The Rudd Government’s backflip on climate change has been further highlighted today, with its key climate change agency to lose 98 per cent of program funding in coming years, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Action Simon Birmingham said today.
Confirmation has come today through questioning by Senator Birmingham of the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency (DCCEE) through Senate Budget Estimates.
“This Department currently employs more than 1100 staff, but is scheduled to have 98 per cent of its program funding slashed over the forward estimates,” Senator Birmingham said today.
The Department’s administered program expenses are budgeted to fall from $1,450 million in 2010-11 to just $30.75 million in 2013-14. However, the departmental secretary was unable to say what impact this would have on staff numbers, despite ongoing employee costs of up to $100 million per annum.
“The Rudd Government has already put off its emissions trading scheme, and abandoned its disastrously mismanaged Home Insulation Program and its bungled Green Loans program.
“But other allegedly important programs are also being scrapped. In three years the National Solar Schools Plan will be the only energy efficiency program left standing; a program that, with all due respect, does not need its own department virtually solely devoted to its administration.
“With the abandonment of energy efficiency measures and the ETS on the never-never this will leave a workforce responsible for little more than policy advice and attending the never-ending array of global climate talks.
“This Government has shown itself to be well versed in the art of wasting taxpayers’ money, but risks setting a new benchmark in relation to the size and cost of its incredible disappearing climate change agenda.”