Page 4914 - Week 11 - Thursday, 21 October 2010
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idea of how to get there and how much it will cost. And that is appalling policy development and leads to appalling policy execution, like we have seen in the building education evolution federally where immense amounts of taxpayers’ money have bought halls at three times the price they are normally worth and, in particular, the just go and insulate those homes policy that led to deaths, four deaths, hundreds of homes being burnt down and incalculable cost to the taxpayer. The cost just keeps mounting.
That is what is happening here today and it must be resisted. If you want support, do the positive, rigorous technical analysis and make your case. Just do not say, “We have picked the number 40 per cent.”
The report then goes on to give a summary in just three lines. What is this plan about? It is about a 10-year road map for 100 per cent renewable energy. Okay, that is what they want to do. They have stated it quite clearly. They want base-load energy supplied by renewable sources. That is fine. That is where we want to be. That is what we are going to do. And how much does it cost? They claim it is affordable at $8 per week. They have done the work.
It then goes on to say, “Here is how we have designed the stationary energy plan supply system. Here is how you get 100 per cent renewable energy supply. Here is the work we need to do to manage grid and load-manage and create a national grid. Here is how you resource the transition. By the way, we have actually done the numbers and to get this in 10 years time will cost a total investment to the Australian people of $370 billion over the period 2011-2020.” This is something that stands up to scrutiny. We have an objective. “This is how we are going to get there. This is what it costs. Here is the analysis.” Here are the flimsies that Mr Corbell threw at me as somehow refuting my claims, and if you look anywhere in any of these documents and do a word search for the word “cost” or “dollar”, you cannot find a price. It is just not there.
We do not know how much this is going to cost. We do not even know whether it is long term or sustainable. Yet these people from the Energy Research Institute in their Zero carbon Australia stationary energy plan then go on to say, “And this will serve the nation for the next 40 to 60 years.” That is long-term planning. That is doing the work, minister. That is providing the argument to back up your case.
We know it does not matter. We know that this will go ahead because it is in the Greens-Labor coalition agreement. This is what you get when you get a coalition of strange bedfellows. We know the Greens have no idea of how to cost their policies because after the election, in the negotiation with the Greens, we costed their policies for them. We started working out what it would cost because they do not do the work either. And that is the problem. It is great to have lofty ideals. It is great to aspire to something. But we are the politicians that pass the budgets, make the laws and deliver the policies for the people. There it is again in the coat of arms: “the people”.
But no-one in this place can tell me how much this will cost, how we will get there, and whether or not we can actually make it. And if you compare the two approaches, then you must have doubt about the people who are backing it.
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