Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Waters, your characterisation is completely inaccurate. The capital available to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, including the Clean Energy Innovation Fund, was $10 billion before today; it will be $10 billion after today, should this legislation pass. And, on top of that, the government has agreed, at the request of the Labor Party, as part of this agreement, to restore $800 million worth of funding, for the purposes of ARENA grants, which was previously supposed to be saved. I do not know how I can be any clearer than that. However, clearly the intention of the agreement between the government and the opposition never was to increase resources available to ARENA to $1.6 billion. It was to provide an additional $800 million, and the implication of what you are asking for is essentially to double the contribution to ARENA, once you take grants and debt and equity financing resources into account.