Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill and to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

We are in the middle of a climate emergency and an energy crisis and this government is asleep at the wheel. This Bill, the Renew Australia Bill 2017, establishes an independent public authority charged with planning and driving the transition to a new clean energy system.

Pollution is wrecking our way of life and everything we care about on this planet. What precious little time we have to protect and safeguard our planet is slipping away. To insulate our livelihoods from the catastrophic effects of climate change, we need real leadership – not a business as usual response. And that's what The Greens are in this place to do. To provide the leadership that this country so desperately needs, because this Government aren't giving it.

We have a plan to act and act urgently to remake our economy and secure our prosperity, by powering our new economy with clean energy and decoupling our future and our systems from pollution. The Government's plan is coal, coal and more coal. Not only do they – along with the Australia Labor Party - want to build Adani – a monster that will trash our reef, burn our planet and run roughshod over our native title legislation – but there are also reports that they'll use scarce public money to build a new coal-fired power station! Building a new coal fired power station now is like knowing cigarettes cause cancer but starting your kids on a pack a day, or knowing asbestos kills but having your family live in it anyway. While Japan cancels plans to build a major coal-fired power station, we're looking at building them.

Our plan is what Australia really needs. Our plan will ensure energy generation for electricity is at least 90 per cent renewable by 2030 and that our energy productivity is doubled. This Bill will establish a Government authority, Renew Australia, that will short-circuit the current paralysis that we're seeing – with standoffs between the Federal and State Governments – by taking the issue out of the hands of politicians and into the hands of experts. A number of submissions to the Finkel review, including from big energy companies like Origin energy, have also supported this idea that we need a new national body to oversee electricity reform.

Our plan is for this new public authority to leverage $5 billion dollars of construction in new energy generation over the next four years. This policy will also provide for a $250 million clean energy transition fund to assist coal workers and communities to transition, with the total amount spent rising to $1 billion over the decade. What this Government should be doing for the workers at Hazelwood right now is providing them with certainty and a long term plan, not a last second thought bubble from a former Prime Minister who's suffering from relevance deprivation syndrome.

We will implement pollution intensity standards to enable the continuation of gradual staged closures of coal-fired power stations, like what we've seen with Hazelwood. But as we do so we need to ensure that no-one is left behind, that the workers in those coal-fired power stations and their communities are looked after and that supply is continued so that the lights stay on as we make this transition. We need to get off coal and onto renewables right now if we have any chance of meeting the challenge of climate change, and The Greens' believe that we can do this, while looking after people through this transition.

Our plan aims to electrify transport and industry, including new industries that want to access cheap and clean energy. As a result of that, even with a doubling of energy efficiency, energy production for electricity in Australia actually needs to increase by about 50 per cent by 2030. So the Green's plan is to grow the amount of electricity that we produce in this country but to make it clean and green. To do that, we are going to need all shoulders to the wheel.

Government needs to seize this issue as an opportunity because government will be an integral part of this transition to our clean energy society. Renew Australia will drive Australia's transformation into a clean energy powerhouse and will utilise a combination of mechanisms, including driving down costs and creating a highly skilled clean energy workforce through a staged pipeline of construction projects over the next 15 years.

Renew Australia would also run reverse auctions for the construction of lowest cost clean energy assets, with a preference awarded towards community owned energy projects and those projects that commit to buying their materials and employing people locally. There is 20 tonnes of steel in a wind turbine. If we can make that Australian steel, we should. Renew Australia would encourage workers to purchase energy infrastructure through superannuation funds, which hold billions of dollars available to be invested in nationally significant infrastructure.

The Bill goes on to outline Renew Australia's responsibilities to layout a timetable for the planned closure of coal fired power stations and for principles of investment in the new national electricity grid. As is set out in clause 13—Renew Australia has the capacity to build, finance, own or operate renewable energy projects and also to run reverse auctions for new private sector renewable energy projects. Renew Australia must take action that is in the public interest.

Tackling global warming needs real leadership. In the face of the climate challenge, the rest of the world is moving rapidly to transform their economies and we cannot be left behind, but right now we are being left behind. We need to move beyond coal, and we need to move beyond this paralysis, but the government is stuck and is picking fights with the states on national television.

On 25 July in 2015, Germany produced 78 per cent of its electricity from renewable energy. On 16 May 2016, this number was up again – Germany produced almost all of its power from renewable energy. While other countries are moving forwards, we're moving backwards. Why is cloudy Germany leading the way, when Australia is blessed with a high level of manufacturing capacity, very smart people with intellectual resources and more wind and solar than almost any other country in the world?

Why are countries around the world trying to solve this problem, while we scrap the price on carbon and build massive coal mines and power stations? We should be world leaders; we should be the new energy superpower; we should not be leaving it up to other countries to grab the benefits that are going to come in the 21st century to those countries which produce clean, green renewable energy.

Our hope it is that Australia becomes a destination of choice for industry around the world, which is looking for a place to come to for cheap and plentiful power supply that is produced cleanly. Australia can be a renewable energy superpower if the Government has the courage and vision to put in place a national plan.

Let us be the place in the region where you come to run your business if you want to know that your business is being run on secure renewable energy. We want to increase the amount of electricity that is produced in this country, as we start getting transport—cars, buses, trains—off fossil fuels onto electricity. The jobs that will flow from this are manifold. The German experience suggests to us that there is somewhere in the order of 100,000 jobs available in renewable energy. This Bill will go a long way towards doing that.

Our country can't afford to be left behind and neither can our planet. The stakes literally could not be higher. Let's take the politics out of this debate, which are making it toxic, and get moving on this issue before it's too late.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.