I call the member for Bradfield. 

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. 

This is a subject very close to my heart and this bill frankly does many things but I'm going to focus just on one part of that today:
The tax changes which until today risked making it significantly more difficult to build clean energy that we need for an affordable, reliable, competitive, and secure energy system. 
The bill increases the value of the CGT payable by international investors in Australian wind and solar and large-scale energy storage.
And the consequences of these changes is to disincentivise investment in clean energy. But today, after months of pressure from the crossbench and industry, the Government has announced an important change to the bill, which will greatly decrease the risks posed to clean energy.

To be clear, these risks are not entirely gone, but the situation is much improved, and I commend the Government for making these changes. Let's step through what's going on in this bill, but let's also be very clear from the beginning that, like it or not, tax, like death, is a certainty, and tax is also necessary.

It pays for things like hospitals, schools, roads, public housing, social supports, all the things that make this country function. And when foreign investors profit from Australian land and natural resources, it's entirely reasonable for them to contribute their fair share to the country that generated this wealth.

This bill does that by broadening and clarifying what counts as taxable Australian real property, so that CGT will be payable on a wider range of assets, including renewable energy assets. This isn't changing the CGT rate itself; it's a broadening of the tax base. But the practical effect for foreign investors is the same as if the rate had gone up. More of what they hold and sell will now be subject to more Australian tax.

Ensuring that foreign investors pay their fair share is a good idea. So my argument today is not that these reforms are ill-advised in principle. My objection is that in principle the changes disproportionately affect clean energy projects, which we should be doing everything we can to support.

We know renewables are pushing down power prices. We know that they are displacing imported fossil fuels and improving Australia's energy security. We know that we need to be building more of them faster. Building renewables is capital intensive, and much of that capital comes from offshore because the scale of what we need simply outstrips what domestic capital alone can provide.

Between two-thirds and three-quarters of investment in Australia's clean energy sector comes from international investors. Long approval times and issues with transmission, are already making it hard for projects, wind projects in particular, to meet financial closure.

Our 82% clean energy by 2030 target is a worthy goal, but it's looking doubtful as we stand. So, disincentivising clean energy investment at this critical juncture is the exact opposite of the kind of policy signals that we should be sending.

These tax changes, they've been signalled since the 2024-2025 budget, but when the Government announced the detail earlier this year, it included an ability to retrospectively tax investments all the way back to 2006.

Now this would have been an unprecedented and to its credit, the Government has since removed this retrospectivity, and until today the government had included a Transitional 50% discount for four years to foreign corporate investors who dispose of Australian renewable assets.

It framed this as a generous concession reflecting its commitment to Australia's clean energy future. But this was misleading because a four-year transition window is simply not how renewable energy investment works.

These projects are built. On at a minimum on eight to 10 year investment horizons and often so much longer, multi-decades. So, what a four-year window actually would have done is create a very obvious incentive to sell before 2030 while the 50% discount still applies, and then commit no further capital after 2030.

In other words, a fire sale of existing assets in the lead up to 2030. Followed by a freezing of new investment once the discount ceases. Thankfully, after months of advocacy from the crossbench and industry, the Government's agreed to extend that transitional period all the way to 2040.

I commend the government for this concession. It's an extra 10 years and it's very, very welcome. I'm very pleased that the government has engaged constructively and in good faith on these amendments and I thank the minister for doing so. Extending the transition period for an extra 10 years will mean that the law more accurately matches the timescale of this century's energy economy build-out and it aligns with real investment cycles rather than the arbitrary four-year political deadline.

At 2040 date, we'll capture now more like one to two whole investment cycles, ensuring that more clean energy is built and for cheaper, knowing that the policy risk factor doesn't have to be baked into the cost of capital.

But the reality of the clean energy build-out so far is that we are relying on private capital to do much of the heavy lifting. The Government's underwriting projects through the capacity investment scheme, but it's not building its own renewable energy projects.

So, if we want to deliver an energy system at pace required for industries to remain internationally competitive, then we need to be doing everything we can to support international clean energy investors. Some will say, "Won't Australian super funds simply fill the gap left by departing foreign capital? They have so much money under management.” And yes, they do. But unfortunately, their track record to date shows that they won't fill that gap. Australian super funds have consistently and disappointingly underinvested in domestic clean energy, in large part to a very conservative risk appetite which is baked into their regulations.

Australian super funds contribute only 0.8% of investments in renewable energy projects since 2020. They've been hamstrung by the performance test rules, which to its credit, the Government is in the process of fixing, as I've spoken out about elsewhere, but given such low levels of investment, even changes to the performance test, even if that helped double or even triple the volume of investments, it from Australian super funds is still going to be far far below the 70 percent that international investors make up.

So I'm also moving two additional amendments to this bill. The First Amendment will provide additional transitional support for clean energy by resetting the cost base of renewable energy assets when the tax changes come into effect. This would mean that the new CGT rate only applies to capital gains accrued from now, rather than all the gains accrued since the project was initiated.

Now, this is not full grandfathering. I recognise the Government's intent here. Is to broaden the tax base and a blanket exemption for existing assets isn't realistic. But this amendment would strike the right balance between respecting commercial decisions that were made legally and in good faith on the basis of existing taxation rules before any investor could have known that these changes were coming with the Government's tax policy intent.

This amendment has broad support from investor groups, as the Global Infrastructure Investor Association told Treasury in its submission, introducing a deemed market value cost base reset at a time of commencement would address the government's concerns while preserving Australia's reputation for policy stability.

And as EY put in its submission, many investments were priced, financed, and held on the explicit. Understanding that they were not taxable Australian real property. The absence of transitional relief imposes an unfair and retrospective tax burden on genuine commercial decisions made under the law as it stood.

This idea has precedence in our law. It's a sensible change, and I'm also moving a final further amendment to make it very clear that battery energy storage assets qualify for the concession, and that the definition is technology neutral, with flexibility for new clean energy technologies involved in transmission and grid stabilisation.

The government signalled, unfortunately, that it's not open to accepting these changes. It's regrettable, a missed opportunity, in my opinion, to further accelerate the build-out of clean energy at a time that we need it more than ever. 
But finally, I want to register a broad objection to how this legislation has been put before us. The bill bundles eight different schedules together, all of which address different topics: tax advisor misconduct, foreign investment, CGT, national competition policy arrangements, DGR listings, and so much more.

And some of these schedules do really worthwhile things, and I won't detail them all here, and I don't want to detain the House, but I understand the case for legislative efficiencies, but no one wants a parliament clogged up with dozens of small technical bills when they could just sensibly group them all together.

But in some cases, as it is here, it makes it really hard for the parliament to hold the Government to account when we're being asked to deal with legislation that's so varied all at once. It would be great to see these consequential changes split off from the rest of the bill, so we can they can be properly scrutinised.

Deputy Speaker,  I want to end by saying that I support the intention of these changes that foreign investors should pay their fair share. And until today, the bill risked dealing a very large blow to investment that we need to deliver cheap, secure energy that's going to set us up for long-term prosperity.

It simply didn't make sense for the Government, in the same breath, to express support for cheap, clean energy and simultaneously make it harder for investors to build the wind farms, the solar farms, and the battery energy storage, that's going to make this economy cheap and clean.

So I commend the Government's willingness to extend the transitional period to 2040, and I urge it to continue doing everything it can to support the clean energy that we need to make our economy as competitive as possible and for households to have the cheapest possible energy for their livelihoods.