09/02/2014 

1 September 2014 I rise today to support the amendments moved by the Member for Port Adelaide on the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Repeal) Bill. When it comes to the environment, climate change and the renewable energy sector more broadly, this Government is building quite the reputation. Regretfully this reputation is nothing short of abysmal.Through this Governments actions last month, Australia now has the unenviable record of being the first country to be going backwards on climate change. This week in the Senate, the Government is attempting to divest themselves of responsibility for environmental protection, and hand delegations of environmental approval powers instead to state and local governments. Thats right, they want to hand over decision-making power for nationally significant environmental sites to the Premiers and Chief Ministers of the states. Leaders like Colin Barnett, Premier of Western Australia, the man who oversaw the controversial WA shark culling earlier this year, will have carriage of decisions made for the Ningaloo Reef. Will Hodgman, with his axe and saw in hand, bulldozers at the ready, will make decisions about Tasmanias iconic World Heritage-listed forests. And Campbell Newman, Premier of Queensland, will be waving in the ships to dredge and dump on our precious Great Barrier Reef. Next in this governments sights are the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, ARENA, and the Renewable Energy Target. Both of which carried bi-partisan election support, but are now ready to be thrown on the scrap heap by this Government that says one thing before an election and does the exact opposite after. The previous Labor Government established the ARENA in 2012. It is an independent agency designed to improve the competitiveness of renewable energy technologies in Australia and to increase the supply of renewable energy to Australias electricity market. ARENA works to reduce the cost of renewable energy technology development and increase its use in Australia. Effectively, it provides: financial assistance for the research, development, demonstration and commercialisation of renewable energy and related technologies; develops skills in the renewable energy industry; and promotes renewable energy projects and innovation both nationally and internationally. ARENA currently supports more than 190 renewable energy projects, drawing more than 5 billion in private sector funding. 70% of ARENA funding has gone to projects in rural and regional Australia, creating jobs for the future. Areas like my electorate of Newcastle, a regional city in transformation. The Abbott Liberal Governments axing of ARENA puts these projects and jobs in jeopardy. It puts the future prosperity of regional areas like Newcastle under a cloud. This Bill risks the investment arrangements that are already in place for existing projects and puts a complete freeze on future investment arrangements. As mentioned, ARENA has seen significant investment into the local economy of Newcastle, with projects continuing to have a considerable impact. No less than 17 ARENA projects have been either completed or are in progress in my electorate. They are lead ably by Newcastle researchers from the public and private sector, with a range of local, national and international partners contributing through collaborative research and or direct financing. ARENA funding into Newcastle totals almost 115M attack on their organisation with more than 700 job cuts already announced. And thats before the ARENA is abolished as this Bill attempts to do and the Governments continued attack on the renewable energy sector through their loaded report and actions on the Renewable Energy Target. As we see this government make decision after decision to put the renewable industry under threat, I want to make sure that the Newcastle-based ARENA projects are not forgotten. Its important that they are acknowledged and put on the record in this place. Who knows how long they will continue under this promise-breaking government. As I mentioned, the CSIRO are the lead agency on most Newcastle-based ARENA projects. Current, or completed, ARENA projects lead by CSIRO in Newcastle include: the Optimisation of central receivers for advanced power cycles project that is investigating a new family of solar components which can provide a higher temperature range; The Plug and play solar power project that is addressing barriers to solar hybrid power system growth; The Development of combined cycle using solar reformed gas project that aims to demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of a combined cycle power plant fuelled with natural gas that has been upgraded using solar thermal energy; The formation of ASTRI the Australian Solar Thermal Research Initiative, a consortium of leading Australian research institutions collaborating on over the horizon projects on concentrated solar power research projects in close partnership with US research organisations and leading CSP companies; A project to improve translation models for predicting the energy of PV power systems, to reduce the investment risk for large-scale PV power plants, by investigating the relationship between the manufacturers power rating for solar panels and the energy the panels generate over time; the Solar-driven supercritical CO2 Brayton Cycle project that is examining ways to reduce the cost of solar energy to less than 10 cents per kilowatt hour; The Hybridisation of concentrated solar thermal with carbon capture and storage project that is investigating the feasibility of using concentrated solar thermal energy in a post-combustion carbon dioxide capture process at coal-fired and gas power stations; The Solar air turbine systems project, led by a partnership between CSIRO and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, that is developing and testing the components of the worlds most powerful solar air turbines to increase efficiency while decreasing manufacturing, installation and operation costs; The Virtual Power Station 2 project that is creating the next version of a virtual power station that can undertake pilot-scale testing of load, generation and energy storage coordination; The Advanced steam generating receivers for high concentration solar collectors project that demonstrates that significant reductions in the Levelised Cost of Electricity can be achieved by moving operation of concentrating solar; The Solar hybrid fuels project, that sees CSIRO partnering with Chevron, Orica and the Colorado School of Mines to make synthesis gas from natural gas at temperatures compatible with conventional solar thermal storage; The recently completed Solar Thermal Research Hub project that constructed Australias largest solar thermal research hub at the CSIRO National Solar Energy Centre in Newcastle - a fantastic facility I might add, that houses most of the researchers working on these many ARENA projects. And the CSIROs last, but most definitely not insignificant ARENA project in Newcastle, the Thermoelectric generator for concentrated solar thermal systems project that is developing and applying high-performance thermoelectric materials and technologies to concentrated solar thermal systems. Also in Newcastle, ARENA is supporting, the Australian Photovoltaic Institute in a number of projects. The Institute is developing an interactive live solar map of Australia that tracks the uptake and impact of PV across Australia; and they have also completed a project that assessed a range of ways in which customers and electricity utilities might participate in a distributed energy market. Then theres Granite Power Limited, who are working on a solar supercritical organic Rankine Cycle for power and industrial heat that will demonstrate an innovative CST systems ability to provide 24/7 electricity using integrated solar thermal storage and operating as an automated plant in conjunction with a gas heater. And finally, the University of Newcastle, project partner on many of the already listed projects, who took the lead on the completed Fabrication of thermionic device using advanced ceramics project that created a working prototype of a thermionic energy converter which directly converts the heat generated by concentrated sunlight into electricity. The contribution of ARENA funding and organisations like the CSIRO and the University of Newcastle have added enormous value to Newcastle. And their research is making advances around the world. All of these projects make it clear that Labors renewable energy policies are a success story. But they are now all under attack from the Abbott Liberal Government. In addition to this Bill to abolish the ARENA, the Abbott Government also had legislation before the Parliament to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and as weve read in the newspapers over the past few weeks, the Prime Minister wants to scrap the RET altogether. His loaded-RET Review, prepared by handpicked climate change deniers, is no-doubt the pre-cursor to Government actions to destroy the renewable energy sector in Australia by abolishing the RET. The RET is doing exactly what it was designed to do and no one really knows why the Abbott Government wants to put an end to such successful policy that delivers savings to Australian households, creates Australian jobs, drives investment in Australian industries and is good for Australias environment. The RET, I might add, is a policy that has enjoyed bipartisan support and was introduced by the Prime Ministers own mentor, former Prime Minister Howard. And it was a bi-partisan issue at the last election, carrying the Prime Ministers support. In 2011 he said: Look, we originated a renewable energy target. That was one of the policies of the Howard Government and yes we remain committed to a renewable energy target we have no plans to change the renewable energy target. In February last year, the now Environment Minister, said: We will be keeping the renewable energy target. Weve made that commitment. We have no plans or proposals to change it... We have no plans or intention for change and weve offered bipartisan support to that. On this basis, I would have thought you would see the Prime Minister and his Environment Minister stepping up after the Warburton review was released last week to affirm their commitment to an unchanged RET. Or perhaps even the Industry Minister would stand up and fight for the renewable energy industry. Sadly, for our economy, and for the planet, we have not seen any positive action for the environment or for the renewable energy industry from the relevant Ministers or the Prime Minister, either in the last week since the report was handed down, or in the last year since they commenced their promise breaking streak in Government. Abolishing the ARENA and scrapping the RET is bad policy. It is bad for the environment. It is bad for industry. It is bad for Australia. It is bad for Newcastle. Labors renewable energy policies have been resoundingly successful and should continue to be supported, not abolished. During Labors time in Government: Wind power tripled Jobs in the renewable energy industry tripled to more than 24 000 Australian households with solar panels on their roofs increased from around 7000 to more than 1 million. Some of the wind and solar farms in Australia are the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere. When Labor was in Government, Australia ranked in the top four most attractive places in the world to invest in renewable energy projects. Since the election of the Abbott Government and the Prime Minister began his latest scare campaign against renewable energy, Australia has fallen to ninth on the global index. I fear that we will only slip further. The politically motivated RET Review, the attempts to axe ARENA and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and the Prime Ministers untruthful rhetoric about the impact of the RET on power prices has stalled investment in the renewable energy industry in Australia. Its risking jobs and businesses. And its risking the environment. A recent Newspoll published in The Australian on Wednesday 20 August showed that 98% of Australians support renewable energy. I suggest that the Prime Minister, the Environment Minister and the Industry Minister change their tune and join the overwhelming majority in support of renewable energy in Australia by keeping ARENA and by letting the RET continue to do what it was designed to do. Its the least they could do.