Hockey prepares ground to support $10b Clean Energy Fund
Tony Abbott's claim that he will repeal all aspects of the climate change package is looking even more suspect today after Joe Hockey prepared the ground for keeping the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
Mr Hockey told the National Press Club that: ‘if elected, one of my earliest administrative tasks to improve public finances will be to meet with senior public servants to identify the real commercial value of the NBN and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and their treatment in the Budget.'
"Nobody should believe for an instant that Tony Abbott will repeal the carbon price and the huge investments in rolling out renewable energy, helping farmers steward the land and supporting householders that are attached to it," Australian Greens Leader, Senator Christine Milne, said.
"After months of pouring extraordinary abuse on Australia's renewable energy developers and investors with his colleagues Tony Abbott and Andrew Robb, Joe Hockey has now opened the door to keeping the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
"This comes after the Coalition announced they would not repeal the Carbon Farming Initiative which will direct hundreds of millions of dollars into rural and regional Australia to help farmers and indigenous land holders steward the land.
"Tony Abbott is also acknowledging that his scare campaigning is losing its bite by including in his diatribe today the new completely made up claim that all Australians would be paying a carbon price on fuel after 2014 if the government were returned. The negotiated agreement has always been to extend the carbon price to heavy transport fuel only.
"Of course, if Mr Abbott is now going to keep the CEFC as well as the Carbon Farming Initiative, but scrap the price on pollution, he needs to urgently tell Australians where the money is coming from.
"The Clean Energy Finance Corporation is a world-leading investment of $10 billion into renewable energy and enabling technologies. The Opposition should embrace it, as it appears they are preparing to do."
