Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

We have been very grateful for the engagement with Rio Tinto. I do note that Rio Tinto, prior to any obligation imposed by the safeguard mechanism, have their own commitment to net zero by 2050, and that's a commitment that they've made to their shareholders and investors. More broadly, can I just bring a sense of reality to this debate. We have gone through 10 years where the business environment for many of these businesses was terribly uncertain as a consequence of your government's—the previous government's—inability to land a climate policy or an energy policy. I well remember the many Senate inquiries that I attended when these same businesses came before us and said that what they desperately wanted was certainty and that was the thing that would unlock the investment that you're speaking about. For example, I remember when Energy Users Association of Australia said:

We have identified five specific areas of concern that have contributed to the current perilous situation being:

…   …   …

2. A dysfunctional political environment that has dramatically increased the risk associated with investment.

That is what was said when you guys were in charge.

The Investor Group on Climate Change, back in 2017, said:

Australian institutional investors have a strong appetite for low carbon assets, but policy uncertainty and a lack of scalable deals are major barriers.

They said:

Despite the recent surge in renewable energy investment, investment is still not coming through institutional investors.

And:

Yet, the Federal climate change and energy policy landscape provides no investment certainty.

The Energy Supply Association in 2015 said:

The current uncertainty will itself drive up prices. Banks have put away their cheque books on energy projects. Policy uncertainty has rendered electricity generation projects unbankable. That cost has been masked because lower demand has meant we haven't needed new projects but where new assets are needed, that risk premium will be there and it will push up electricity prices.

We are moving in an orderly way to put some certainty into the system after a decade of incompetent management. So, we're happy to have a sensible discussion about how we might best do this—what the best implementation arrangements might be. But I do think we have to have a sense of reality about where we are now and how we got here.