The Climate Alphabet Soup

There are numerous government organisations dedicated to implementing United Nations climate policies, making life increasingly harder for Australians. It’s hard to keep track of them all. One such organisation is the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC). It incurs $537 million in annual expenses and has $7.3 billion of taxpayers money tied up in assets. The wage bill for their top 15 employees is $7.4 million a year.

Ian Learmonth, featured in this video and head of the CEFC, received a $614,000 bonus last year, taking his total remuneration for the year to $1 million dollars or 1.7 times the salary of the Prime Minister.

It’s no surprise he didn’t want to disclose this when I asked.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: There’s an alphabet soup of agencies and government departments involved in the energy transition. As simply and as specifically as possible, what do you do at the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, what are your basic accountabilities and what are the unique qualities you bring?

Mr Learmonth: The object of the CEFC, as per the act, is to facilitate the flows of capital funds into the clean energy sector and to deliver on the government’s climate targets. We’re using a significant amount of capital deployed out there in the Australian economy, effectively, to decarbonise Australia. That’s really what we’re doing. We have 165 people, most of whom are very skilled at going out into the marketplace and finding places that we can use this catalytic capital to drive emissions reduction.

Senator ROBERTS: What is the total wage bill for all employees? Do you have any casuals and contractors or are they all full-time permanents?

Mr Learmonth: We just tabled our annual report that has all that information in there. If you’d like any further details that aren’t obvious or available in the annual report, I’m very happy to take that on notice.

Senator ROBERTS: There have been no changes since the annual report was released?

Mr Learmonth: No.

Senator ROBERTS: What is the total budget for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, including any grants or programs you administer?

Mr Learmonth: Do you mean over the forward estimates? What time period?

Senator ROBERTS: This current financial year and if you want to bring it into the forward estimates, that would be handy, too.

Mr Learmonth: Once again, I will take that on notice. It’s probably best that we do it that way. My CFO might be able to dig that number up for you. We’ve certainly got what’s in the budget papers.

Senator ROBERTS: Just getting in the chairperson’s good books, last question: what is the total salary package of everyone at the desk here who is attending right now?

Mr Learmonth: Once again, it is in the annual report. Certainly, Andrew and I are explicitly there on page 215 of the annual report. If you’d like any further information about that, we can follow up.

Senator ROBERTS: Why the reluctance not to share it?

Mr Learmonth: It’s there and there’s a whole raft of different short-term incentives.

Senator ROBERTS: If it doesn’t meet our needs, we can send a letter to you and get the details? Is that right?

Mr Learmonth: I would be positioning it the other way. If there’s anything that’s not in that public document around the remuneration of the CFO and myself, we could provide it to you on notice.