[Greens-Media]
Renewables target: Government must ignore short-sighted agenda of big
polluters

Brisbane, Monday 18 August 2008 The Rudd Government must ignore the
short-sighted agenda of Australia's big polluters and stick to its
commitment to lift the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target, Australian
Greens climate change spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne, said today.

Senator Milne said, "It is no surprise that Australia's biggest
polluters are lobbying the Government to protect the status quo under
which they can keep raking in the profits and pay nothing for the carbon
pollution they pump into the atmosphere.

"The Australian Industry Group, the Business Council, Cement Australia
and the Aluminium Council are all hard at work in Canberra trying to
lock Australia into a resource economy which will soon be in the past,
and deny us all the benefits of moving swiftly into the clean, clever
future.

"The greenhouse mafia claims that the renewables target will undermine
our export industries, coming on the same day that we are seeing new
concerns that the resource boom is coming to an end, reveal just how
much these people are locked in the past.

"Policies to boost renewable energy are about making sure that Australia
will be in a position to achieve the serious emissions cuts we will need
to make. Without bringing on the alternatives to polluting coal, we face
far higher costs in the future. A high renewables target substantially
reduces the cost of cutting emissions over the medium term.

"With the proposed emissions trading scheme compromised, and early
indications that the scheme's cap will be far too weak, the Mandatory
Renewable Energy Target is the Rudd Government's only remaining scrap of
credibility on climate change. If Rudd and Wong bow to pressure from
polluters on this vital issue, they will pay the political price for
abandoning those Australians who voted for climate action in 2007."


Senator Milne is in Brisbane today in hearings for the Senate Inquiry
into the tax treatment of carbon sink forests. She is available for
interviews on either issue.


Tim Hollo
Media and Communications Adviser
Senator Christine Milne
+61 (0)2 6277 3063
+61 (0) 437 587 562
www.christinemilne.org.au

Come join the discussion at http://greensblog.org
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COSTLY BELL BAY BUY-BACK PREDICTED

Consumers to Pay for Labor's Energy Bungles

Kim Booth MP
Greens Shadow Energy spokesperson

Monday, 18 August 2008
Contact: State Parliamentary Offices of the Tasmanian Greens, (03) 6233
8300

www.tas.greens.org.au


The Tasmanian Greens said today that the Bartlett government's
confirmation that they intend to buy back the Tamar Valley power station
at Bell Bay from Babcock and Brown, which the Greens had predicted
barely a week ago, has exposed that the state's energy strategy is in
tatters.

Greens Shadow Energy spokesperson Kim Booth MP said that the Labor's
announcement that they would buy back the power station for $100 million
while Aurora would foot the $240 million bill to complete the upgrade,
was an indictment on the lack of coherent strategy and planning by the
government, and also raised further concerns about whether the station
will end up being an expensive 'stranded asset'.

Mr Booth also said that it will be the Mum and Dad electricity consumers
who pay the price for this buy-back through increased electricity bills.

"When I announced last week that the Bartlett government would buy the
Babcock and Brown power station at Bell Bay, it was met with a wall of
spin and denial and yet less than a week later exactly what I had
predicted has been confirmed," Mr Booth said.

"It now appears that the Bartlett government was attempting to keep the
purchase secret in order to dress up a disaster, in terms of a crisis in
the state's energy strategy, as good news."

"The government needs to explain what has changed so quickly to the
extent that a half-finished potential lemon is now worth purchasing,
when only last year the government was adamant that the best option was
to sell this station on the bogus grounds of retiring debt."

"It now appears that Aurora will need to go into debt to complete the
station's upgrade."

"Babcock's power station is a half-finished project, and one which we
suspect cannot connect into the grid."

"The challenge is now on the government to detail how they intend to
connect the station, and how it will put back on track the State's
desperately needed Energy strategy," Mr Booth said.

Mr Booth reminded that the Greens were the only Party to vote against
the sale of the Bell Bay power station, and had the government not sold
it the design of the generators would have been to suit the Tasmanian
electricity grid frequency controlled requirements but instead Labor is
now purchasing by knee-jerk reaction equipment that was purchased to
suit the needs of Babcock and Brown and which may not be able to be
connected to the grid, or if so, at a vastly reduced capacity.
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Come Clean on Port Stanvac Clean Up


The Rann Government has refused to release, under Freedom of
Information, progress reports on the clean up of the Port Stanvac oil
refinery site.

"The Government is refusing to tell us what progress is being made by
ExxonMobil at Port Stanvac. What dirty secrets are they hiding? This
has a real smell about it," said Mr Parnell.

"The public has every right to be suspicious - especially as the
Government has announced Port Stanvac as the preferred site for their
desal plant before finalising negotiations with ExxonMobil.

"They have put themselves in a very tricky bargaining position.
ExxonMobil's responsibility to clean up Port Stanvac must not be
traded off by the Government in order to secure favourable terms for
the site," he said.

Under the agreement between the Government and ExxonMobil signed in
July 2006, the company was required to provide a progress report every
six months to an Independent Site Environmental Auditor and the
Environmental Protection Authority (EPA).

The Department of Premier and Cabinet has refused to release to Greens
MLC Mark Parnell the three reports completed so far on the grounds
that it 'could have an adverse effect on the business affairs of the
third party'.

"Why won't they release a report they were publicly heralding just two
years ago?

"Is the pollution worse than we thought, or has the company made
little or no progress on their clean up?

"Either way, the public has a right to know, especially if a third of
Adelaide's water is set to be manufactured on this land," he said.


For further comment contact Craig Wilkins on 0434 007 893

Parnell@...