Page 2804 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 17 September 2014
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After all, it is the federal government that is implementing an ideological program to terminate climate action and in particular to stop the growth of renewable energy.
It’s attempting to remove the modest carbon price, abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, cut the renewable energy target, and further undermine future wind farms by holding yet another inquiry into the sham “wind turbine syndrome”.
It has already cut $800 million from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and abolished the Climate Commission, which provided independent advice to the public. (Fortunately, it has been relaunched as the public-funded Climate Council.) A single one of these actions could be interpreted as simple ignorance, but the whole set clearly compromises a deliberate plan to try to slow the inevitable shift away from polluting fossil fuels to renewable energy.
The article comments that the federal opposition may step up and be somewhat more proactive in its horror at these moves. It goes on:
The “justification” of these federal policies is ideological, because it is anti-climate science, because investment in the growth of renewable energy (and energy efficiency) can generate more jobs than are being lost in the fossil fuel industry, and because the Clean Energy Finance Corporation is levering much private investment and is actually making a profit.
The subsidies to the production and use of fossil fuels in Australia are running at more than $10 billion a year and seem to be permanent, dwarfing the small declining subsidies to renewable energy.
It is worth a very good read but it points out that any step away from supporting ambitious renewable targets is not in the community’s interests, it is not in families’ interests, it is not in industry’s interest, it is no-one’s interests. The Canberra Liberals choose to come to this place with such wanton disregard for, one, the climate change facts, and, two, supporting the 80 per cent of Canberrans who support our position on doing all we can to address this. It is out of step with the public’s view.
In closing, I make reference to the petition you tabled in this place yesterday, Madam Assistant Speaker, supporting those who have concerns around the wind power at Collector. I think it was pointed out to you yesterday—in closing I point it out again—that that power arrangement, the wind turbine, was approved by the New South Wales National and Liberal parties, and the current Liberal-National sitting member was here objecting to something that his government actually gave the tick of approval to do.
DR BOURKE (Ginninderra) (12.24), in reply: This morning, Madam Assistant Speaker, we heard a history lesson from the Canberra Liberals on renewable energy targets and their evolution in this country. But we did not hear the latest instalment—the latest instalment of Liberal flip-flops on policy leading out from the Warburton review, a missing part of the story. I am glad, Madam Assistant Speaker, that the Canberra Liberals agree that the Canberra community supports Labor government policy on renewable energy targets—overwhelming community support.
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