Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane and Environment Minister Greg Hunt have found themselves caught in a lie but they are sticking to it anyway. Turns out, they did agree to a fixed target of 41 000GWhrs back in 2010.

RenewEconomy have called them “the twiddle-dum and tweedle-dee of the Coalition’s campaign against renewables” and that is probably the nicer of what they have been called lately. Mr Macfarlane and Mr Hunt continue to say that, “We have always been committed to 20 per cent renewables.” They believe they have not cut anything by 40%-60% because they agreed to ‘20% renewables’ which now happens to equal 26 000GWhrs as a result of falling demand (and not 41 000GWhrs as 20% equated to at the time of signing the agreement).

HOWEVER…they have now been caught out…the legislated agreement they gave their support to never once mentioned 20% – it agreed on 41 000GWhrs. The 20% was just a clever marketing ploy to put the fixed amount into perspective for every day Australians who don’t work in gigawatt and terawatt hours.

That being said, there is no way that 41 000 drops to 26 000 and still equals no ‘actual’ cut – Ministers….that equals a drop of 15 000 – a cut of almost 40%.

A RenewEconomy correspondent says, “At the time the legislation was passed in 2010, with bipartisan support, parliamentary speeches by MPs were made stating that 41TWh represented at least 20% of Australia’s electricity supply in 2020. However, this was just a catchy slogan—it does not appear anywhere in the actual legislation.”

“The Minister is correct when he states that he did not sign up for a 27% renewable energy target by 2020; he signed up for 41 TWh of electricity from renewable sources in 2020. It’s there in black & white in the legislation, and he knows it.   He was there as the Coalition’s Shadow Energy Minister when the legislation was passed—with bi-partisan support.”

First they said that the RET was adding too much to people’s electricity bills…and their own modelling proved that in fact it was only adding a few percent at most. Then they argued that the RET was pushing up electricity prices…and their own modelling showed that it was in fact lowering the wholesale price of electricity. Now they are trying to say that by lowering the RET they are not breaking any promises or changing any goal posts because they always only agreed to a ‘20% target’ and not a fixed gigawatt number…now we find out that that is not true either! They are determined to get rid of renewable energy target any cost – even if it means charging us more for our electricity every year and ruining our environment – just so they can get a few more dimes in their own pockets from the coal industry.