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April 17th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda THE Gillard government has moved to ”Abbott-proof” its Clean Energy Finance Corporation by ”appropriating” the full $10 billion five-year budget in legislation to be passed this year.
The move means the corporation could continue lending to clean energy projects at the rate of $2 billion a year, making it difficult for a future Abbott government to repeal the legislation setting it up. It would also pave the way for another parliamentary showdown over climate change, alongside the carbon tax, as a future Coalition government would likely face a hostile Senate.
The government will introduce legislation to set up the corporation when Parliament resumes next month, accepting advice from an expert review panel, chaired by the Reserve Bank board member Jillian Broadbent, including that it ”invest … on the premise that existing Commonwealth policies … continue to operate”, including the carbon price.
The Coalition has labelled the corporation a ”giant slush fund” and a ”waste of money”, but Ms Broadbent said similar funds around the world enjoyed bipartisan support.
The corporation, a key demand of the Greens in the negotiations over a carbon tax, is set to provide loans to clean energy projects from July 2013. The Coalition climate spokesman, Greg Hunt, called for the government to delay its start-up until after the election, which is due within months of that date.
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But the government will instead formally ”appropriate” all the money in the enabling legislation – which can then be drawn down as needed – allowing the corporation to carry on after a change of government until the legislation is repealed.
The details of the corporation came as a study by the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute found the federal Treasury may have overestimated electricity price rises under the carbon tax, predicting an average 8.9 per cent increase in power bills, rather than Treasury’s projected 10 per cent, upon which compensation to low and middle income households is based.
The study found NSW price rises would be just below the average, at 8.7 per cent, with Queenslanders likely to be hit with the highest increases, of 10.4 per cent, and Tasmanians the lowest, at 3.8 per cent.
The corporation said yesterday it would apply a ”commercial filter” to its lending, with careful procedures to minimise risk, and is expected to earn a return in line with the long-term bond rate.
But its purpose is to lend to projects not able to get finance elsewhere, either because the proposed technology is unfamiliar, or the risk considered too high.
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To the extent the corporation’s lending is concessional, either by offering a lower rate, or a longer term than would be commercially available, its operations hit the federal budget’s bottom line. But most of its lending, with an expected commercial return, is off budget. The Coalition has said this is a tricky mechanism to achieve a false budget surplus.
Ms Broadbent said the budget estimates of the cost of the lending concessions – $944 million over the first four years – were ”conservative”.
Her panel invited the opposition’s treasury and finance spokesmen, Joe Hockey and Andrew Robb, to talks about the corporation’s set-up, but received no response.
Business groups, including the Business Council of Australia, have attacked the corporation, saying it will distort the clean energy investment market. They have also attacked the fact that it will not be available to carbon capture and storage projects, at the insistence of the Greens.
Britain has a £3 billion ($4.5 billion) Green Investment Bank and the US Department of Energy has issued loans worth about $US35 billion ($34 billion) since 2009. One of them was a controversial $US520 million loan to the Solyndra solar-panel maker which last year declared bankruptcy.
According to the expert panel review, ”while [the US] facility has been criticised for a few high profile failures, an audit completed in February 2012 concluded that the vast majority of the loans are expected to perform well”.
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