Renewed ALP renewables focus

Opposition energy spokesman Mark Butler has signalled he will oppose a gas-led recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, urging a focus on renewable energy.

The Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Mark Butler, during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Gary Ramage

Opposition energy spokesman Mark Butler has signalled he will oppose a gas-led recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic as he urged Scott Morrison to focus the government’s support towards renewable energy.

Mr Butler at the weekend issued a statement that the government’s focus should be on “new renewable projects”, after a newspaper report reiterated the ­Coalition’s backing of cheap gas as a transitional energy source.

Mr Butler said Australia had the potential to be a “clean energy manufacturer” in a plan that could create new jobs, lower power prices and tackle climate change.

“Scott Morrison and his government need to deliver a policy which incentivises renewable energy investment and modernises the Australian economy,” Mr Butler said. “To ignore the massive potential of renewable energy and ­renewables-related industry is exactly the type of ideological bias that has undermined ­progress under the Coalition ­government.

Shadow Minister for Agriculture Joel Fitzgibbon in Canberra in December. Picture: AAP

“After seven years and 19 energy policy attempts, this government has no national energy policy and they continue an anti-renewables agenda, refusing to capitalise on the huge benefits clean energy can bring to Australian households and businesses.”

Mr Butler’s emphasis on renewables instead of gas puts him at odds with resources spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon, who has been strongly critical of Victoria for its blanket ban on fracking and warned the party’s environmental wing, Labor Environment Action Network, against exagger­ating job opportunities in the renewables sector.

Australian Workers Union national secretary Daniel Walton also backs gas projects to supply cheap energy to manufacturing.

Labor Right MP Josh Burns, who is on the parliamentary energy and environment committee, said Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden, had released a $2 trillion renewables-led job plan. “It is all about renewables and it is all about cleaner and more sustainable technology,” he told The Australian.

“Australia needs to be a part of that action. Long-term renew­ables are the answer and the jobs are in renewables. That is what we should be focusing on.”

Sources close to Mr Butler said his backing of renewables did not mean he opposed gas.

LEAN has made it clear that it ­opposes gas as a transitional energy source. “Gas as transition fuel is, to adapt Tony Abbott, absolute crap,” it has tweeted.