Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Attorney-General (Senator Brandis) to questions without notice asked by Senators Kitching, Dastyari and Singh today.

What an interesting garble we heard from the other side today in relation to relation to this new plan from the Liberal government! The party room, as I understand from media reports, agreed to ditch the CET and adopt a National Energy Guarantee that requires electricity retailers to have a minimum amount of power constantly available. Prime Minister Turnbull said that the new plan is a 'game changer'.

It's really interesting because, over a number of years, Minister Turnbull has backed and supported an emissions trading scheme, a carbon tax, an emissions intensity scheme, a clean energy target and a stronger renewable energy target. Now he's backing a National Energy Guarantee. It makes you wonder what he's going to be supporting and backing in tomorrow. Each of these positions, basically, is being pushed by the previous Prime Minister, Mr Abbott, who, it appears, has much more say on that side of the parliament than Mr Turnbull does. Mr Turnbull made his announcement this morning—and we are yet to see detail of it, I might add. I can't find any detail.

Senator Brandis interjecting—

It's been released, says Senator Brandis. Where would we find that, Senator Brandis? It's interesting—I haven't been able to find it. What Prime Minister Turnbull has done is turn his back on his own Chief Scientist. They have turned their back completely on the report that Dr Finkel put out. They have turned their back on renewable energy. Renewable energy is one of the things on the horizon that will create jobs and provide lots of opportunities in regional Australia. We heard Senator Scullion a moment ago talk about how they know regional Australia and how wonderful they are, but he read word for word off a piece of paper. How well does he know regional Australia when he has to read the answer to a dorothy dixer question from his own side? He can't even talk about regional Australia. Well, I tell you, I can—I talk to people on the west coast of Tasmania, who are waiting and have been waiting since Mr Abbott was the Prime Minister and absolutely wrecked the clean energy target, absolutely wrecked the wind industry and absolutely wrecked any renewable opportunities for industries to grow and grow in places where we absolutely need jobs.

From the package of leaks to different newspapers this morning, we can clearly see that this government is hell-bent on absolutely destroying the renewable energy industry and severely restricting growth in Australia over the coming years and decades. That's what this demonstrates. It's like they said: 'We've got a thought bubble today, so we'll run with that. It sounds like a great idea. We won't take any notice of what the Chief Scientist says—oh, no, he wouldn't know. He doesn't have the expertise. So we'll just come up with what we think will placate our backbench and other people and go along with Mr Tony Abbott.' It is a thought bubble to dump the Chief Scientist's recommendation. The Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party this morning was unable to answer any basic questions of detail on the package.

Senator Brandis interjecting—

He could not answer any questions at all. Clearly, the announcement made this morning is the capitulation by the Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, to Tony Abbott's hard right-wing agenda for Australia, which is now utterly complete. He's almost got there—the only thing that he's not doing is getting the salary of the Prime Minister.

It was reported in newspapers this morning that renewable energy growth will be restricted over the coming three decades to just 4½ per cent—4½ per cent growth in the renewable energy industry over 30 years. That places at risk thousands and thousands of jobs in the renewable energy industry and makes it utterly clear that Australia is completely unable to satisfy and discharge its commitments around carbon pollution reduction that were made at the Paris conference in 2015. This government should be ashamed of itself for moving the goalposts. (Time expired)