in their operations, as they always have, and they continue to put pressure on the Tasmanian government and the federal government to get as many subsidies as possible. This is what big business does to maximise payments to its shareholders. Their objective is clear and my objective was clear. I said that all polluters should pay for their pollution.

That is the fundamental principle that my party stands for: if you pollute, you pay. Someone has to pay for the externality that is produced by polluters such as Comalco. If they do not, if they keep getting out of things like renewable energy target commitments and carbon prices—which they would never have paid anyway—then the Australian taxpayer has to foot the bill, because someone has to pay for this pollution if we are going to actually do something about climate change.

I went and visited Comalco. I have seen their website and their lobby group's propaganda—and that is what it is. It is propaganda. It has been thoroughly debunked by people such as the Australia Institute. But Senator Lambie stood in here today and regurgitated it, ad nauseam, straight from the website of the biggest polluters in Tasmania, who, incidentally, are among the biggest, wealthiest companies in the world, yet they do not want to pay a measly fee for their pollution. What they do is put pressure on people like Senator Lambie, saying: 'Help us. We're not wealthy enough. We're not rich enough. We can't afford to pay for our carbon pollution.' Well, they can. We boiled it down in our discussion with Comalco management. I asked, 'Why should you get out of paying for your pollution,' they said, 'Because we employ people.' I said, 'If we adopted that logic, we would be back to the days of the Industrial Revolution,' which, interestingly, Senator Lambie talked about. We would be back to the days of the Industrial Revolution, when everybody dumped their crap in the river and polluted the atmosphere. We have come a long way since then. Everyone needs to pay for their pollution.

Let us talk about pitting jobs against jobs, employment against employment, because that is exactly what Senator Lambie is doing. She is, apparently, putting the jobs and the security of jobs in the old, dirty industries, like Comalco's, ahead of the jobs of workers in the renewable energy sector. In fact, in the electricity sector, modelling by several organisations forecast continued growth in renewable energy, in clean technology, over the coming decades, right around the country. Austrade believes current renewable energy targets in combination with other elements of the clean energy package which have now been removed—including a price on carbon—would have delivered $20 billion of investment in renewable energy. The Australian CleanTech Review 2013 estimated that at least 53,000 Australians were working in the renewable energy sector, with strong growth since 2009.

In Tasmania, where 86 per cent of its renewable energy is generated from sources such as hydro, the Clean Energy Council's own report in 2010 forecast the number of renewable energy jobs in Tasmania to grow from 737 in 2010 to approximately 3,007 by 2020, in five years time. The Climate Institute are a little bit more conservative, but they predicted the creation of 1,329 new jobs in renewable energy in Tasmania in the next 15 years. These are new jobs. These are jobs being driven by innovation, by investment in technology. These are the kinds of jobs in which my state can be a world leader. We are already a world leader in so many areas around clean energy. This is a competitive advantage for Tasmania, and this is something the Greens delivered to the state of Tasmania that is seldom acknowledged by people like Senator Lambie in their constant rhetoric about the Greens not having any ideas. Well, guess what? We delivered a windfall to our state. We delivered jobs. We delivered a new direction in an area in which Tasmania could have a competitive advantage.

I recently drove a Tesla. The people who were showing me the car told me that this kind of electric car is going to become affordable in the next five or 10 years. It is expensive now, but they estimated that these kinds of cars would have a price of around $22,000 or $23,000 in the next five years. For those of you who are not aware of this, they have also brought in new battery technology, around $3½ thousand for households, that means you can generate your own electricity and store it. You can store it. You can alternate consumption and flows at different times of the day with other simple technology. You can charge your car. You can even use the battery charge in your car to recharge your house. This is a disruptive technology. In 10 to 20 years time, it is possible that grids could be redundant, in many senses. We are still going to need grids; they are still going to be very useful tools for us, especially for large-scale renewable energy generation. But do not underestimate the disruption that new technology is bringing not just to the actual processes and utilities of electricity but also to the consumption habits of those who use electricity.

It is an economic pipedream, it is a false hope and, to many in Tasmania who care about the forests and our ecosystems, it is a phantom menace to hold out the idea that burning logs or biomass, forest furnaces, will somehow provide thousands of new jobs in the Tasmanian forestry industry. We already have trouble selling our clean energy into the National Electricity Market. There has been significant pressure to get a second Basslink cable to provide more capacity. The big, threatening bullies, the big polluters, are always talking about leaving if they do not get what they want. The risk of huge oversupplies of clean energy in Tasmania are very real. But, suddenly, people like Senator Lambie are once again swallowing hook, line, and sinker the propaganda of the forestry industry, when she comes in here and says we are going to create thousands of new jobs by burning native forests in forest furnaces. Who is going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in these plants when the world is already facing and talking about disruptive technologies that could make large-scale baseload electricity generation redundant?

Those technologies are what we are looking at, and they are exactly the kinds of things that would be useful in Tasmania in terms of people being able to go off-grid if they wanted to; generate their own power and store it; and have cheap, affordable vehicles to drive that do not rely on burning any dirty fossil fuel, be it wood, be it coal, be it gas or other hydrocarbons. This is the future. This is the future we are facing. In dealing here with the RET, I have heard very few people discuss where we are going with technology, even though technology does not stand still. It is academic, really, for forest furnaces to be included in the renewable energy target.

I wanted to make it very clear here today that, for my home state of Tasmania and right across the country, especially in states like South Australia that are really catching up to Tassie in terms of their power generation in a whole new suite of exciting battery technologies, as well as solar thermal plants, this is the future

This creates new jobs. For those in areas like the forestry industry who may have lost their jobs, this is where we will find the new jobs. We need to transition our economy. We need to do it because we actually need to take serious action on climate change. It is no good mucking around with targets. Even the targets we have in place now are not enough to make an impact. In that sense, Senator Lambie's cynicism about man-made climate change has an element of truth to it, if we do not take strong action, if everyone in here is thinking about weakening renewable energy targets.

We have already pulled the rug on a pricing mechanism that helped us reduce emissions, being the clean energy price, we are trying to reduce funding to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation that is making a $25 million profit for the Australian taxpayer and financing a whole range of new technologies, including battery technology, as we are providing finance packages for Australians to go off grid. Why wouldn't you generate your own power from the sun or from wind and then store it at home and charge your car? Tesla goes up to 600 kilometres depending on the type of typography you are in—around 400 is the average. That is not bad for an electric car. You can get home and recharge your batteries from stuff that you have generated for free while you have been away at work during the day. This is the future. We have to get real about this and we have to think. With large projects like Woolnorth in the north of Tasmania and the new developments that are occurring in wind power are also very important to Hydro Tasmania, as are combinations of wind, solar and even tidal energy in places like Flinders Island, replacing the diesel subsidies in place for those couple of islands in Tasmania.

Senator Lambie has swallowed hook, line and sinker the rhetoric of the old industries—unsustainable native forest practices and the big dirty polluters in Tasmania that are always looking to make a buck at the expense of the Australian taxpayer. We have to be thinking about the industries of the future. That is why we cannot afford to weaken the RET. In fact, we need to strengthen it. We cannot allow the burning of native forests as biomass to be given credits in this RET scheme, because it will already make an unprofitable business an unsustainable business, and it will hold out false hope to those in the forestry industry that see this as their future. As usual, the Greens will be the party in the Senate and in the parliament standing up for the environment.