Australia’s new Environment Minister Greg Hunt has reaffirmed the new conservative Liberal-National coalition government is committed to clean energy targets despite its plan to scrap several government bodies set up to tackle climate change.
The newly sworn in Liberal-National Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said abolishing Australia’s carbon price legislation will be at the top of his agenda now that he and his team are officially in government.
He has formally instructed his department to prepare legislation for the repeal of the carbon price laws.
ABC News reports Treasury will also be told to prepare legislation to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), which had been tasked with managing $10 billion to invest in renewable energy projects.
Mr Hunt has labelled the CEFC a “green hedge fund”, and said it “borrowed in taxpayers’ name for investing in speculative ventures”.
He said even though it wants to scrap the fund, the government is committed to the target of having 20 per cent of electricity produced by renewable sources by 2020.
“The environmental gain comes from renewable energy under the Renewable Energy Target (RET),” told ABC News.
“That’s the real driver of activity and that remains.”
Chief executive of the think-tank The Climate Institute, John Connor, told ABC News it was hard to see how the government would meet the 20 per cent target.
He said the private sector was nervous about investing in renewable energy because the target was reviewed every two years.
“It’s very important that the renewable energy legislated target that’s there, and been there now for a number of years, is actually set in stone and we don’t keep shifting the goal posts for all of industry to get to,” he said.
“We still need the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to help commercialise new technologies and to build the skills in our own financial services sector.”
However, Mr Hunt is not bowing to pressure to abandon the regular review.
“The previous government talked about it, but didn’t change it,” Mr Hunt said.
“We’ll be conducting a review. We’ve always said we would. That’s what is legislated at the very moment. That is the law of the land and we will be complying with the law of the land.”
As part of the sweeping changes planned by the Liberal-National government it is also expected that the Climate Change Authority and the Climate Commission will be abolished.
Australia’s chief scientist, Professor Ian Chubb, told ABC TV’s Lateline program the likely axing of the climate bodies would be a loss.
“These sorts of issues are not going away just because we ignore them,” he said.
“They are things we are going to have to deal with and grapple with and understand better and then make informed choices rather than go out there and guess at what we might do,” Professor Chubb added.
