RSS Feed
January 4th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Australian Greens leader Bob Brown says fossil fuel industry attacks on a government loan scheme for renewable energy projects are “a bit rich” given the massive subsidies they get.
Senator Brown was defending the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which will provide finance to renewable energy, energy efficiency and low-emissions technologies.
Setting up the corporation was part of the Greens’ deal with Labor to support a carbon pricing package.
The corporation has been attacked by the opposition as a slush fund, with finance spokesman Andrew Robb saying it would only “fund projects that the private sector won’t touch with a barge pole”.
Now a new attack has come from some of Australia’s biggest industry sectors.
The Australian Industry Greenhouse Network – whose members include the Australian Coal Association, the Minerals Council of Australia and the National Generator’s Forum as well as large mining and petroleum companies – says the loans fund could distort markets, the Australian newspaper reported on Wednesday.
“Intervention by the CEFC … is likely to distort those markets by discriminating against market participants,” the group’s submission to a government expert panel on the fund, obtained by the newspaper, states.
The submission reportedly suggests that instead of directly financing projects, the corporation could play a “match-making” role between clean energy projects and private investors.
But Senator Brown said government had a legitimate role in helping establish new markets that had wider public benefits.
He cited the fact that most coal fired power stations in Australia were originally built by governments, even if they were now privately owned.
“Here we’ve got that same industry, having been built upon government financing, claiming now that the renewable energies of this century shouldn’t even be subject to assistance through loans,” he told ABC Radio on Wednesday.
Senator Brown said the fossil fuel industry was currently subsidised by about $11 billion a year.
“The subsidies involved in the clean energy finance corporation are really very restrained compared to those going to the polluting industries at the moment,” he said.
“The fossil fuel industry is largely foreign-owned, it pours billions of dollars out of the country each year and it’s complaining about domestic industries getting a $10 billion loan fund.
“It’s a bit rich isn’t it?”
Views: 0
Posted in 
Tags: 
