All across Queensland, wind, solar and battery projects are being given free reign to clear the environment with minimal checks or consultation.
Bouldercombe residents are right to be concerned. A battery that was only one-tenth the size of the planned project caught fire there, and authorities were unable to put it out. The fire was just left to burn.
Only One Nation will reduce power bills and protect the environment by putting an end to the net-zero madness.
The coalition is complaining that Labor’s “renewables” target is falling behind, which is a good thing!
It’s time to tell foreign, unelected organisations backed by billionaire donors to stop dictating what we do in Australia and to bugger off. Australia’s wealth should be used to benefit Australians, plain and simple.
For those watching at home, we’re debating a motion the Liberals-Nationals coalition introduced proposing a matter of public importance. The motion complains that, ‘Labor’s 82 per cent renewables by 2030 target is way behind schedule.’ I have two responses to that: ‘Who cares!’ and ‘Good!’ Renewables are the collection of wind, solar, hydrogen, battery, pumped hydro and other scams that parasitic billionaires own and pump up with billions more in taxpayer subsidies. Every new solar panel and every new wind turbine installed represents another increase in Australians’ power bills.
I commend the Liberals and Nationals for further opening the debate on nuclear, which One Nation has always advocated. I cannot abide, though, the insistence that we do nuclear so that we can meet net zero targets. Net zero is economic suicide, human catastrophe and environmental disaster. The only thing that can truly bring Australian power bills down is coal and, in North Queensland, hydro. To comply with net zero, the coalition’s proposal is to forcibly acquire coal-fired power stations, shut them down and replace them with nuclear. We don’t need to end coal to do nuclear. We can do both. Why would we stop using coal here while we ship hundreds of millions of tonnes of coal to China and other countries every year. The United Nations World Economic Forum net zero target: that’s why. A foreign, unelected bureaucratic organisation is telling Australians what we can and can’t do.
There’s only one solution: tell the foreign, unelected organisations and their billionaire donors, like Bill Gates, to bugger off. Australia is one of the most resource-rich countries in the world. We should be using every bit of these resources right here for the benefit of Australians and especially for getting back to being the source of the world’s cheapest electricity. Put Australians first.
Everyday Australians have gone backwards by 8.2% since the Albanese Government came to power. The largest reason for this is the net zero madness, which has driven up the price of electricity across the entire supply chain, from the farm gate to supermarkets. While subsidies on household electricity provide temporary relief while in place, businesses don’t get the same assistance and must pass their increased costs onto you.
The solution is simple: end the net zero madness!
Under this Albanese Labor government, the buying power of wages in Australia is now eight per cent less than when Labor took office, the develop world’s worst result. Consequently, the Prime Minister’s approval rating has gone from positive 27 to negative six per cent in the latest Newspoll, and down 13 per cent as preferred Prime Minister. The conversation on social media and in person simply won’t move away from just how expensive it is now to live under Labor.
Fixing this mess is simple: end the net zero madness and destruction of Australia’s productive capacity. Net zero is increasing costs right through the supply chain and forcing up supermarket prices. One Nation would restore competition to sectors like supermarkets, which are oligopolies with foreign wealth funds manipulating prices for their own benefit and then taking those profits overseas, permanently reducing Australian wealth. Residents in some Brisbane suburbs have been hit with obscene rises in insurance of up to 10 times their previous premium. Insurance rose after Brisbane City Council produced a flood map reflecting climate change hysteria—fraud rather than actual historical flood data. Suncorp recently sold their bank because their insurance business is more profitable. How is that even possible in the free market? The Roy Morgan Research consumer confidence index has been below 85 for a record 82 successive weeks. One hundred is neutral; 85 is bad. Only one in 12 Australians expect good times ahead. Aren’t governments are supposed to make things better, not worse?
Into this environment of despair, the government has introduced its misinformation and disinformation bill. The government wants to talk about anything except housing and the cost of living under Labor. One Nation will remain focused on offering policies to encourage enterprise and hard work to encourage and support families. Its time all Australians can once again enjoy the riches our beautiful country has to offer.
The government is the largest spreader of misinformation, and its Chief of Propaganda is Chris Bowen. There’s no limit to the lies he’ll tell to push the Net-Zero pipe-dream that’s making everyone’s bills higher.
Chris Smith: Let’s get on to energy. Now, a report from the US Energy Department is saying that with nuclear electricity, prices will drop 37%. Chris Bowen says renewables will always be cheaper. This is basically a blatant lie, isn’t it, Malcolm?
Senator ROBERTS: Well, you stole the word right out of my mouth. It is a lie. It is fraud. Fraud is the presentation of something as it is not for personal gain. Chris Bowen has been pushing this bandwagon, the lies fraudulently to get political capital. He is telling lie after lie. Solar and wind are the most expensive forms of energy, that’s repeated everywhere. You know, AEMO doesn’t even cost the lowest price system. What they did with, relying on GenCost in the first place was false assumptions underpinning their calculations for solar and wind to make them look favorable and negative assumptions under coal to make it look unaffordable. That is completely false. And now we’ve got a circular argument that’s beaten back to us all the time. AEMO doesn’t cost the lowest price systems. It’s forced to exclude the cost of calculating coal or nuclear. This is rubbish – the stuff that comes out of the south end of north bound bull.
Chris Smith: Yeah, well, the CSIRO should be condemned completely for their reliance on that GenCost report. Malcolm.
Senator ROBERTS: That is fraud as well Chris. That was a deliberate misrepresentation of the energy structure. It was politically driven to achieve a political objective, the same as their climate. The CSIRO has admitted to me that the politician’s quoting them as saying that there’s a danger in carbon dioxide from human activity, the CSIRO has denied ever saying that and they said they would never say it. They admitted to me that the temperatures today was not unusual, not unprecedented. So the whole thing is based on the stuff that comes out of the south end of north bound bull. The CSIRO is guilty of misrepresenting climate science, misrepresenting nature and misrepresenting climate, misrepresenting energy. It’s just a fraud to extract money, to make billionaires richer, and to make, foreign multinationals richer.
Chris Smith: Spot on.
Senator ROBERTS: And we pay for it.
Chris Smith: Spot on. You’re not wrong.
The Greens’ war on coal is fuelled by misinformation. Modern coal is particulate free, and gas recovery technology on new coal fired power plants captures and converts steam stack gas into essential products like fertilizer, AdBlue, ethanol and even explosives, resulting in zero gasses being released into the atmosphere.
Coal mines are remediated to return the land to its original state. Many Australian mines have already transformed into productive pastures. In the long term, coal mines do not damage the country; rather, it’s industrial wind and solar that do. Blasting the tops off mountains to install industrial wind turbines is permanent environmental destruction.
Coal is essential for the health of our grid, for providing breadwinner jobs and to ensure prosperity of rural communities.
The Greens misinformation on coal has gone on long enough. Fifty thousand Australians rely directly on the coal industry for their livelihood. Given the services to coalmines, add another 50,000 people that coal keeps afloat in mining communities—actually, it’s much, much more than an additional 50,000, with a reported multiplier across Australia of six times the number of jobs directly from mines. They’re communities that, if this unscientific rubbish from the Greens goes on much longer, the Greens will decimate.
Modern coal plants are free from particulates and noxious gases. The only thing that leaves their steam stacks is water vapour and carbon dioxide: nature’s fertilisers. Australian and international firms now offer a process to capture those gases and convert them to productive things like fertiliser, AdBlue and ethanol—some things that the Greens will need so they can keep blasting the tops off mountains for wind turbines; that’s explosives. With this new capture and conversion technology, coal uses fewer resources and has a smaller environmental footprint than any nature-dependent power the Greens can advocate.
Coal is not damaging to the environment. To those who post photos online of coalmines, alleging environmental vandalism and that the planet is boiling, please tell the whole story and please tell the truth. Coalmines are rehabilitated after use. A few moments ago I posted a link to the New Hope Group’s website, showing the remediation of their coalmines that I’ve personally inspected. It’s beautiful green countryside supporting thousands of cattle and in turn supporting rural communities. Mines remediate; that is fact. And damage from wind turbines and their access road construction is permanent; that is fact.
Under current legislation, mining must pay into a bond fund to pay for remediation. No such provision exists for the net zero madness. Once this orgy of taxpayer and electricity-user subsidies is exhausted, these solar and wind companies will sell their installations into a shell company and scoot on back to whatever foreign tax haven in which they’re based. On humanitarian and environmental grounds, One Nation opposes this reckless, destructive Greens motion. Taxpayers will be left to clean up the mess. Communities will be destroyed, and it will cost electricity users and taxpayers tens of billions of dollars more to clean up after this insane green nightmare.
Join me as I break down the famous QandA session from 2016 with Brian Cox.
Have my arguments stood the test of time? Have the warnings of certain disaster by 2024 come true?
I go into depth to explain the full story behind this exchange that captured millions of views.
For years, net-zero campaigners have refused to admit that wind and solar cannot keep the lights on during the evening and morning peaks. Climate realists using the phrase “when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow” have been mocked for years.
That ridicule has now gone down the memory hole and net-zero advocates are now acknowledging the truth of that statement by introducing a policy called “firming.” This involves the process of storing electricity generated during the day for use during peak demand in the evening and morning—exactly what I’ve been saying for 15 years.
The issue here is the cost: batteries and pumped hydro costs a fortune and batteries only last 10 to 15 years before needing replacement. There’s also an energy loss to consider—batteries lose about 10% of the energy put into them and another 10% on the way out, while pumped hydro uses more electricity to pump water uphill than it generates on the way down.
I asked the Minister about the cost of “firming,” and her answer was quite embarrassing — she didn’t know. It’s likely to exceed $100 billion.
Senator ROBERTS: My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Senator McAllister. Minister, during evening and morning peak hours, electricity generation from industrial solar and wind averages just 10 per cent of rated capacity, because solar doesn’t work in the dark, and wind goes quiet at night. Big batteries can transfer electricity from daytime to the evening peak. Minister, how much battery capacity is your government planning to build to maintain electricity supply between sunset and sunrise?
Senator McAllister: I thank Senator Roberts for the question. The senator is right to point to the fact that Australia’s electricity system is changing. We have, as I think most senators understand, a fleet of ageing coal-fired power stations that require replacement. I can tell you: they are not getting any more reliable. In fact, over the last year, I don’t think there’s been a day when we haven’t had a circumstance where at least one of the coal-fired power generators in the national electricity market has been offline for one kind of maintenance or another. Of course, this arises because we went through nearly a decade when the coalition, while in government, did not land an energy policy. They had 22 policies; none of them landed. Our task as government—
The PRESIDENT: Minister McAllister, please resume your seat. Senator Roberts?
Senator ROBERTS: I have a point of order. Standing order 70 (3) (c) says, ‘Answers shall be directly relevant to each question.’ I asked about how much battery capacity your government is planning to build to maintain electricity supply between sunset and sunrise.
The PRESIDENT: I will draw the minister to your question.
Senator McAllister: Of course, our task is actually to restore some measure of order to the energy system so that the investors who build the generation capacity that is necessary to power homes and businesses have the confidence to invest. And that is what the Capacity Investment Scheme has been designed to do. We have just been through a round of the Capacity Investment Scheme where we received very significant commitment to underwriting very significant battery capacity. We do understand the significance of this technology. What the experts tell us is the most cost-effective way to establish a national energy market that can meet the energy requirements of Australian homes and businesses is a combination of wind, of solar, of batteries and of gas, and that is the policy setting that we— (Time expired)
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, you couldn’t tell me the battery capacity your government is planning to build, so you may not be able to answer this question. But let’s just say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, please. What is the capital cost of that battery backup, and how much of that bill will taxpayers pay? Simple.
The PRESIDENT: I will just wait for silence, particularly on my left. This is Senator Roberts’s question.
Senator McAllister: As I have indicated previously to questions asked by Senator Roberts in this chamber, the cost of the transition is regularly estimated out to 2050 by AEMO, and it is included in the Integrated System Plan, which is regularly published and updated. Different states have different arrangements in terms of the ownership and investment in generation, and so the investment that will take place will look different depending on the ownership arrangements that are in place across the national electricity market. However, we understand that there is a measure of support required from the Commonwealth government, and it is why we have put in place the Capacity Investment Scheme which aims to provide support for those who are seeking to invest in new capacity, whether it is in batteries or other forms of generation in the national electricity market.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, second supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: So the minister cannot tell us the battery capacity required, nor the capital cost of that battery backup. So, Minister, AEMO is working off a figure of 60 gigawatt hours of storage at around $1 billion an hour, which is $60 billion. How much will electricity prices and supermarket prices rise as a result of having to spend that staggering amount of money?
Senator McAllister: Well, the one thing I can say is that we will take advice from the experts about the optimal investment that’s necessary to build out the national electricity market. It’s a different approach to the one taken by those opposite, because right now we have a coalition government whose plan is to invest taxpayers’ money in the most expensive form—
The PRESIDENT: Minister, please resume your seat.
Senator McKenzie: You can’t tell us how expensive yours will be!
The PRESIDENT: I’m waiting, Senator McKenzie! Senator Roberts.
Senator ROBERTS: A point of order on relevance. I didn’t ask about the coalition government, as you said. I asked about the Labor government now.
The PRESIDENT: I will draw the minister to your question, Senator Roberts. And while I have the attention of the chamber, I will ask senators, particularly those on my left, to listen in respectful silence. Minister McAllister.
Senator Thorpe: You lefties need to listen!
The PRESIDENT: Senator Thorpe, that includes you! Order! Minister, please continue.
Senator McAllister: Thanks very much, President. The senator asked about our plans. The Capacity Investment Scheme will deliver 32 gigawatts of renewable and clean dispatchable capacity to fill emerging
reliability gaps. The truth is that will put downward pressure on prices, because one of the consequences of the failed policies of those opposite is that we do have capacity capabilities that need to be filled because energy capacity is leaving the market and it has not been replaced. We are taking steps necessary to replace it. (Time expired)
I move:
That the Senate take note of the answer from the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Senator McAllister, to a question without notice I asked today relating to energy.
My question was quite simple: how much is the government’s net zero policy going to cost just for firming? Firming is the provision of what used to be called stable, synchronised baseload power to keep the lights on when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. Firming wasn’t needed when we had coal power because coal plants provide stable, synchronised baseload power day and night. Solar and wind don’t.
AEMO estimates Australia will need 65 gigawatt hours of firming to guarantee grid stability. Depending on the time of year, that storage will need to be refilled each day to get the grid through the next night, including most of the evening and morning peak hours. Australia’s energy consumption in 2023-24 shows that, in summer, for the morning peak hours we needed 36 gigawatt hours of power and for the evening peak hours 28 gigawatt hours. So AEMO’s figure of 65 gigawatt hours of firming is about right. The $64 billion expense—billion dollar expense—will be added to every Australian’s power bill, or it will go onto your taxes. Either way, under the Albanese government you will pay.
The $64 billion cost is just for one night. These batteries need to be refilled the next day with power from the grid. That means that every day we need a huge amount of solar and wind just to charge the batteries. One wet day preventing large-scale generation from solar and wind means the batteries will not be recharged, resulting in blackouts and energy management that I’ll discuss tomorrow. It’s clear that 65 gigawatts of capacity at $64 billion is not enough to avoid blackouts. We’ll probably need twice that, as well as having to build extra solar and wind just to charge the batteries.
Everyday Australians are up for hundreds of billions of dollars just for firming. That’s in addition to the electricity needed on any day. This is an insane impost on every Australian struggling with paying for their groceries and insurance and with the cost of living under Labor. End the net zero mandates now.
Question agreed to.
A reputable study says that 70-80% of carbon credits “are devoid of integrity”. This is a market that is costing Australia roughly $5.5 billion based on carbon credit units that even the Greens agree is a scam. This is driving up prices even higher in the middle of a cost of living crisis.
It’s time to stop the corruption and cancel these ridiculous net-zero policies.
Carbon dioxide credits are a scam and an absolute fraud, and the Greens agree with One Nation on this. Yes, you heard that correctly. It’s difficult to believe. Australians may wonder what we agree on Granted, the Greens and One Nation have come to the same conclusion for very different reasons. Nonetheless, we share the conclusion that carbon dioxide credits are a scam. They are rife with opportunities for fraud.
The Clean Energy Regulator has issued 140 million carbon dioxide credits. At the current spot price of $35 each, this represents a racket potentially worth $4.9 billion. That’s expected to grow by 20 million credits, or $700 million, this year alone, making it $5.6 million.
The Greens and One Nation aren’t the only ones to criticise Australian carbon credit units, or ACCUs. In 2022 Professor Andrew Macintosh, environmental law expert at the Australian National University, and his colleagues published a series of papers absolutely tearing apart the ACCU system. Keep in mind that this is a $5.5 billion market that’s being fabricated, in part to give the UN income, ultimately. As usual, they enlist parasites who benefit while pushing UN policy for them. For example, the major banks. Rothschild Australia, the Bank of America and Merrill Lynch had on their advisory boards in this country at the time the CSIRO chief executive, Dr Megan Clark—a conflict of interest?
Back to the study of ACCU carbon dioxide credits. The study was done under Professor Andrew Macintosh, who said:
The available data suggests 70 to 80 per cent of the ACCUs issued to … projects are devoid of integrity …
So 20 to 30 per cent may have some integrity. Remember, this is a $5.5 billion market. Here’s another quote:
What is occurring is a fraud on the environment …
‘A fraud on the environment’, I say to the Greens. This is what Dr Macintosh said:
What is occurring is a fraud on the environment, a fraud on taxpayers—
Australian taxpayers—
and a fraud on unwitting private buyers of ACCUs …
In response to these revelations, the government commissioned what they call the Chubb review. The government should just have been honest and called it what it really was: a whitewash, a distortion and misinformation. Actually, the Chubb review is disinformation. In the past, when Professor Chubb has been requested to provide empirical scientific data within a logical scientific point backing up claims of climate change due to human carbon dioxide, he has repeatedly failed to produce it. He has never produced it, yet he’s often advocated for it. He’s part of the climate fraud industry and has received a lot of money to push climate fraud. He has been heavily rewarded by both Liberal-National and Labor Party governments. The Chubb review, in this case, addressed nothing of substance and provided no evidence for its claims that problems have been fixed, yet the government held the report up as proof that everything’s fine. As Professor Macintosh and his colleagues outlined in their response to the Chubb review, it spent less than six pages discussing the ACCU rules, which relate to a $5.5 billion market. They say:
The–
Chubb—
report does not contain references to the evidence relied upon to reach its conclusions …
I’ll say that again:
The–
Chubb—
report does not contain references to the evidence relied upon to reach its conclusions, and includes very little analysis to support its findings. And importantly, the panel does not address key questions around the integrity of the scheme’s rules.
What use was that? This is ‘a fraud on the environment, a fraud on taxpayers and a fraud on unwitting private buyers of ACCUs’. Here is another quote:
Bewilderingly—
I don’t find it bewildering; it’s straightforward, as I’ve been watching this scam unfold for years–
in its assessment of the methods, the panel does not refer to the findings of a review it commissioned from the Australian Academy of Science … The academy … found numerous flaws in the methods and the associated governance processes.
There were ‘numerous flaws in the methods and the associated governance processes’. This is so typical of this government. It is so typical of the Liberals, the Nationals and Labor, pushing the climate fraud. Here is another quote:
The—
Chubb—
review … acknowledged the scientific evidence criticising the carbon credit scheme, but says “it was also provided with evidence to the contrary”. Yet it did not disclose what that evidence was or what it relates to. The public is simply expected to trust that the evidence exists.
Maybe the dog ate the evidence for breakfast. This is what the government says is assurance and integrity for taxpayer money.
While the Greens, Professor Macintosh and I may agree on the integrity issues with carbon dioxide credits, here’s where I leave them behind: there is no reason to reduce our output of carbon dioxide or trade credits for it. Carbon dioxide credits can never have integrity because they are a scam designed to transfer wealth from the pockets of everyday Australians and their families and small businesses to the bank accounts of billionaire net zero scam artists and parasitic multinationals sucking on the financial payout from climate fraud and associated financial scams. I note some of these points. I won’t go into them in detail. The government that introduced the renewable energy target, a scam, and the national electricity market that is really a national electricity racket—it’s not a market; it’s a bureaucratic controlled entity—stole farmers’ property rights across the country so that they could comply with the UN’s Kyoto protocol. They put in place the first policy—not legislation—advocating for a carbon dioxide tax. It wasn’t Julia Gillard. It was the Howard government that did all these things. The Howard government laid the foundation for all of this. It went around the Constitution to steal farmers’ property rights around the country. Then, six years after being booted from office and after the Liberals and Nationals in the Howard government told us that it was all based on science, John Howard, in a major lecture to sceptic think tank in Londan said that on the topic of climate science, he was agnostic. He didn’t have the science, and now our electricity sector has been crippled because of the renewable energy target, the national electricity market and an alphabet soup of bureaucratic agencies.
There has never been—there never is—any empirical scientific data and logical scientific points that human carbon dioxide is warming the planet. There is not any from the CSIRO—I’ve done freedom of information requests and held them accountable in the Senate—nor from their publications ever. There is not any from the Bureau of Meteorology. It’s the same deal. There is not any from the United Nations. It’s the same deal. There is also no policy basis. There is no documented effect per unit of human carbon dioxide on climate factors such as air temperature, rainfall, heat waves, drought severity and frequency or storm severity, frequency and duration—none at all. There is no basis for the policy on which the carbon dioxide credits are based. There’s been no cost benefit analysis. There’s been no business case. Ross Garnaut, who produced a report for the Rudd-Gillard government, said in his report on the science that there basically was no science and he was going on the consensus. Yet he is parasitically sucking on solar and wind subsidies, driving up electricity prices and putting Australians into poverty. Remember, the money that goes to the extra costs of electricity in this country is a highly regressive tax on the poor in our country.
In 2009 and 2020 we had two global experiments showing that human carbon dioxide has no effect on carbon dioxide levels in the air. We had a major downturn with the global financial crisis in 2008. We then had a recession in 2009. COVID hit us. It arrived on our shores—it didn’t really hit us; the government hit us—in 2020, and then 2020 was almost a depression because of the restrictions and lockdowns. In both years, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued rising unabated. Yet we’ve been told for decades now that by cutting back on human production of carbon dioxide we would see the levels in the atmosphere start decreasing and go down. We had a major reduction in industrial activity and a severe recession in 2009 and 2020. The production of carbon dioxide from human use of hydrocarbons, coal, oil and natural gas decreased dramatically, yet nothing happened. The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere kept increasing.
I asked the CSIRO why. They said that there is an inflection. I asked them for the details of that inflection, to characterise it statistically. They failed to do it. I asked the Bureau of Meteorology, and they said, ‘Senator Roberts, it would take years for that to come through.’ Here is the CSIRO saying that we’ve already seen it and the Bureau of Meteorology saying that we will see it eventually, but it will take a long while to come. You can’t make this stuff up! What the experiments in 2009 and 2020 showed is that the production of carbon dioxide from human activity will not affect the level of carbon dioxide in the air. Once you understand Henry’s law—the quantities of carbon dioxide dissolved in the ocean are 50 to 70 times more than the entire atmospheric carbon dioxide—then you start to understand why that’s the case. But not content with climate science fraud, the CSIRO is perpetrating gen cost, which is energy fraud based on bogus assumptions that have been completely debunked. Aidan Morrison has done a marvellous job; others have done a marvellous job.
There’s no basis for this scam, this fraud, but let’s return to the fraud. A report in the 2010s said Europol found 95 per cent of carbon dioxide trading credits were suspicious. That’s easy to believe because there’s no physical basis to the measurement of reductions to carbon dioxide produced. They’re all projections. They’re all based on guesses. They’re formulae based on estimations. They were never quantified and are still not quantified. China is producing record quantities of carbon dioxide, and so are Russia, Brazil, the United States and the European Union—Australia are a small player—yet temperatures are flat and have been flat since 1995. That’s almost 30 years of flat temperatures. I urge senators to establish this inquiry so that we can get to the bottom of how taxpayer money is being fraudulently abused.
This is another of my ongoing questions into understanding the cost of net zero. The Sun Cable project is an insane proposal to cover 12,000 hectares of the Northern Territory with solar panels, at a cost of over $30 billion. There are multiple problems with this project, including environmental damage, power loss during transmission and site remediation once the panels reach the end of life.
These large energy companies are not required to, and don’t set aside funds for remediation. This means Australian taxpayers will end up footing the bill for billions of dollars in cleanup costs when this project inevitably fails.
Despite this being the world’s largest solar project and carrying significant sovereign risk, the Minister had no clue what I was talking about.
Senator ROBERTS: My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Senator McAllister, and it’s regarding the SunCable industrial solar project in the Northern Territory. Minister, please advise the Senate of the total value of guarantees and, as a separate figure, the total value of subsidies available to the project.
Senator McAllister: I am aware that the Minister for the Environment and Water has recently provided approval for the SunCable project. This is a project that, as I understand it, seeks to establish renewable generation capability in the Northern Territory and also significant transmission capability, which will allow that generation to be used within the Australian grid but potentially also to be exported to our Singaporean neighbours. This is potentially an extremely important project. It is also one that is first of kind in the Australian context—
Senator ROBERTS: I have a point of order, under standing order 72(3)(c): ‘Answers shall be directly relevant to each question.’ I asked about the total value of guarantees and the total value of subsidies. What are they? If you don’t know, please just say so.
The President: I will draw the minister to that part of your question, Senator Roberts.
Senator McAllister: The senator asks me to comment, I think, on policies that exist in the Australian context to support the rollout of reliable renewables, and of course—
The President: Minister McAllister, please resume your seat. Senator Roberts, on a point of order?
Senator ROBERTS: I asked about the total value of guarantees and the total value of subsidies. That’s it.
The President: Senator Roberts, the minister barely said seven words, so let’s just hear the answer. I have reminded the minister of the question, and I will continue to listen carefully.
Senator McAllister: The Australian government takes our advice about the future of the energy system from experts, and all of the advice that has been provided to us is that the most cost-effective form of new generation to replace the older, ageing assets that are shortly to retire is reliable renewables.
Senator CASH: He just wanted to know what the figure is.
The President: Order! Senator Cash, this is not your question.
Senator McAllister: We take our advice from experts because we believe that Australians deserve the most cost-effective form of energy that is available to us. We can’t actually go back to doing things the way that they were done under the previous government.
The President: Minister McAllister, please resume your seat. Senator Roberts, on a point of order?
Senator ROBERTS: I remind the minister that I asked about the total value of guarantees and the total value of subsidies.
The President: I have reminded the minister of the question, and I will remind her again, Senator Roberts.
Senator HENDERSON: It’s okay to say you can take it on notice.
The President: Order! Thank you, Senator Henderson.
Senator McAllister: My advice is that this project has been— (Time expired)
The President: Senator Roberts, first supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: The project proposes to generate electricity in the Northern Territory and send it to Singapore using a 4,300-kilometre-long cable, mostly undersea. This is five times longer than Norway’s 760-kilometre Viking Link, the current longest cable. Viking Link loses 3.5 per cent of its generation through transmission loss. What percentage of the project’s Australian generated electricity will be lost in transmission to Singapore?
Senator McAllister: The senator asks about, essentially, the economics of the project that has been approved, and what I can advise the senator is that this is a matter for the project proponent. The government’s role is not to assess the economics of this project. The minister has made a decision in relation to its environmental approvals. This is part of a broader transformation of the Australian economy. We are blessed with abundant sunshine, wind and land, with skilful engineers and skilful personnel, with a mature commercial and legal environment and with a natural electricity system that many other countries seek to talk to us about because of its strengths. These are strengths for Australian communities. They are strengths for Australian regions and they are potentially a source of significant economic opportunity for Australians living in regional communities. (Time expired)
The President: Senator Roberts, second supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: The minister can’t or won’t tell me about guarantees and subsidies nor a core project assumption, so, Minister, my second supplementary question is: how much is SunCable lodging as a rehabilitation bond for the 12,400 hectares of land that will be covered in solar panels?
Senator McAllister: The senator asks about the terms on which the approval for the SunCable project has been provided. I can tell the senator that Minister Plibersek applies the terms of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to all of the matters that come before her. This is a project proposal that intends to establish a significant source of new generation in the Northern Territory, as you indicated in your first supplementary question.
The President: Senator Roberts, on a point of order?
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, is there a rehabilitation bond in place to cover the desecration of the environment?
The President: Senator Roberts, it’s your responsibility to seek a point of order, not to re-ask your question. If you have a point of order, I invite you to make it. If you don’t, I’ll ask the minister to continue.
Senator ROBERTS: President, the point of order is one of relevance.
The President: I believe the minister is being relevant. She has outlined to you the approval processes. So I will ask her to continue.
Senator CASH interjecting—
The President: Order! Order! Senator Cash, which bit of ‘order’ doesn’t apply to you? Minister McAllister, please continue.
Senator McAllister: The minister’s responsibility, of course, is to apply the law when a project is put before her. Since coming to government we have sought to do so in relation to all of the projects before us, but we are pleased to see new renewable projects coming online. Since coming to government, we have given the green light to more than 55 of those under the
For years, the Government has subsidised rooftop solar and, more recently, wall batteries. This isn’t so you can have cheap power, it’s so they can have YOUR cheap power.
Half of Australia’s solar energy is generated from rooftop systems. During the morning and evening peak hours, when the sun isn’t shining and wind energy reduces by 90%, the government will take the charge from your wall battery and EV to keep the grid going. This is called “grid connectivity”. Under net zero policies, you will receive only as much electricity as the officials in Canberra decide you can have.
One Nation will end the net zero scam, build new high efficiency coal plants and restore wealth and prosperity to Australia.
I thank Senator Van for this matter of public importance. Without criticising the science, cost and impracticability of net zero, which I did last night and will do again tomorrow, it’s certainly possible to talk about wasted capacity in the electricity sector. The ad hoc stance towards solar power in Australia has meant that a lot of people have fitted solar panels without battery storage. This is a distortion in the market as a result of government interference—subsidising solar panels early on while only subsidising wall batteries much later. In fact, the distortion in the energy market as a result of government interference is exactly why energy prices in Australia are out of control. In the most energy rich country in the world we should have the cheapest retail electricity in the world; it should not be amongst the dearest.
Remember, though, that One Nation is the party of free enterprise. If an Australian homeowner, body corporate or business wants to spend their own money to install solar power, connect it to a battery and then use that investment to start trading in electricity, all power to you. In fact, homeowners organising themselves to direct the output of their solar panels into community batteries is a way of getting into the energy business.
The government promised community batteries, and I know it has so far funded 370. Only one of the 370 grants went to a community organisation. The other 369 were to either government departments or energy companies. Why are we giving grants to energy companies to build big batteries when the proceeds of those big batteries will be sold back to the grid? Can’t they finance themselves? The Albanese government are handing out taxpayers’ money to their big business mates at a time that everyday Australians need the money for themselves.
Electric vehicles are another area where energy trading could be an option. Modern EVs use a battery which can hold 100 kilowatt hours of electricity. If charged from the owner’s own solar panels during the day, selling that electricity into the grid during peak hour will help stave off blackouts. Instead, all of these measures fracture energy generation and make the task of maintaining the reliability of the grid harder and more expensive.
There is a better solution. Modern clean-coal technology allows for the retrofitting of a device which captures all of the gas coming out of a coal fired plant and converts the gas into useful products like fertiliser, AdBlue and ethanol. In the language of the woke, that means zero emissions. This process costs less than $100 million per power station and works best using sea water. Instead of spending more than $1 trillion and up to $2 trillion to simply replace our electricity generation and convert to electrification, clean coal will achieve the same objective for a few hundred million dollars. Clean coal is the real wasted resource in the Australian energy market. Clean coal will reduce the cost of living under Labor.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Hughes): The time for the discussion has expired.
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