Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Here we are again. It's deja vu. The Greens are begging the chamber not to give yet more free public money to fossil fuel donors. We're really proud to be co-sponsoring this disallowance motion, which is just cooked from whichever angle you look at it. The chamber could actually stand in the way. We could do our job and properly allocate public money—$3.3 million of taxpayer money—and we could stop it being allocated to coal. We could block this climate-destroying coal-fired power station from going ahead.

What has happened here is that a thoroughly inexperienced company has proposed a coal-fired power station and the feasibility study for the same in the middle of a climate crisis after the nation just had the most destructive bushfires our history has ever recorded. We here in the Senate have the ability to stop this rorting and stop this destruction, and that's precisely why the Greens are moving this disallowance.

Not only is it cooked to give public money to a coal-fired power station in a climate crisis after those bushfires but it is cooked to dish out public money as a pre-election slush fund to try to shore up your own power. Unfortunately, we've seen quite a bit of that, and I'll come back to that point. Surprise, surprise! The company that would get this windfall gain, Shine Energy, has connections with mega political donor and coal giant Glencore. Incidentally, Glencore would directly benefit from the power station's construction and it's been lobbying the government to support the same and to support the coal industry. But it gets worse. Shine Energy have no relevant experience. They couldn't get funding from any existing program, so the government just created an entirely new grants fund and then awarded a grant to Shine Energy two or three days before the money had even been applied for. I'll go through the dates. On 8 February—a fantastic day for anyone born on that day, such as myself—Minister Taylor announced that Shine would receive up to $4 million of public money for a feasibility study into a so-called low-emission coal-fired power plant, which is the biggest misnomer of the century. Two days later, Shine Energy was asked to apply. That's two days after they'd been announced as the winner of this public money.

Despite the fact that stakeholders, including the Queensland government, have strongly questioned the need for and the validity of a power station, the government just charged on regardless. They set up the Supporting Reliable Energy Infrastructure Program and then developed guidelines specific to the Collinsville power station. They then asked only Shine Energy to apply for that money. This is despite the fact that Shine has no relevant experience—no past projects—and funding for the project has been rejected by UNGI. Since the funding has been announced, Shine has already said that it's not enough money; they're going to need more public money to do a feasibility study. I'm trying to think of an analogy. It would be like me asking for public money to open a video store—something that I've never done before and that nobody wants because we have more efficient alternatives. The only difference in that analogy, of course, is that I'm not a massive donor to the LNP, nor am I promising them cushy jobs once they leave parliament.

In the too-long history of this cooked government, we've seen grants awarded with no criteria and grants that ignored the criteria and happened to be in marginal seats just before an election. Now we have a grant awarded with criteria that have been specifically drafted to justify a winner that's already been chosen. This is exactly why we need a Senate inquiry into all of these pre-election slush funds. That's on the books for next week, and I'll be having conversations with my colleagues about this latest example of the need for more scrutiny of how the government are misusing taxpayer dollars to shore up their own failing political fortunes, in a climate crisis, by giving funds to coal-fired power. It doesn't escape anyone's notice that this latest scandal is by serial offender Angus Taylor. It's nothing more than a misuse of taxpayer funds to prop up fossil fuels.

We can save everyone a little bit of money on a feasibility study. It is not feasible to build a new coal-fired power station in an already crowded market in a climate crisis. None of the experts say this is economically feasible. Nobody wants to put in any money to fund it, and the previous speaker just noted how the Prime Minister himself had acknowledged that this wasn't a viable option. Public money should not be wasted on fanciful, self-interested projects. This sort of money should be spent on supporting workers to retrain—workers who are watching the coal industry dwindle and are worried about their future. We want to make sure that they're looked after and retrained and that they're supported into new industries that have a long-term future and won't damage their health with black lung syndrome. But this sort of money could be used to shore up and re-establish a domestic manufacturing base. Central Queensland and North Queensland could be building solar panels and wind turbines. We could be then mandating the use of those locally built components in clean energy projects. We could be putting money into public housing to end homelessness. We could be investing in clean energy and giving young people the chance to find work as we recover from a global pandemic.

There is nothing 'low-emissions' about a coal-fired power station, and yet it is the so-called emissions reduction minister who is championing a highly polluting coal-fired power station. One renewable energy commentator has described this as '$3.6 million to a company that lacks the competency to pull off a project that will never stack up.' This is just yet another pre-election slush fund with taxpayer dollars to try to shore up seats. We all know the Nats needed an announceable in the lead-up to the last election, but this project is such a dog that not even the Queensland LNP want money to go to it. They have already distanced themselves from it. So I'm afraid former Minister Canavan and his Nationals counterparts are really out on their own on this one, which is exactly why this money should be disallowed. ARENA is running out of money in a few months, and they've had a billion dollars stripped from their budget, thanks to—sadly—Liberal and Labor teaming up in the last parliament. That's something that this $3.6 million grant could be usefully and meaningfully allocated to.

This coal-fired power station will never be built. The Liberal backbenchers know it. Even the Prime Minister knows it. And Labor's spokesperson on, I think, mining—surprise, surprise—Mr Joel Fitzgibbon knows it. No investor is going to sink money into a steam-turbine technology in one of the most congested parts of the grid in the world, when the world is acting on global warming. This company has not even built a fence, let alone a coal-fired power station. The only people that are clueless enough to commit money to this project are the current bunch of cabinet ministers who take donations from the coal industry, who probably will go off and work for the coal industry once they leave parliament and who are using somebody else's money to pay for it—your money; taxpayer money. This is a culture war, and taxpayer money is being frittered away as a result.

This feasibility study is going to tell us what everybody knows: it is a waste of money, and it's a waste of money that could be better spent on actually creating real jobs—not phantom, fake promises, but real jobs for regional Queenslanders, like they deserve and like they need. We could be spending it on manufacturing, we could be spending it on building clean energy components and we could be spending it on schools and hospitals to give people the services that they deserve and that they pay for. This is taxpayer money. Even outfits like the AiG, the Ai GROUP, have said that it will never happen.

I think the previous speaker mentioned that if there was proper indemnification of this project against future carbon liability—if we ever have a carbon price brought back in in this nation, like we had 10 years ago when we had world-leading climate laws—$17 billion in payments would be required. The reason that we have this slush fund that's been proposed and announced as an election commitment, and then hastily patched up, and a whole special grant that's been created and allocated to a company that has zero experience doing this sort of thing, is the millions of dollars in donations that the Liberal, National and, I might add, Labor parties receive from the coal industry and from the fossil fuel industry. With this proposal, the government is actually standing in the way of the wave of clean, lasting, reliable jobs that could be created if public money, and private money, was invested in genuinely clean renewable energy—not the nonsense that is 'low-emissions coal'. As I said before, it's the biggest misnomer in history.

If this coal-fired power plant were, miraculously, to go ahead—massively subsidised by the taxpayer, in an age of a climate crisis, and not creating anywhere near the jobs that that region needs—then it would actually drive regional jobs out of regional Queensland. The climate impacts that could flow from yet more coal in the system would further endanger the tourism industry, the agriculture industry and any other industry that relies on a livable, safe climate. The government have a choice here. They could see reason; they could listen to almost every single expert on this topic and understand that this is a dog of an investment, a waste of public money. Some of their own backbenchers are in the papers today acknowledging that. They could redirect this money to where it will genuinely do good, where it will help people, where it will create jobs and the sorts of services that people deserve.

This is yet another test for the government that I fear they will fail. Sadly, they are dominated by a rump of climate-change-denying dinosaurs who accept donations from the coal, gas and oil industries and who, concerned about their own future employment prospects, line up lobbying jobs with industry representative bodies or directly with companies, as we have already seen happen in the last 10 or 20 years. They are getting in the way of a livable climate for all of us and a prosperous economy that would create jobs in areas of regional Queensland that are desperate for a plan for what comes next as the rest of the world continues to turn away from dirty coal.

That is the choice the government have before them. Thankfully, the Greens have been joined by Labor this time around—although I suspect they've got just a bit of internal dissent on this matter; we'll see how long they can hold the ship together on this issue. We've got a chance here to ensure that public money is spent wisely, that it doesn't worsen the climate crisis, that it doesn't go to a two-bit company that has never done anything like this before but has some convenient connections to a big political donor. The Senate has the chance to disallow this instrument. We have 15 sitting days from it being laid on the table to have the chance to vote on this issue, but our position has always been very clear: we do not support public money going to prop up an industry that is damaging all of us and damaging the natural world. So I'm really proud to be co-sponsoring the disallowance of this instrument.

What I hope will happen next week, when we bring on a suggestion for a Senate inquiry into all of the different rorts and grants and funding the government established in the lead-up to the last election to try to shore up their own failing fortunes, is that we get some support from across the chamber. It is clear that this government has no respect for public money; it's simply using your money to do favours for its corporate mates, who then, in a bizarre sort of washing-machine move, donate money back to the coalition.

So let's do the right thing here, folks. We've got the chance to have a good outcome—to use public money to make people's lives better by investing in projects that stack up and can address the climate crisis. Let's go for it!