James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before I begin, I welcome Senator Waters back to the chamber for the resumption of her term. Before I turn to the substance of the Coal-Fired Power Funding Prohibition Bill 2017, I want to make one brief observation about the debate and the process on the previous bill, the Animal Export Legislation Amendment (Ending Long-haul Live Sheep Exports) Bill 2018, that the chamber just considered. If there is one positive thing to come from the passage of that bill and the way in which it was passed, I hope it will be that it brings to an end the pious sanctimony that we often hear from the crossbench, from the Greens and from the Labor Party about the gagging of debates in this chamber—about bringing debates to an end so that a vote can be held—because not once, not twice but three times this chamber was gagged. Senators were prevented from making a contribution on the bill. In a debate that lasted no more than one hour this morning, when there was a long speaking list, with many senators who wished to make contributions, they were cut short. In the committee stage of the bill, only one senator was allowed to make a contribution, when there were many others who wished to. So I'm sure we'll never again hear from the Greens, the Labor Party or the crossbench, if another bill is ever gagged in this chamber, any complaints at all about process, truncating debate or getting on with the business of the chamber. I look forward to them consistently upholding the standard which they have displayed here this morning on this bill.

Turning to the actual bill before us now, in a sense I was pleasantly surprised when I heard about this private member's bill from the Greens today because I thought it was quite novel. It is a red-letter day. We have found an area of government spending that the Greens don't like. Normally the Greens are all for government spending and subsidies. They love nothing more than collecting tax from the Australian people—it would be as much of it as possible, if we allowed them to—and then them 'wisely' disbursing that tax in the form of grants, handouts and subsidies to their favoured friends in their favoured industries. But we have found at least one area in which they think it is not a good idea to do that. I'm hoping that that, again, is progress from the Greens. I hope we will see them apply this standard consistently across the board to other areas. If they are so concerned about subsidies, as Senator Waters seemed to be in her contribution to the debate, maybe we'll see them extend this logic to other areas of subsidies. Perhaps they might even turn that logic to the renewable energy industry and the generous billions of dollars of subsidies it's received over the years from this place.

I found Senator Waters' contribution on the question of donations to be particularly ironic. Senator Waters' contention is that fossil fuel industries have benefited from the political process by supporting political parties and then receiving taxpayer handouts. Well, if they ever have, the renewable energy industry has learnt very wisely from them. It has followed them very closely and emulated their behaviour, including, by the way, with generous donations to the Greens. The renewable energy industry is among the many generous supporters of the Greens political party, and we have here in the chamber today the Greens advocating a position that is substantially to the interest of the renewable energy industry. If we follow the logic deployed by Senator Waters in her contribution to this debate, there must be something sinister going on there, there must be some kind of connection between the financial support of the renewable energy industry—all the donations they make, all the functions they attend and all the support they give to the Greens party—and the position the Greens advocate in this chamber and, in fact, the billions of dollars of taxpayers' money that the Greens political party advocates handing out to the renewable energy industry.

My view is that it would be best if we subsidised no forms of energy, if we allowed all forms of energy to equally compete on a level playing field. Unfortunately, in the last decade of climate policy and energy policy in this country, that has not been the case. The renewable energy industry in particular has done exceptionally well out of taxpayers and exceptionally well out of favourable regulation, which has aided its growth immeasurably.

There is nothing, though, to fear for the Greens or anyone else watching this debate from the ACCC recommendations made to the government which the government has signalled that it will proceed with. One ACCC recommendation in particular is that, given the disaster of climate policy and energy policy over the last decade in this country, it is necessary for the government to intervene to assist the creation of new dispatchable energy in the market. What the ACCC recommends, in a technology-neutral and technology-agnostic way, is that government underwrite the creation of new dispatchable energy. The ACCC doesn't specify what form the energy should take. It doesn't say that this energy should be coal fired, gas fired, nuclear, wind, solar or geothermal. It just says that new dispatchable power, power that is available when it is needed and when it is demanded—and we sadly know the intermittent nature of renewable energy means that until it can be sufficiently firmed with back-up batteries or other supports it is not dispatchable—does need to be created in Australia. It needs to be created because Australians like to know that, when they flick the light switch, the lights will come on. They do like to know that, when they hit the power button on the aircon, it will come on. They do want to know that their computer, TV, fridge, microwave and radio will work when they switch the power on. But, without new dispatchable power generation being brought into the market, they can't be assured that that will be the case, let alone be assured that they'll be able to do so in an affordable way. We have heard loud and clear from many Australians the way in which they are struggling with rising energy prices. They are absolutely laser-like in their focus, as we need to be in ours, on getting those prices down.

Why is it that in the last decade no new coal-fired power station has been built in Australia? 2007 is the last year in which one was built. The reason is not that a new high-efficiency, low-emissions coal-fired power station is uneconomic; in fact, they are very competitive on price terms. The reason is not that people are unwilling to, or uninterested in, building one of these coal-fired power stations, which would lower the cost of electricity, provide electricity on a reliable basis and, at the same time, have the benefit of producing lower emissions compared to existing coal-fired power stations. The reason no-one has built one is that if you are an investor in this industry and you are contemplating building a coal-fired power station—or, indeed, any power station—you need to generate a return on investment over a 10- to 15-year investment horizon. You can't just invest for three, four or five years; you need to have confidence that your investment will be able to be returned on a long time horizon, because there are very high capital costs involved. If you are an investor in this industry and you are contemplating your investment in a coal-fired power station, you have to take into account not just the policy settings of today but the likely policy settings of the future. If you were able to be sure that the policy settings of today would stay in place in perpetuity, then you would invest with confidence and know you would get a good return on your investment, on your outlay of capital.

However, if, like me, you fear that one day in that 10- to 15-year time horizon there may be another Labor government, or even another Labor government that relies on the support of the Greens in order to form government or in order to transact any business in this chamber, then you'll be thinking: 'Oh-oh, the coal-fired power station that I might be willing to build—or the gas-fired power station or whatever style of power station I might be willing to build—might be hit by a carbon tax, might be hit by an emissions trading scheme, might be hit by an emissions intensity scheme, might be hit by some other scheme for which they will come up with a different name but will have the same effect.' Your investment will be damaged by a future Labor-Greens government. People in business, people who invest in this industry, people who provide capital in this industry, prudently and wisely are holding back.

What the ACCC recommendation helps us do is overcome that political risk. It helps us to overcome that regulatory risk. It says to the investors in those industries: 'You can invest with confidence. Even if there is a change of government, your investment will be secure.' And I think that is a really important and appropriate signal that we need to send to the market.

My friend the learned Senator McKim from Tasmania has been interjecting throughout this debate about how renewables are cheaper. Well, if it were the case it would be a wonderful thing. There would be no need for a renewable energy target. There would be no need for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. There would be no need for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. In fact, I am sure that the Greens, with their new principled opposition to taxpayer subsidies as enunciated in this debate, would be the first to stand up and say we can get rid of all these subsidies because renewables are so competitive in their own right they don't need any assistance at all. I look forward to them bringing that bill to the next private senators' time to be debated. I hope that it is because I'm sure that the Greens are being consistent not just favouring one form of energy over the other.

The truth is that the rest of the world is getting on with building high-efficiency, low-emissions coal-fired power stations and other traditional fossil fuel powered power stations. They are building them because they are reliable, they are building them because they are cheap and they are building them because they reduce emissions over the existing stock that they are replacing. There are, I am advised, 400 new units being built in China alone, which are replacing old polluting plants, and they have plans for hundreds more. A recent IEA Clean Coal Centre report noted that China's embrace of high-efficiency, low-emissions technology had reduced its emissions footprint by 450 million tonnes of CO2 per annum. The Greens tell us that their priority is to reduce CO2 emissions, but, when provided with a viable way of doing so that is also reliable and cheap, for some reason they don't support it. Japan, which is a pioneer in the area of high-efficiency, low-emissions coal-fired power stations already has plans to build an additional 45 coal plants. India has plans for 600 plants and there are plans for dozens of others across South-East Asia, including in Bangladesh and elsewhere.

Famously, even in the heart of Europe, even emissions-conscious Germany is building its own new low-emission coal plants, which have the great feature of being able to ramp up and ramp down relatively quickly to compensate for the intermittent nature of the renewable energy plants which they are also building. Uniquely in Germany the high-efficiency, low-emissions coal-fired power stations that they are building are not just black coal power stations—and we have decent stores of black coal in this country, particularly in New South Wales and Queensland. They are also building high-efficiency, low-emissions brown coal-fired power stations. We have hundreds of years of brown coal source in my home state of Victoria. We'd be very happy to see an energy industry investor enter the market to build a high-efficiency, low-emissions coal-fired power station using brown coal in my home state of Victoria.

Colleagues, I think we should take this bill for what it is. It is the Greens adopting their usual ideological approach to energy; their obsession with renewables at the exclusion of all else; their obsession in the face of facts and evidence about the emissions reductions that high-efficiency, low-emissions coal-fired power stations can deliver; and their obsession with, apparently, aiding an industry which has also been a generous political supporter of theirs, if we are to take them at their own words about what they believe the impacts of donations are on the policies of political parties in this place.