If liberalism is so popular, why do green energy ideas NEVER take off? Why does everyone hate liberal ideas?

Image by Takver
About 50 people attended a rally Saturday 23 January 2010 on the Victorian parliament house steps to Save Solar Systems and build the Mildura Solar Thermal Power Plant. Adam Bandt from the Greens spoke on Why we need to Support Solar Systems Mildura Power Plant.

Solar Systems pioneeed the solar technology of mirrored dishes that concentrate light on a central panel of high-quality photovoltaic material. Due to the pressure of the financial crisis the company went into voluntary administration in September 2009. The Victorian Government promised 5million in 2006 in total funding for the project, of which only million-million has been paid.

More Information: Mildura Solar Power Plant languishes while Coal CCS technology gets fund

Speech Transcription:
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If you think about it for just a moment the intellectual resources available to us here in Australia. You think about the intellectual resources you have in the workers at the Solar Systems Plant for example. People like David Turner, who if you’ve come to one of these rallies before you will see an incredibly intelligent person who has devoted their whole life to how we can make renewable energy happen.

Here at Solar Systems we had world leading technology and there is absolutely no reason technologically or resource wise why we couldn’t be leading the world in renewable energy technology.

What is lacking is the political will, and what we are seeing is people interested in investing in solar technology and building solar power plants here going offshore, and no where is that more apparent than the current administration of Solar Systems. What happens in an administration is that the administrator and liquidator comes in and says ‘How can we get the best price here and the best return for our shareholders.’ The question is not ‘How can we save the planet?’; the question is not ‘How can we jump-start Australia to renewable energy technology?’; it is ‘How can we get the best return for the multinational power company that has a huge investment in us?’

And if that means packing up half of it and selling half of it to some overseas company or to some other company that just wants the intellectual property and throwing the workers on the scrapheap, then that’s exactly what they’ll do.

And that’s why this campaign is so absolutely critical. Because what we have got in Abbotsford – what we had – is a real live example of what life in the 21st century could be like if we wanted it to be like. But instead what we’ve got is a Government at the Federal level who is intent on propping up the coal industry. And that’s essentially all that they’re doing. That’s their energy policy.

Chris gave a number of very good ways, very good examples of how we could fund renewable energy.

One of the other things we could do is stop giving billions of dollars in direct assistance to the coal industry. And that is what this Government has done since it came to power. And no-one is more responsible for that than the member for the electorate who is the Finance Minister who is the one in charge of writing the cheques, and lets have a look at some of the cheques they have written.

In 08/09 in their budget they devoted 0 million to the unproven technology of carbon capture and storage. So while you have proven solar technology happening right here in Abottsford that doesn’t get a cent, you’ve got carbon capture and storage getting 0 million of which 0 million has already gone to pilot projects in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

So those places are already getting the money, the money is not already on the table for them, it is in their pockets, the pockets of the coal companies – the multinational coal companies – they are already getting it. They have had those projects up and running and had that funding come. In the last budget, as if 0 million wasn’t enough, in the last years budget billion was given to this fantastically named "Low emissions Coal Flagship Project’ to get carbon capture and storage up and running.

At the same time they announced a thing called the ‘Solar Flagship Project’. If you were in the solar industry at the moment and you wanted to get some of this solar flagship money, if you ring up the Federal Government, the only information that is available is a press release. It is one of those classic ‘Hollow Men’ creations where they announce it and think about how to implement it afterwards.

If you wanted to get your hands on some of that carbon capture and storage money, however, they have set up a committee for that – applications for that close in August and they are going to announce this year how that billion is going to be spent amoung the carbon capture and storage lobby.

So its another classic example of this Government big on announcement but actually when you look at where the money is going, look at how they are spending it, they are spending it to line the pockets of some of this country and the world’s biggest polluting industries.

At the same time as Kevin Rudd jets around and talks about the importance of productivity you have workers effectively on the Government payroll in the coal industry. Meanwhile people like David Turner and the other workers at Solar Systems get thrown on the scap heap.

They tell us the market is going to be the solution, and when you look at the market solutions that have been proposed by this government, they can’t even get that right. The price of renewable energy credits which was meant to be the driving force in the future has absolutely plummetted because they have included things like solar hot water and heat pumps in that. As a result you have these large scale wind companies who are saying ‘We would love to build turbines here. We will go and build them down in Gippsland so that the workers can transition from working at Loy Yang and Yallourn to come over and work for clean energy’.

I’ll just say, by the way, some of the unions who are involved in this, they did a survey and found that, they asked their workers who are down there in the coal industry: ‘If you had a choice between your current job and a job in renewable energy that was at the same pay, what would you do?’ 90 per cent of them said they would rather be working in the renewable energy industry. So when you here all this talk about jobs you need to understand that actually the workers who are working down in these polluting industries themselves understand that the way of the future is renewable energy.

They tell us the market is the solution, and they haven’t been able to get that right. They say, as Chris mentioned, those days of direct funding and investing are over, but they are prepared to put in million in the last budget to funding greater roads to get more coal [inaudible]. They are prepared to do all these things. They say we don’t pick winners. Well actually thats true. The Government doesn’t pick winners. The Government is backing losers. The Government is backing losers in the coal industry and they are doing it every day of the week. And its time to say enough is enough. We cannot wait anymore to turn this ship around. It is well overdue.

Scientists are telling us we have got at most 5 – 10 years if we haven’t past the tipping point already – 5 – 10 years toget the whole planet effectively running on zero emissions. And people will say, well thats impossible to do. And people will say that we can’t act here unless everyone acts. In fact the opposite is the case.

Can you imagine the implications it would send around the world if a country like Australia within a short space of 10 years managed to get itself powered 100% by renewable energy. If a coal dependant country like ours did it, that would send shock waves around the world. That change has got to start somewhere and I’m hoping that one aspect of that is that we save the Solar Systems Plant and that another aspect of it is that at the Federal election – here comes the selfish part of the speech – that at the Federal election you come out and help us win the Federal seat of Melbourne in which this is happening.

We only need one in twenty people in Melbourne to change their mind and vote Green and we win our first House of Representative seat in a general election. Now if we did that on the back of a campaign for direct investment in renewable energy – the back of a campaign to: I’m doing something on February 14 – goto the Transition Decade launch – a project about how to turn Australia around within 10 years and get something out of renewable energy. If we can do it on the back of a campaign that is going to send a message right across Australia and right throughout the rest of the world. But actually the public is well in advance of the major parties on this issue. The public knows it is time for action and the public is going to speak up. When that happens the nexus between the Government and the coal industry is going to be broken.

They are saying that some of these things are old fashioned, that we can’t talk abou direct funding anymore and we can’t talk about transition plans.

Well I don’t want us to be remembered as the generation that was so unwilling to distort the market that we were prepared to destroy the planet. And lets just look at the amazing amount of support we have given to banks in the last little while – support which is still flowing. It was Westpac or Commonwealth Bank just recently announced they were going to borrow another billion at the generous rates being offered by the Government as part of the financial crisis assistance package to prop up the ailing home loan market.

If there is that much money available for the banks, if there is that much money available for the coal industry, there is that much money available for renewables. And it is our job to say to the Government enough is enough, its time to save Solar Systems and begin the renewable energy revolution right here from Melbourne and spread it across Australia.

Question by scooterpoop, the supreme contributor: If liberalism is so popular, why do green energy ideas NEVER take off? Why does everyone hate liberal ideas?
I mean, come on.

We’ve had electric cars since the 70s, solar and geothermal powered homes since the 80s, flourescent light bulbs since like the 20s, and the government has been begging people with billions of dollars for the last 45 years for green energy ideas.

45 years

Look around. How we doin’? How’s all that wasted money and time working out?

Pardon me for saying so, but doesn’t that prove liberals are complete morons?

What do you think? Answer below!