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Net Zero Climate Credibility is Boiling Over

The UN has dialed up its terror war against the West to ridiculous new levels. We’re now expected to believe in climate boiling.

Basic human rights are being destroyed using false data and children are being scared into thinking they have no future.

Wind and solar fail to provide baseload power and their subsidized existence is driving up energy bills. It’s unsustainable.

I’ll be saying a lot more on this shortly in my adjournment speech.

Transcript

I thank Senator McKim for his matter of urgency.

The public is waking up to the net zero war on living standards, war on freedom of movement and war on property rights.

Following public sentiment moving away from global warming ideology, the media is seeking to restore its credibility on this.

So what’s a climate carpet bagger like UN head Antonio Guterres got to do? Does he admit the scam is over and resign? No. He dialled up the hyperbole from global warming to global boiling.

This hyperbole is dangerous. It’s based on falsification of data. It’s scaring children into thinking they have no future. It’s destroying wealth and property. It’s taking away basic human rights like the right to travel and the right to enjoy one’s own property.

The warmers are desperate to save their scare from the reality of cooling temperatures and the demonstrated failure of wind and solar to provide baseload power, while driving skyrocketing unaffordable power prices, crippling families.

In tomorrow’s adjournment speech, I’ll be saying a lot more.

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Greens and Teals can’t see the wood for the trees

Native timber forestry does not harm the environment, but destroying an established 120 old industry does more harm than good to the environment and to Australian society.

How do the Greens and Teals think they’ll solve Australia’s housing crisis without wood?

Is this another one of those net zero solutions where the coal used to manufacture all those disposable ‘renewables’ is acceptable as long as its burned overseas? Perhaps the climate alarm switches off at the border where East meets West. So much for global climate solutions.

What about the jobs lost? What about the fire risks that come with shutting up forests and no longer managing them?

We’ve already had a taste of what green ideology does to our environment and it doesn’t take a genius to work out that fires need fuel.

The Greens and their climate crisis cronies seem more than happy to add that to the flaming wreck of Australian industries, jobs and the housing crisis.

These are tangible and more real than their manufactured climate fears.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I speak in favour of Senator Duniam’s motion. The timber industry is an essential industry to maintain Australia’s way of life.

How can Labor Premier Andrews eliminate native timber production while at the same time Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is promising to build 30,000 new homes which require timber? As a famous robot once said, ‘That does not compute.’  

Native timber forestry does not harm the environment. Sensible native timber logging has been going on in Australia for 150 years, and the forests are still here, the fauna and flora are still here.

Until these Labor and Greens ideologues declared war on sustainable timber harvesting, the jobs in the timber industry were still here, the communities that rely on these jobs were still here. Not any more—Dan Andrews has done them in: no jobs in forestry in Mr Dan Andrews’s socialist state of Victoria.

The truth is native timber logging disturbs a few per cent of the total forest area every year. Logging reduces the forest fuel loads to protect us from bushfires. We also saw how badly some areas of forest burned in the deliberately lit bushfires a few years ago, some areas have still not recovered thanks to Greens and teal policies—clearly, not areas that were logged and the fuel loads removed.

One Nation stands as a strong supporter of the logging industry and a strong supporter of humanity. Timber is essential.  

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Net Zero Leadership

Prime Minister Albanese really is a net zero politician.

There’s been much talk about the Prime Minister’s broken promises without any thought to the question: Were these promises ever designed to be kept or were these “strategic” promises designed to hide this government’s Soviet-style agenda during the election campaign? An agenda perhaps that would make people reliant on government handouts and in turn, make them captive. We know a compliant, captive population is the building block of a Soviet-style society that this Prime Minister supported in his youth and probably still does.

As part of this agenda, rather than creating viable private sector jobs, the Prime Minister is destroying them. For example, we’ve lost 1,500 jobs in transport with the loss of Scott’s Refrigerated Logistics in the name of net zero transport. Not only are we losing jobs, we risk losing entire communities in coal regions, including the Bowen Basin in our state of Queensland – all in the name of net zero mining.

We’re set to lose yet more jobs and family farms in the agricultural sector as Minister Plibersek restarts water buybacks in the name of net zero agriculture. “No water buy backs” was another broken promise. One that was really a bald-faced lie from the start. Just like his promise to reduce household power bills by $275 a year when those same power bills have risen 40% this year alone. Rather than saving money on their energy bills, everyday Australians will be paying double for their electricity by the end of the Prime Minister’s term.

The Prime Minister is falling in the polls and failing his agenda because everyday Australians have woken up to the real meaning of ‘Net Zero’, which is net zero wealth and net zero happiness.

The Albanese Government is a shocker, as my comments in this speech make clear.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I believe this second Albanese government budget is a time for reflection, a reflection on what this government promised and what it’s delivered. There’s been much talk about the Prime Minister’s broken promises, without any thought to the question: were these promises ever designed to be kept, or were these strategic promises designed to hide this government’s Soviet-style agenda during the election campaign? It’s that agenda that I speak to now. It’s an agenda of making people reliant on government handouts, to make them captive to the government. A compliant, captive population is the building block of a Soviet-style society that this Prime Minister appears to have supported in his youth. 

As part of this agenda, rather than creating viable private sector jobs, the Prime Minister is destroying them. We’ve lost 1,500 jobs in transport with the loss of Scott’s Refrigerated Logistics in the name of net zero—trucking. We’ve lost jobs and risk losing entire communities in coal regions, including the Bowen Basin in our state of Queensland, in the name of net zero—mining. We’ve lost jobs in the live sheep export industry, which Labor is shutting down in the name of net zero—grazing. We’re set to lose more jobs and more family farms in the agricultural sector as Minister Plibersek restarts water buybacks in the name of net zero—agriculture. ‘No water buybacks’ was another broken promise which all along was really a bald-faced lie. 

Net zero has made Australians poorer, transferring tens of billions of dollars in wealth from taxpayers to the government’s mates in the solar and wind scam, who then export that wealth to foreign tax havens. Solar and wind are parasitic mal-investments. They’re parasitic and they kill their host, the Australian economy. All this is wrapped in a feel-good cloak of saving the planet. Supported by affluent Australians who have led lives of plenty, these people now embrace the climate agenda to ease their conscience about leading lives of plenty. In reality, net zero is a fraudulent plan to replace productive energy generation with fairytale generation designed to create energy shortage, and from that shortage comes control. The only winners will be the billionaire carpetbaggers who are driving this agenda through their ownership of media, energy companies and, of course, political parties. The Prime Minister has given in to the foreign controlled Australian banks, removing penalties for criminal banking behaviour. Surely, criminal banking behaviour will follow. 

Let me remind people: former Prime Minister John Howard did the same thing in 2003 when he tore up the banking code of practice and gave the green light to banks to tear apart the laws of fairness and decency, laws that protected everyday Australians from financial exploitation. Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones has withdrawn penalties for criminal bankers in his financial accountability scheme proposal. He really is a friend—a great friend—of the big banks and their foreign owners. What, may I ask, is he doing in the Labor Party? The Prime Minister is hollowing out the bush, transferring up to two-thirds of Australian land area to the United Nations through native title and locking it away from Aboriginals. The Prime Minister has cancelled one submarine that will never be built and replaced it with another submarine that will never be built, all the while destroying Australia’s defensive capability. Everyday Australia will feel the result of this mismanagement all at once, and then unrest will result. That’s why the Prime Minister and our weakened, complicit military leadership are training Australian troops to attack Australian protesters. Clearly, the troops on the streets threatening and intimidating Australians into staying silent in their homes were just on a training exercise for what’s to come. Yet the future is never dictated; it can only be manipulated. 

Conservatives can retake government in the next election if we come together and do more to spread our message of economic prosperity, family, community and Australian values. I’ve said this before in this place: abundance is not a dirty word; it’s a wonderful word. One Nation is the party of abundance, with policies that generate wealth for everyday Australians and prevent wealth from being leeched away from Australia. Conservatives must do more to drown out the self-interest of the presstitute media, who are advancing the interests of predatory billionaires on their share register over the interests of everyday Australians. Here’s an example: in the recent Senate committee hearing into One Nation’s anti-vaccine-mandate bill, we heard of a fine young Australian killed by vaccine mandates imposed by her employer, SG Global. SG Global is part-owned by the Vanguard investment fund. Their primary shareholder is a South African company that is partly owned by Vanguard. They use financing instruments from Vanguard. Vanguard use their ownership to force vaccine mandates that require the purchase of vaccines from Pfizer, a company in which Vanguard are the largest institutional shareholder. Do you see how it works? That’s how the rich become richer and everyday Australians lose wealth, lose health and, with no explanation or media interest, lose their lives in unexplained deaths. There have been more than 35,000 excess deaths in Australia. In a world run by everyday Australians, this sort of crony capitalism would rightly be considered racketeering, yet no action has been taken by the uniparty to uncover the truth and dispense justice to the crooked. 

What we hear from the Prime Minister is rhetoric around plans for better days accompanied by handouts to make it look like he cares—not to do good but to look good. Handouts are government funded fake jobs which will not lift the poor out of poverty. They will not provide a sustainable breadwinner job that is so necessary for starting and supporting a family. The indisputable truth here is that wealth drives social change, not the other way around. Handouts take wealth; they do not create it. This is why every policy that comes out of the antihuman Greens, the teals and the Labor Party is about making people poorer and taking their homeownership, their spending power, their opportunity and, worse, their pride in order to break their spirit. 

This is not an unfortunate outcome of Albanese government policies. This is the agenda the Prime Minister was covering up with his empty promises during the election campaign. It is a deliberate strategy to return the public to poverty, where they can be controlled, indoctrinated and caged in their 15-minute cities. Even the Bank of England stated recently that the public had to get used to being poorer. To hell with that. Corporate ownership and influence in Australia have gone too far. Health has been compromised, as I spoke about during my recent matter of public importance on a COVID royal commission, which the Albanese government promised before it was elected. Education has been compromised, as I spoke about in my two-minute statement on the sex education program of the UN and the UN’s World Health Organization that can only be called child sexual grooming. Energy has been compromised, as Treasurer Chalmers’s $15 billion income support in the budget shows. This giveaway is an admission of the failure of parasitic solar and wind energy to provide energy that people can afford. 

It’s not just energy, of course. Food is becoming much more expensive, and that process will continue until everyday Australians eat the bugs or the lab meat—the in-vitro, cancerous meat. If this is not obvious to the chamber yet, then let me use an example from the Netherlands, where the globalist government of World Economic Forum lackey Mark Rutte has announced that they’re buying back 1,000 family farms from Dutch farmers and rewilding them, using taxpayer money to buy back farms and shut the farms, shutting food production. The purchase agreement made at the point of an administrative gun requires the farmers to agree to never farm their land or any other land in the European Union ever again—all that knowledge gone, all that experience gone and all those farmers prevented from ever growing food again. Is this where Australia is heading? Under the antihuman Greens and the soviet Albanese government, the answer is yes, no doubt. I call on the Prime Minister to categorically rule out purchasing and rewilding Australian farms and to rule out taking food off the table and the future away from rural Australians. One Nation’s message to the Prime Minister is this: Australia is not the Soviet Union, and it never will be. 

It’s time Australian conservatives left behind the fifth column of globalist infiltration that has infected parts of the Liberal and National parties and returned to genuine conservativism. History has shown that the only way to lift people out of poverty and oppression is through economic progress. That’s the basis for human progress. The last 170 years have been remarkable for that. The last 30 years have seen a backward step under policies adopted from the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. History has taught us that some rich greedy bastard will always try and take everything for themselves. It is, though, only in recent years that the Labor and Liberal parties have decided to let them do that, no doubt in response to pressure from the party of the rich, the teals. The Liberals seem to have forgotten one of their founding principles: wealth in the hands of everyday Australians is the antidote to oppression and tyranny. 

One Nation will grow the wealth of everyday Australians and drive Australia forward using our abundant, cheap means of power generation, coal, to produce clean, environmentally responsible baseload power—reliable, secure, stable, synchronous baseload power. This will provide an answer to net zero for those who have joined the UN and World Economic Forum’s alliance and its net zero cult, while we will also save the national silverware—and by that I mean our productive capacity. 

One Nation will use vehicles driven by internal-combustion engines that power our productive capacity in a way that electric vehicles can only ever pretend to do, at a fraction of the cost of those monstrous electric vehicles—inefficient resource hogs. One Nation will build infrastructure, including through Project Iron Boomerang, the Outback Way project, the Gladstone port upgrade and the Hells Gate water and hydro project. These are Queensland projects that will provide breadwinner jobs for 100,000 Australians and add 20 per cent to our gross domestic product. The longer the Albanese government wrecking ball continues, the more Australia will need a One Nation conservative government to restore wealth and opportunity to everyday Australians. 

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Climate Ambitions for an Unsustainable Future

I made this statement to the senate recently to highlight the insanity of the C40 scheme. This is a collaborative effort by many of the world’s largest cities which have been captured by the UN monolith and their financial backers, the world’s predatory billionaires.

C40 strives for a ‘zero-carbon future’ and of course it’s backed by those who will profit from the scheme.

In 2021, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced that 1000 city and local governments around the world have joined the ‘Cities Race to Zero’. The globalists and their mouthpiece media are supported by a captive political establishment in both the parliament and the bureaucracy.

The main outcome of C40 will be a massive increase in taxation to pay for the apparatus to police the scheme. This will require substantial reductions in personal sovereignty, taking away freedom of movement, freedom of speech, and the freedom to decide how and where you spend your own money.

C40 is about Government autocrats having more money and power, leaving everyday Australians with less. Much less.

In short C40 will regulate and tax individuals into serfdom.

The Lib-Lab duopoly and the Greens have been promoting this agenda for twenty years.

Only One Nation stands opposed to the United Nations, World Economic Forum and the World Health Organisation – all of which are dedicated to increasing their power and reducing your freedom.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I draw the Senate’s attention to C40 Cities, another campaign, from predatory billionaires who run the world, to destroy our standard of living and steal everything we own for themselves—all in the name of saving the planet. C40 Cities is a product of the usual suspects—billionaires Michael Bloomberg and George Soros, and the Clinton initiative. Sydney and Melbourne have already signed on.

As he calls on the world’s governments to do more on climate change, Michael Bloomberg is doing the opposite. In 2022, he made 702 flights in his five jets, covering 810,000 kilometres, burning 1.2 million litres of jet fuel, and, for those who are counting, producing 3,200 tons of carbon dioxide. Bloomberg’s No. 1 destination was not the Sudan or Afghanistan, where his money might actually help people; his favourite destination was the Bahamas.

Here are the top end C40 targets for 2030, just seven years away. There’s cutting steel and cement use 56 per cent. There’s increasing the number of people in each building 20 per cent—and the Reserve Bank governor recently made a similar comment. There’s eliminating—yes, eliminating!—meat consumption and dairy consumption. There’s limiting buying new clothes to three new items a year—three; that’s three pairs of undies. Food waste is to be reduced 75 per cent, mostly from homes. We’ll shop once a week, buy our allocated ration from bulk displays and eat everything we buy or starve until our next allocated shopping day. There’ll be programmable digital currency to ensure compliance.

These rules are for you, for us, not for the elites and their nomenklatura, their henchmen in the media, academia, the bureaucracy and politics. The rules never apply to the people who make them.

One Nation stands opposed to serfdom. One Nation works for freedom, basic rights and free choice.

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How the West was Lost

On the one hand, Australia bans the use of its own natural gas, while on the other hand plans huge gas processing and export expansion for international bidders.

We’re sending our natural resources overseas to power the economic prosperity of China, India and other nations. Then we’re buying back unreliable wind and solar manufactured with our gas and coal.

Maybe the Greens will appreciate the irony when they’re sitting in the dark without cooking and heating. Gas should be our back-up to the energy shortfalls, not the bad guy.

This war on gas is a heist under the banner of UN ‘net-zero’. The only winners are the billionaires involved with the corrupt UN-WEF “sustainability” agenda.

Transcript

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I thank Senator Pocock for his motion. I question why we need a dedicated export facility for the Beetaloo Basin’s natural gas. Australia has 10 natural gas export terminals—two in Darwin. Beetaloo output is expected to be huge, and much of it should be used here in Australia, not exported.

Australia’s parasitic mal-investments in wind and solar are destroying our energy generation capacity. Gas generation is essential to keeping the lights on, while commercial gas hot water and cooking are likewise essential. Everyday Australians will never accept the insane idea that Australia should stop using gas. This is despite the advertising spent on climate campaigns designed to do one thing—line the pockets of climate carpetbaggers, like those funding teal senator David Pocock’s campaign. Gas connections are being banned in new builds and existing lines will be ripped out because, at some point, we will need to recycle that copper, since world production will never be able to supply the copper needed for UN net zero.

My own building that I rent in Campbell, in Canberra, sent out a note to owners this week saying that the body corporate had been told they will need to remove the gas hot water system, rip out the pipes and remove all gas appliances by 2035. Homeowners will have to pay the bill—likely, over a million dollars all up. This is a brand-new building! What a waste.

On one hand, the green ideologues will require owners to spend tens of thousands of dollars per unit to pull out near-new hot water heating, gas lines and equipment and replace them with less efficient solutions. Then the ideologues will complain, ‘Rents have gone up!’ Of course rents are going up. Green ideology is forcing rents up by forcing landlords’ costs up. How are the climate lobby not connecting the dots here? How much more productive capacity are we going to rip out, to replace it with shiny new electric capacity that doesn’t do the job as well as gas? Never mind the environmental waste of tossing millions of stoves into landfill where they can rot beside broken and toxic solar panels and wind-turbine blades! And these people were worried about plastic straws! Please!

One gas provider proudly claims on their website that they’re banning gas to ‘save the planet’. No, you are depriving Australians of our own gas so you can sell it for a larger profit into an energy starved world market, a situation the government’s price cap on gas made worse because it made exports more profitable than domestic sales in a disrupted supply market.

Meanwhile, another energy retailer is advertising on their website—listen to this—that:

We all like to do our bit for the planet, so you’ll be happy to know you can reduce your household carbon emissions by switching from appliances running on grid electricity to natural gas.

It goes on to say that ‘gas is the perfect partner for solar’ and by connecting your home to natural gas you ‘can lower your carbon emissions by up to 77 per cent in Victoria compared to electric cooking and hot water appliances.’ Which is it? Is gas a perfect partner to solar or is it environmental vandalism?

Another energy provider’s website has a spiel about renewable gas, which turns out to be hydrogen. Hydrogen is not even a viable fuel yet as it takes huge amounts of energy to make it out of water and yet they have rebranded it already. That must be some sort of record! What a mess climate carpetbaggers have created through their green and teal shills in the Senate. What I have not heard in the gas debate at all is a major reason gas is better than electricity, and that is transmission loss. Electricity suffers transmission loss getting from the point of generation miles out in the countryside to homes in the city. Gas does not suffer a transmission loss. Factor that into energy calculations and electrification becomes an even worse idea.

We’re banning Australians from accessing our own natural resources while allowing our gas to be flogged off to international bidders at a premium just as our coal is shipped to China where it powers the solar panel and wind turbine export industry that the Greens and teal Senator David Pocock worship with no hint of irony. Meanwhile, a rapidly increasing global energy market values and prefers hydrocarbon fuels, coal, oil and gas. The West is deindustrialising while the rest of the world, including China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, are industrialising using our gas and coal. The war on gas is a heist of our nation’s natural resources. We’re sacrificing economic prosperity and the opportunity for advancement for all the Australians in the name of a corrupt United Nations sustainability agenda that sustains nobody except the billionaires behind it all. It is wealth transfer from we the people to global billionaire elites and global predators like BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street.

One Nation rejects the electrification of Australia’s gas supply and questions the Middle Arm project. Natural gas must stay as a choice for all— (Time expired)

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Australia turning into a spiderweb of high voltage transmission lines

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It’s estimated that 28,000km of power lines will be required to help the government’s net-zero pipe dream.

In many places, these powerlines are being proposed over prime agricultural land with the owners having their property compulsorily resumed.

I spoke in support of a inquiry to give affected landowners a voice as the government bulldozes over them on their way off the wind and solar cliff.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I want to acknowledge the people in the gallery. My brothers and sisters in Queensland amongst the rural sector were at a property rights conference just last Friday. The stories about the so-called green power—wind and solar—are well and truly horrific.  

People are just starting to wake up to the blight that is coming upon this country. And it’s not just the city people paying for power; it’s rural landholders and farmers losing their land, losing their livelihoods and losing their health. The social, economic and moral impacts are enormous and devastating. And the anti-human Greens are responsible.  

I want to compliment the farmers who have come here today. Thank you so much, because what you’re showing is democracy in action. You’re putting pressure on the people down here in this chamber. We are paid by these people. We serve them.  

Recently I was in the wonderful Widgee community to listen to people about the Queensland government’s plan to destroy their national park and communities in order to build a high voltage powerline. Electricity transmission has become a controversial topic in recent years. The UN’s 2050 net zero—next to zero—needs a huge spend on wind turbines and solar panels, inevitably located in the bush and requiring tens of thousands of kilometres of transmission lines to bring the power all the way to the cities. 

Long transmission lines were not needed when coal power kept lights on and fridges running, lifting our beautiful country into a period of prosperity and stability. 

The woke Left—the socialist Left—are destroying what works and replacing it with a short-lived, unscientific exercise in feelings. Net zero will need $50 billion spent just on transmission lines, every cent of which will come out of the pockets of everyday Australians and electricity users, including manufacturers. Queensland Premier Palaszczuk’s plan for a big battery in the Pioneer Valley calls for peak generation of five million kilowatts of electricity to be delivered into a 275-kilovolt transmission line. It’s absolute insanity, deceit and arrogance. Premier, where’s the costing on the several thousand kilometres of additional lines necessary to carry that amount of power into the grid without melting the wires? Are you forgetting that melted wires is exactly what happened when the Kennedy renewables project was connected to the grid, and that was less than one per cent of the Pioneer project? 

It’s a fact that Katherine Myers from Victoria addressed the Property Rights conference in Gympie on the weekend. She told us that 80 per cent of solar and wind in western Victoria is not connected to the grid. You guys have blown that money and now you’re wanting to tear up farms to get it to the cities. Once wind and solar wear out, which takes only 12 years—and that’s the reason they’re called renewables, by the way—and taxpayers become jack of this ruinous drain on public finances the bush will be left a wasteland of glass, toxic chemicals, rusted steel towers, concrete and fallen wind turbines full of oil and dangerous chemicals. Do you know why they’re called renewables? Because you have to renew the bloody things every 12 years. In the space of building one power station you need to build four generations of solar and wind. That’s why they’re renewables. 

Wires melting is exactly what happened when the Kennedy renewables project was connected to the grid, and that’s less than one per cent of the Pioneer project. Nothing stacks up—nothing. Their owners are Bahamian shelf companies and Chinese shelf companies, which have no intention of remediating this inevitable environmental disaster. Who will be left with this legacy of blown toxic panels and wind turbines? You will be. That’s why we need this inquiry to explore this issue. 

One Nation stands opposed to green vandalism underway in rural Australians’ backyards just so that wealthy, ignorant and uncaring inner-city anti-human Greens and teals can feel better about their inhuman energy consumption myths. Why do the Greens hate nature? Let’s look at their track record. They chop down trees to make way for steel and fibreglass monuments to the sky god of warming, who is celebrated with religious fervour by people who think themselves too clever for religion. Tens of thousands of hectares have been cleared and devastated for electricity interconnector easements. It’s a permanent scar across the landscape for no reason.  

The seabed is marked with two new interconnectors to get hydropower from Tasmania to energy deficient Victoria. Suicide is what’s going on with the Victorian government. They’re suiciding their state. Productive farmland and native grasses are covered in a carpet of glass and silicon reflectors. The sea is supposed to shine, not the countryside. Productive land is dug up as a graveyard for expired wind turbine blades. There’s strip mining of the seabed for rare earth minerals to make EVs and big batteries. Beautiful natural lakes in China are polluted with toxic chemical run-off from the processing of rare earths. The Greens look the other way with this environmental vandalism because ignoring environmental standards is essential to bring the price of solar down so that they can claim the price of solar is falling. 

This is the stuff that comes out of the south end of a northbound bull. So there’s China’s environmental standards and the health of the locals, but who cares about children being devastated? Our beautiful bird life is sliced and diced in wind turbines across the country. If oil were the culprit, they would never shut up about birds. But with wind turbines: ‘Shoosh. No-one mention the dead birds.’ 

I make this offer to the Greens: come camping with me. Let me show you the beauty of this amazing countryside and then perhaps then you will be less likely to chop it down; cover it in glass, steel and concrete; pollute it; and lock it away so nobody but a chosen few can appreciate the beauty. One Nation is now the party of the environment. 

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Will the Australian Energy Regulator sacrifice price or reliability to reduce emissions?

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Currently, the government agencies that run our electricity grid are meant to balance 5 objectives: price, quality, safety, reliability and security of supply. The Government wants to add emissions reduction to those objectives.

I don’t think the objectives of price, reliability, security of supply and emissions reduction can all be achieved at the same time so my question to the Australian Regulator was, which objective will you sacrifice for emissions reduction to satisfy the net-zero pipe dream?

Transcript

Senator Roberts: Thank you all for being here today. The national electricity objectives include price, quality, safety, reliability and security of supply. The government is now intending to add emissions reduction to those objectives. You, the Australian Energy Regulator, have made a submission to the government’s consultation process on the draft National Energy Laws Amendment (Emissions Reduction Objectives) Bill 2022. In that submission you said, ‘The AER supports including an emissions reduction objective.’ This is support for a proposed government policy. Surely the very first value of the Australian Public Service is meant to be impartiality. Why are you commenting one way or another on support for a government policy?

Ms Savage: I guess my objective from that would be that we are there to try and meet Australia’s emission reduction targets in the least-cost way. That’s part of our job, and our decision-making needs to ensure that happens. Our purpose as the Australian Energy Regulator is to ensure Australian consumers are better off now and in the future, so when we assess what tools we need, as the Australian Energy Regulator, to actually do our job effectively and to make sure that we can deliver upon that purpose, our considered view is that change to the legislation, to the objective for which we have to use our decision-making, is required and is important to us being able to deliver upon our purpose. So it speaks fundamentally to our role rather than to the government’s policy.

Senator Roberts: Do you consider that the Australian Public Service Values and Code of Conduct apply to you?

Ms Savage: I absolutely do, Senator.

Senator Roberts: Do you consider that the Australian Public Service value of impartiality applies to you?

Ms Savage: Yes, I do.

Senator Roberts: Why are you stating support for a proposed government policy, rather than impartially commenting on your ability to carry it out?

Ms Savage: I’m not commenting on the policy; I’m commenting on the importance of the change to the work of the Australian Energy Regulator. In that regard, my obligation is to make sure that we have the tools we need to discharge our function such that we can ensure Australian consumers are better off now and in the future.

Senator Roberts: I put it to you that you are breaching the Australian Public Service value of impartiality by advocating support for a government policy. I would like you to take on notice to fully explain how advocating support for government policy in a submission is impartial.

Ms Savage: Senator, as I’ve said, we didn’t advocate support for the policy. We’re advocating support for the changes to the laws that are required to enable us to do our function.

Senator Roberts: ‘The Australian Energy Regulator’—your words—’supports including an emissions reduction objective.’

Ms Savage: That is the change to the legislation required to do our function.

Senator Roberts: You’ve taken a side in this debate even before it’s started. You’re required to be impartial. Why were you not impartial?

Ms Savage: I have—

Senator Roberts: I don’t accept your answer.

Ms Savage: I hear that you don’t accept my answer, but my answer remains that we have asked for changes, and we constantly and repeatedly ask for changes to legislation—and it’s in our strategic plan to do this—when it’s required for us to fulfil our strategic purpose, and that is to ensure that energy consumers are better off now and in the future. Limb 4 of our strategic plan actually says we will inform debate about Australia’s transition, and that’s to ensure that we can do our job to make sure Australian consumers are better off now and in the future.

Senator Roberts: I suggest you read the Australian Public Service Values and Code of Conduct.

Ms Savage: I have, Senator.

Senator Roberts: The current objectives of price, quality, safety, reliability and security are sound objectives. What level of compromise on price or reliability are you willing to accept to achieve the objective of emissions reduction?

Ms Savage: When it comes time for us to consider the new objectives, with all of the limbs in them, including the emissions reduction objective, we’ll need to think about the value of carbon emissions reductions in the context of the target to achieve net zero by 2050, to ensure that the investments that happen in things like transmission or gas networks are consistent with achieving that goal at least cost to consumers, which is where that element of making sure consumers are better off now and in the future arises.

Senator Roberts: So my question—I’ll say it again—is: what level of compromise on price or reliability are you willing to accept to achieve the objective of emissions reduction? You’ve now got a new objective.

Ms Savage: I don’t see it as compromise; I see it as optimising.

Senator Roberts: Can I take note of that?

Ms Savage: Absolutely.

Senator Roberts: It will be interesting in the future. What are you going to do if the objective of emissions reduction conflicts with those existing objectives?

Ms Savage: We will need to optimise against the current list of objectives, and the inclusion of emissions reduction which become another limb. Already, today, we have to make judgements and choices between the existing elements of those objectives. We constantly have to be thinking about trade-offs on behalf of customers in terms of price, quality, safety and reliability, and we will also be considering emissions reduction in that context.

Senator Roberts: I put it to you that there is no way that the objectives of price, reliability and emissions reduction can be achieved at the same time, so which one will you prioritise?

Chair: Senator Roberts, I wonder if your questions are getting a bit accusatory. You have asked questions, and Ms Savage is responding to your questions with her perspective.

Senator Roberts: I have constituents that are deeply concerned about electricity prices that have trebled in a couple of decades.

Chair: You are open to ask your questions, but I would ask you to mind your manner.

Senator Roberts: Thank you, Chair. I say it again: I put it to you that there is no way the objective of price reliability and emissions reduction can be achieved at the same time—the facts show that—so which one will you prioritise? You’ve actually supported the government and its policy, so which one will you prioritise?

Ms Savage: An example might help. Currently, we have to think about price, safety, security, reliability.  When we make a judgement, we have to think about price and reliability, and those two things aren’t always the same thing. More reliability can mean higher prices, and higher prices can mean lower reliability. On safety and security, we just gave, in response to Senator Van’s question, an example of abolishing gas connections; there is a safety issue there. We’re always and constantly in our work needing to optimise across those different objectives within the national electricity and gas objectives, and, with the inclusion of emissions, it will be the same type of task. We have to look at it in its whole, and we have to optimise across all of those objectives. We do it today and will be able to it tomorrow.

Senator Roberts: My view is that the people who tell us wind and solar are the cheapest form of electricity are lying. If they are the cheapest form of electricity, why do we need to change the electricity objectives to include emissions reductions, so they are favoured?

Ms Savage: You are thinking about generation technologies. We do a lot of work with the Australian Energy Regulator in electricity and gas networks, and that’s nothing to do with renewable energy necessarily. If I take a gas network, for example, and if you came to me as a gas company and said, ‘I need to invest in an electric compressor instead of a gas compressor because I’m trying to meet my emissions reduction objective,’ then that is something that we could not consider necessarily under the existing obligations. Under a future set of arrangements that’s something we could consider, so it’s not necessarily about wind and solar; it’s about lots of little choices that go along in the system to make sure it all adds up to the least-cost way of meeting our climate goals.

Senator Roberts: If the ministers past and present are not lying and solar and wind are cheap and reliable, it would fit into existing objectives of price and reliability. Why do we need to change the objectives if the climate ministers are not lying?

Ms Savage: As I just said—and I’ll repeat my answer—it’s not always about wind and solar.  Sometimes it will be about networks, and, in fact, most of the changes to the objective for the work of the Australian Energy Regulator will be about transmission, distribution, electricity and gas networks.

Senator Roberts: So it won’t be about price versus emissions, yet everywhere in the world every country that has a substantial proportion of solar and wind has had a dramatic increase in prices—that’s fact.

Ms Savage: Are you asking me a question?

Senator Roberts: Yes, I’m asking you a question. How can you justify the statement that there won’t be a trade-off between emissions and price?

Ms Savage: I have covered that in answering the question before, which is that we’ll be optimising across the new emissions reduction objective with the other elements of the national electricity and gas objectives.

Senator Roberts: What is the Australian Energy Regulator’s position on nuclear energy?

Ms Savage: We don’t have a position on nuclear energy.

Senator Roberts: So now you’re impartial?

Ms Savage: We’re always impartial.

Chair: Last question, Senator Roberts.

Senator Roberts: You say as part of your retail energy market regulation, your other roles include, secondly, reporting on performance of the market and energy businesses, including affordability and disconnection of customers for non-payment of energy bills. What is the latest disconnection rate in each state? Could you take that on notice?

Ms Savage: I can tell you at the macro level and take the state based data on notice. For ’21-22, which is the last full financial year of data we have, the number of disconnections was about 30,000, which is significantly less than what we saw before COVID. At the time before COVID it was 70,000 customers per year.

Senator Roberts: Could you take on notice to give us the five years—actually the three years?

Ms Savage: I have the five years here at the macro level if you’d like it.

Senator Roberts: I would like to know the states as well because I want to see how the different states are behaving.

Ms Savage: Actually, I have got the states here. Would you like me to read them out?

Senator Roberts: If you could put it in writing, that would be good.

Senator McAllister: As you can imagine, it ends up being like 20 numbers.

Chair: I wonder if we could just copy it in the break and circulate it—just for ease. Is that okay with you, Senator Roberts?

Senator Roberts: That’s fine.

Ms Savage: At a cumulative total, in 2017-18 it was 72,000 and in 2018-19 it was 70,000. The Australian Energy Regulator then asked retailers to stop disconnecting customers during COVID and we saw a big drop down: 43,000 in 2019-20; 17,000 and 2020-21; and then it’s back at 29,000 in 2021-22.

Senator Roberts: Thank you.

/3 Comments/by

The market is not abandoning coal, the government is forcing the market to abandon coal

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Australians are constantly told that banks, electricity markets and buyers are all turning away from coal and gas because it’s too expensive or the buyers just don’t like it anymore. It’s bullshit.

It is the Government that is applying direct pressure on coal and gas while it gives wind and solar a free ride. There is a sneaky, hidden piece of legislation called the Renewable Energy Shortfall Charge that is enforced by the Clean Energy Regulator (CER).

It forces your electricity company to buy a percentage of all of their electricity from wind and solar complexes. If your electricity company buys too much coal or gas fired electricity, they have to pay to buy green credits (generation certificates) off wind and solar generators or they will be fined.

Like slowly boiling a frog, the percentage of wind and solar your electricity company is forced to buy has been ratcheted up from 0.65% in 2001 to 18.64% this year. The increases are only accelerating.

So remember when anyone tells you “the market” is abandoning coal that it’s a lie. It’s only the government that’s choosing to abandon coal.

Transcript

Senator Roberts: I want to get help with an issue that constituents want to understand and so do I; I don’t understand it. It has relevance to the primacy of energy costs in the budget. I’m hoping to get into a relatively complex area and get your evidence or confirmation on how the renewable energy shortfall charge, under the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act, works. Perhaps you could bring anyone to the table who has expertise in that.

Mr Parker: Sure. Mark Williamson has the expertise.

Senator Roberts: Thank you, Mr Williamson. I will try to step my way through the legislation here, and you can pick me up where I’m wrong or missing something. The renewable energy shortfall charge applies to liable entities?

Mr M Williamson: Correct.

Senator Roberts: Which is defined in sections 35, 31, 32 and 33, and essentially talks about entities that make a wholesale acquisition of electricity.

Mr M Williamson: Yes. For simplicity, these are typically electricity retailers.

Senator Roberts: Retailers.

Mr M Williamson: Yes.

Senator Roberts: Wholesalers?

Mr M Williamson: The electricity retailers are typically the liable parties.

Senator Roberts: Okay; they are the liable parties because they sell it to the end user.

Mr M Williamson: Correct.

Senator Roberts: Okay. Thank you. That’s great.

Mr Parker: Or large users, people directly purchasing electricity.

Senator Roberts: So large users who buy direct can also be facing these charges.

Mr Parker: Correct.

Mr M Williamson: Correct.

Senator Roberts: Can I get you to explain who the liable entities for the renewable energy shortfall charge are in simple terms—again, retail or large users?

Mr M Williamson: I need to frame and explain the renewable energy target for you. It sets an obligation on these retailers or large users who are buying direct to surrender to us each year a certain number of large-scale generation certificates and small-scale technology certificates. Those amounts are based on percentages set each year in regulation by the minister. Effectively, if you’re an electricity retailer, you take your acquisition of electricity in megawatt hours, you multiply it by those percentages and that tells you the number of certificates that you need to surrender to us. If a liable entity does not surrender the certificates or surrenders fewer than they should, that makes them liable for the shortfall charge.

Senator Roberts: So it’s not power generators and not wholesalers; it’s just retail and large consumers, as Mr Parker said.

Mr M Williamson: Correct; and they’re only liable for the shortfall charge if they do not surrender enough certificates to us to meet their renewable energy target liability.

Senator Roberts: Can you talk me through the large-scale generation certificates that you just mentioned.  What are they and what is the effect of surrendering them for that company?

Mr M Williamson: Large-scale generation certificates are issued for each accredited power station that’s from a renewable energy source.

Senator Roberts: Solar or wind, for example?

Mr M Williamson: Correct. Hydro, as well, is quite common. They get a certificate for every net megawatt hour of generation. Those certificates can be used on the demand side to equip liability, so they can be sold to electricity retailers or big users, or they can be voluntarily cancelled to prove the use of renewable energy. For example, you may have heard of the GreenPower scheme. That operates in a way that businesses who want to have more renewable energy use proven, other than just the statutory renewable energy target, can buy and cancel large-scale generation certificates.

Senator Roberts: So a coal-fired power station would not get them?

Mr M Williamson: That’s correct.

Senator Roberts: Definitely not. Solar and wind would. And purchasers must buy at least 18.64 per cent right now of solar or wind power or hydro.

Mr M Williamson: Effectively, that’s the case. I think that percentage you’ve mentioned is the renewable power percentage and so, yes, those electricity retailers or big users multiply their electricity acquisitions by that percentage. That tells them the number of certificates that they have to cancel to us.

Senator Roberts: I’ve got some figures in front me about the renewable power percentage. I’ll just go through them. In 2001, it started—so that’s 22 years ago—and it was just 0.24 per cent, about a quarter of one per cent. Then it went up in the following year. You mentioned that this is a ministerial directive.

Mr M Williamson: The minister sets these percentages, based on calculations that we do each year, but the actual targets are set in the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act. A certain number of gigawatt hours of generation each year was set in the act. That got to the target, which is 33,000 gigawatt hours, which is set in the legislation from 2020, and that same number continues to 2030. That 33,000 gigawatt-hour target was reset in mid-2015 by parliament. In the early stages of the scheme, there was a table in the act that set the numbers that dictated where that percentage would be set.

Senator Roberts: Is that table in section 39(1) of the act?

Mr M Williamson: I’d have to ask the general counsel to try to find the right part of the legislation.

Senator Roberts: While we’re waiting for confirmation, in 2001 it was 0.24. In 2002, the following year, it was 0.62, and it had slow increments, mild increments, until 2010. It took 10 years to get to 5.986 per cent. Then, from 2011 onwards, it rose, in 11 years, to 18.64. So it was 5.6 per cent in the first 10 years and there was a 13 per cent increase in the next 11 years.

Mr M Williamson: These were legislated increases. That was the way that the scheme was designed.

Senator Roberts: I want to understand this. First of all, I’ve focused mainly on the climate, because I haven’t found anyone who can give me the science that proves the need for this. But I haven’t focused on the energy, and that’s where I want to go in the future. That means resolving some of the complexities. I want to no-understand this because we always hear that it’s the market that’s forcing coal-fired generators out and that one likes coal. Yet it appears to me, with this renewable energy shortfall charge—a fine, if you like—that it’s actually the government forcing the retail sellers and the end users to buy wind and solar energy or, essentially, they’ll be faced with this fine. Is that correct?

Mr M Williamson: The construct of the scheme is that the retailers should buy the certificates. The shortfall charge is only where they do not choose to or are unable to get the certificates that they need. So it’s the default mechanism. But the way the scheme works is that the retailers should get in and be buying renewable energy. That should bring through more renewable energy, and that’s the way the scheme works.

Senator Roberts: It appears deceptive from one perspective. I’m not accusing you of doing that, but it appears deceptive from one perspective, hidden in the complex legalese. Have you ever advertised to the public that the government, through you, is forcing retail purchasers and large-end users to purchase more and more wind and solar?

Mr M Williamson: We don’t do specific broad community education, but all of this is regularly published; it’s published by other bodies, such as the Australian Energy Regulator and the Australian Energy Market Commission. It is generally well known that there’s an obligation on the electricity retailers. As I said, a lot of electricity users are choosing to buy GreenPower and to go further than the minimum statutory target.

Senator Roberts: What we have is a consumer faced with a choice of buying electricity. If they don’t buy an adequate amount or proportion of solar and wind, they will have to pay a charge in addition to the subsidies that the solar and wind producers are getting.

Mr M Williamson: No. The obligation is set with electricity retailers. There are a lot of electricity retailers. In a competitive market, they should source the certificates at the best price they can and have the lowest level of input cost for the renewable energy target.

Senator Roberts: My point, Mr Williamson and Mr Parker—you can correct me or confirm—is that, in my opinion, now that I’ve had it clarified, this is the most significant intervention in the electricity market that the government has ever conducted, and not just this government but previous governments as well. By ministerial directive via legislation, they’re ratcheting up the percentage of renewable electricity that every electricity buyer has to buy, or face a fine over the course of 20 years.

Mr M Williamson: Let me clarify, again, that the underlying numbers that lead to those percentages are locked in the act, so parliament took a decision to lock those numbers in. We do complex calculations to convert that to a percentage and they are put to the minister. The act sets out the things that the minister must consider. This is all set in legislation that was passed in parliament.

Senator Roberts: Thank you for affirming that yet again. My mistake: I thought I said ‘in the act’, but maybe I didn’t. Doesn’t this confirm that solar and wind are much more expensive? We’ve all been hearing the fluff that says people are going away from coal because it’s more expensive. Solar and wind get subsidies; plus, if somebody buys coal-fired power, the retailers or large-end users can be up for a charge. Doesn’t this really confirm that, without subsidies and without a throttle on the coal-fired competition, wind and solar are too expensive?

Mr M Williamson: Not in my view; I wouldn’t agree with that at all.

Senator Roberts: On what basis?

Mr M Williamson: There are incentives in the form of those large-scale generation certificates that go to the generators.

Senator Roberts: The solar and wind generators?

Mr M Williamson: Correct. Effectively, who benefits often depends on the nature of power purchase agreements between those solar and wind power station operators and the retailers. But, in essence, the numbers—if you look at the Australian Energy Market Operator’s Quarterly Energy Dynamics report, every time that wind and solar are setting the price in the wholesale electricity market, the prices are very low and, in some cases, in negative territory. It’s quite clear that, in fact, wind and solar are driving down wholesale electricity prices, which are also an input to retailers and to all of us as consumers.

Senator Roberts: I would say that’s an aberration. What’s happening is that coal is actually being forced out by the governments—I say ‘governments’ plural—and it’s a direct market intervention in addition to the subsidies. The subsidies enhance solar and wind; the charge slams coal.

Senator McAllister: Senator Roberts, in your questions just now and, indeed, yesterday, you mentioned subsidies. Are there any particular subsidies that you’re interested in? I think it’s been challenging sometimes for witnesses to engage with your questioning, because you don’t name them and I’m just unclear what it is that you’re referring to.

Senator Roberts: Subsidies on solar and wind.

Senator McAllister: Issued by whom?

Senator Roberts: Federal government, state governments.

Senator McAllister: Is there a program in particular that you’re seeking information on?

Senator Roberts: No, I don’t have any one in mind in particular.

Senator McAllister: I see. Please go on.

Chair: Senator Roberts, I’m going to wind you up as well. We can come back to you, if you need.

Senator Roberts: I’d just make the point that the market is not abandoning coal; the government is forcing buyers to not buy coal. That’s the point.

Chair: Thank you for your statement.

Senator Roberts: Thank you very much, Mr Williamson, for clarifying.

/by

Clean Energy Finance Corporation defends rubbish returns on wind and solar

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The ASX200 is the Australian benchmark for investment returns, if you’re not matching it many people will ask why you even bothered.

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation “invests” your taxes into pipe dream “renewable” projects. We’re told that these investments are some of the best things in finance, in reality I think they are a scam.

My question was simple, if the CEFC is making such good investments, why would putting money into the ASX200 have made a 22% better profit over the last 10 years?

Click here for Transcript

Senator Roberts: At the last Senate estimates, I submitted some questions on notice asking for how the returns for wind and solar investments compare to other financial investments or benchmarks. The CEFC answered very vaguely and essentially said, ‘Depends.’ The number for that question and response is SQ23-000642. In your annual report, you are happy to tout a percentage but not in your answer to me, apparently. In your report you say, since the Clean Energy Finance Corporation’s inception you have achieved an annualised return of 4.48 per cent, which adds up to 55 per cent in total over 10 years. The ASX 200 over the same period has returned 67 per cent. That’s 27 April 2012 to 20 May 2023. An investment in the Australian benchmark would have returned a 22 per cent better profit than the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Why are your investments in supposedly clean energy, which is not clean—just have a look at what happens when heavy metals out of abandoned solar panels get into the water supply or oil from a malfunctioning wind turbine leaks into the ocean—so poor compared to the Australian benchmark?

Mr Learmonth: There are a few things in there. Firstly, that 4.48 that you refer to doesn’t just cover renewable energy of wind and solar, if that’s what’s going to be in your sights; it covers the whole portfolio, and that’s everything from green bonds, loans to industrial companies to reduce emissions, technology investments with venture capital, limited partnership interests in funds in sectors like the built environment, agriculture and infrastructure. So it’s very, very broad. You can’t possibly hone it in just around wind and solar.

The other thing I would note is you’re making the point that our returns appear inadequate or are below what other commercial benchmarks should be. The CEFC’s capital is about driving policy outcomes as well as making appropriate return, so it’s about decarbonising the electricity sector. It’s about fuel switching and energy efficiency. In many cases, we may make a below-market return because that’s what’s needed to bring a project online or take a technology down a learning curve. So I don’t think you can use those very sweeping references to apply to the CEFC.

Senator Roberts: Let me interpret that. You’re saying that the subpar performance is a cost of subsidising government policy objectives?

Mr Learmonth: I wouldn’t put it like that. I would say that if you felt that we weren’t reaching some kind of commercial benchmark, that’s probably a reflection of the way that we are using our capital to deliver on the policy objectives of the CEFC. But, equally, we are a lender. Today 70 per cent, broadly, of our portfolio is debt. So you can’t compare it to an index like the ASX or some ETF or whatever it might be, because a secured loan is a relatively low yielding investment compared to putting money into a technology company where you might expect 25 per cent. So, again, I don’t think we are comparing apples with apples.

Senator Roberts: That’s fair enough. I’m asking for more details, because the response to the question on notice was not detailed and not respectful, in my opinion. It was very vague.

Mr Learmonth: I’m happy to provide you with more information around that and break it down by sectors to demonstrate that and give you a bit more background to the return, the 4.48 that you refer to.

Senator Roberts: Can you take that on notice?

Mr Learmonth: I can do that, very happily.

Senator Roberts: Perhaps something else you could take on notice is: why should Australian taxpayers be giving you the extra $20.5 billion Labor has given you in this budget, given you are not even close to the Australian benchmark. You can explain why you’re not close to the benchmark. That’s fair enough. But why should the Australian taxpayers be giving you an extra $20.5 billion?

Mr Learmonth: I can start, and I’m sure others may have views on this. The money is being appropriated and delivered to the CEFC to help deliver on some very defined policy objectives, like Rewiring the Nation, like Household Energy Upgrades and, thirdly, investing in growing technology companies here in Australia. We were proven to have done a very good job over the last 10 years on investing, lending and using capital to achieve these environmental outcomes. One can only assume that’s why the government was prepared to back us into doing more.

Senator McAllister: Senator Roberts, obviously you fundamentally don’t believe that it is necessary to reduce carbon emissions.

Senator Roberts: I know so.

Senator McAllister: It is a difference of opinion between you and the Australian government. As I understand it, it is also a difference opinion—

Senator Roberts: Minister, you have repeatedly failed to provide the evidence for your policies.

Senator McAllister: between you and the opposition, as I understand their policy.

Senator Roberts: I think the opposition wouldn’t agree with me.

Senator McAllister: Putting that to one side, having agreed that our policy is to reduce Australia’s emissions, we therefore have to look at the policy levers that are available to us. One of the very successful levers, in my opinion, in the Australian landscape has been the CEFC. It is a different model to one that might conventionally be adopted using grants or direct funding to proponents, and instead seeks to increase financial flows into the clean energy sector, as Mr Learmonth has explained to you. It is one of a number of tools that the Australian government seeks to use to drive investment in the clean energy sector, and it has met that objective.

Senator Roberts: I understand that, but, repeatedly, you have failed to provide the specific effect of human carbon dioxide on any climate factor—temperature, storms, rainfall. You’ve repeatedly failed to provide that basis for policy. The whole thing is just running on fluff.

Let’s continue the questions. I asked you on notice at the last Senate estimates if you had done modelling on what percentage of your returns are attributable to government subsidies and policies. Your answer to me was ‘yes’, as part of your due diligence. It is question No. 2 from the question on notice that I asked before. Question No. 2 says: Have you done any modelling or investigation to find what percentage of these returns are attributable to government subsidies or policies?

Your answer was: All revenue streams are taken into account as part of transaction assessment and due diligence. So your answer to me was to say yes, as part of your due diligence. Given you’ve done that analysis, what percentage of returns for investments are attributable to government subsidies and policies?

Mr Learmonth: I’m just trying to understand your question, Senator. Our returns come from using government dollars—taxpayer dollars—that are either lent or invested by the CEFC. Therefore, using those dollars, we either receive interest or dividends, or, potentially, we might sell an equity investment and make a gain. That’s where our revenue comes from. When you ask what percentage of that is coming from government subsidies, all our capital is coming from the government. All our returns come from the deployment of government capital. I’m just trying to understand what you mean by ‘subsidies’ there.

Senator Roberts: Do you get a return on your investment?

Mr Learmonth: Absolutely—

Senator Roberts: So what percentage—

Mr Learmonth: You inquired about it earlier, and that’s correct.

Senator Roberts: Right. So what percentage of that is due to government subsidies?

Mr Learmonth: Again, I don’t quite understand your question because all our capital is provided by the government. Someone might say, ‘Well, that’s not really a subsidy, it’s a provision of capital from Treasury.’

Senator Roberts: Accept that.

Ms Learmonth: Therefore, we’re not the recipients of subsidies. I might see if my—

Senator Roberts: Let me—

Chair: Mr Learmonth, I wonder if you could, in a very pithy fashion, outline the kind of organisation you are and its intent, because I think the senator has misunderstood that.

Senator Roberts: Perhaps I could clarify something: what part of your returns from your borrowers enables them to succeed because of government subsidies? They wouldn’t have provided a return without those subsidies.

Mr Every: Are you thinking about matters such as the large-scale generation certificates, which the Renewable Energy Target—

Senator Roberts: No, I’m not thinking about that. I’m thinking about the actual return—the income that a person who is the borrower of your money, or our money, is able to make because of subsidies for solar and wind.  Without those subsidies, would you have got a return?

Mr Learmonth: Oh, so you’re referring to, say, a household subsidy for having solar panels, for example—

Senator Roberts: More to the point: you don’t lend to households, I take it?

Mr Learmonth: We do via intermediaries; we actually do. We use—

Senator Roberts: But most of your lending is to large—

Mr Learmonth: Yes, a substantial portion is to large projects, large companies. That’s part of it, but we also use intermediaries and partners like large Australian banks, for example, to provide mortgages for people to stimulate people to make their houses more energy efficient or to buy a more efficient home. They might access a green mortgage, so there’s a very broad range of borrowers. They pay back the loans out of the money that they’re generating in their business. That might be a small manufacturing company, it might be an agricultural company, or it might be a solar farm. Whether they are entitled through their businesses to subsidies, discounts or benefits through state and federal governments, one can only speculate about that.

Senator Roberts: Your mission and values say that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation is a specialist investor with a deep sense of purpose to invest as Australia’s green bank to help achieve our national goal of net zero emissions by 2050. How many of your borrowers make a return because of government subsidies for solar and wind? In other words, without those subsidies, you would not be getting a return.

Ms Learmonth: I’m not sure about that. Let’s talk about a solar or wind farm. We may lend them money to help them build out the generation plant, the wind turbines, the solar panels, for example. They either sell the electricity into the spot market, or they might have a contracting arrangement, so they generate income through that. Yes, a large utility-scale renewables project will also receive a generation certificate, a renewable certificate, which traces its way back to a different government policy, the RET, Renewable Energy Target, so some component of the income of a renewable energy project does come through a former government policy. But the majority of income comes from the sale of those electrons either to someone who wants them or into a market like the NEM spot market. They make that money, and, if we’re the senior lender, we’re the first person they’ll pay.  They’ll pay us back interest and principal through those revenues.

Senator Roberts: Do you have any idea why, when we’re told that solar and wind are now the cheapest form, we still need subsidies?

Mr Learmonth: We know that wind and solar, based on the cost of it and what they can produce, is today the lowest cost of energy.

Click here for Transcript

Senator Roberts: You told me in the answers to questions on notice that you’ve done the analysis. Now you’re telling me that we can only speculate on what those businesses are receiving in terms of subsidies that contribute to your returns. What is it?

Mr Learmonth: I guess I’m just trying to use some examples to try and flesh out what you mean by subsidies. Are they subsidies that are being provided to our borrowers?

Senator Roberts: Yes. You understand their money streams. What is the proportion of subsidies in there?  In other words, the government is paying to help you get a return on your loans.

Mr Learmonth: In some cases there are companies we have lent to that are recipients of state government benefits. And for some reason they might—

Senator Roberts: The point is you’re investing in something that needs subsidies to survive, so we’ve got the government giving money under a loan and then relying upon other subsidies, from the same taxpayers—maybe state, maybe federal—to get a return back.

Mr Learmonth: Just in terms of wind and solar, even if you backed out the subsidy around the generation certificate, they would in most cases still be able to pay their debt. We don’t come up with the subsidies. We are there looking at projects and companies—

Senator Roberts: I’m not accusing you of coming up with the subsidies. I’m saying that your borrowers cannot pay it back without those subsidies.

Mr Learmonth: I don’t think that’s right.

Senator Roberts: Could you give me the figures that show that, please? You’ve said you’ve got the analysis.

Mr Learmonth: The only borrowers that we have where a part of their direct revenue source or generation may have some form of government subsidy is probably wind and solar, because they are recipients, but there are other ones that have no government subsidies.

Senator Roberts: Let’s move on to something that’s associated, because you don’t know the income streams. I also asked you in Senate estimates, on notice, what the risk to wind and solar investments was from a change in government policy. You didn’t answer what the risk was. You just said that you have assessed the risk, like any prudent investor.

I asked: Political risk is one of the most basic elements of a assessing a business case. What is the risk to wind and solar investments if the government were to abandon their net-zero policy?  Which some jurisdictions around the world are discussing right now. The answer I got was: The question is a hypothetical but suffice to say, like any prudent investor, the CEFC undertakes due diligence into risks to any revenue stream, and structures its investments to ensure that it is not unduly exposed to risk, including policy risk. If you have assessed the risk, what is the risk?

Mr Learmonth: What is the risk of a government abandoning—

Senator Roberts: Financial risk—what is the risk to your loan?

Mr Learmonth: It’s hard to speculate. We would look—

Senator Roberts: But you’ve assessed it.

Mr Learmonth: Yes, because we would have looked at it and we would have gone: What sort of generation would this wind or solar farm produce? Do we estimate that power prices over the term of our loan—it might be five years; it might be seven years—will introduce some element of risk to those cash flows? And then we would have looked at whether or not our debt could be paid back. If a future government changed policies around net zero, it would take some while before that potentially would have any impact. I think it’s not a risk that we would be factoring into it, because we’re looking at the more immediate and realistic options.

Senator Roberts: You’ve said you’ve done your due diligence but you can’t put a handle on the risk. I put it to you that the government abandoning net zero targets would be catastrophic for your investments. Without targets, there are no subsidies, and the generators couldn’t produce a return and pay back the loan.

Senator McAllister: Senator Roberts, I think the problem with the line of questioning you’re pursuing with Mr Learmonth is that you assume that investments in the National Electricity Market are driven by subsidies, which you have not identified. All over the world renewable energy is increasing because of its technological advantages and because of the cost profile of alternatives—

Senator Roberts: Hydrocarbons after—

Senator McAllister: May I finish?

Senator Roberts: Yes.

Senator McAllister: Particularly where either the overall demand in an electricity system is growing or assets need to be replaced. I think you have repeatedly mischaracterised Mr Learmonth’s answers to you and then put the question back to him in a form that misrepresents the position he has just put to you. To be fair to the officer, he is doing a good job at describing to you the processes that the CEFC go through in examining investment opportunities.

Senator Roberts: Well, combining what you’ve said—

Chair: Senator Roberts, I’m going to have to make this your last question.

Senator Roberts: I’ll move on. I note that, as you said in those same answers, you don’t screen any investments for connections to political donations. Don’t you think that some basic due diligence is needed?  Shouldn’t you be bringing it to the attention of the minister if you are about to give a company hundreds of millions of dollars and it has made a political donation?

Mr Learmonth: We undertake very significant due diligence on all our borrowers or investee companies. We would look at whether there was some overt political connection—

Mr Every: We’re actually required to under the AML/CTF laws, the anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing laws. We are required to identify politically exposed persons, and that is part of the due diligence.

Senator Roberts: Senator McAllister, in response to your comments: the world has globally invested trillions of dollars—I think the figure may be $150 trillion, but I may be wrong on that—and the share of energy used on the planet from hydrocarbons has gone from 82 per cent to 81 over the last 10 to 20 years, despite trillions of dollars going into solar and wind.

Chair: I’ll take that one as a comment.

Senator Roberts: Yes. It’s not a question; it’s a fact.

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Labor wants to kill the industries that just saved their budget

Without mining and agriculture our country would be toast. Yet Treasurer Jim Chalmers couldn’t bring himself to mention them once in his budget speech. I guess ‘coal’ and ‘iron ore’ are scary words to him.

Transcript

What are the two words too scary for the Treasurer to mention even once in this budget? They are mining and agriculture.

Ladies and gentlemen of Australia, booming mining and agriculture have yet again saved Australia’s economy. The budget surplus is due to mining and agricultural exports, not to the Treasurer.

Is he keeping it secret because Labor wants to continue to destroy these vital industries? We should be opening more coal mines, not blocking them. We should be building more coal-fired power stations, not blowing them up. And we should be setting our farmers free to feed and clothe the world.

Labor’s energy relief plan is an admission that net-zero policies cannot lower power prices. Today we have the highest ever amount of wind and solar, yet the Treasurer needs to step in and use taxpayer money to cover up how high they are driving power bills.

On inflation, how inflationary will 400,000 new migrants be? Every single one of the 400,000 people arriving this year will need a roof over their head, a home. That’s inflation.

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