Chairperson, Minister and fellow members, I must say at the outset that I agree much with what the Minister had said in her opening remarks. No one could disagree with the need for us to focus on nuclear energy; the need for the new refinery; the partnership with the Clinton Foundation, which I think is excellent news; and the focus on independent power producers.
I have very little time, so I want to make three points. The first relates to energy sustainability and development. We have heard from the department, when we had hearings in the committee, from the President's speech and now from the Minister, that the government will be prioritising renewable energy. It has to be said that in the past this has not been the case in practice. No real substantial incentives have ever been put in place or any real measures to compel or to incentivise people to ensure that we promote sustainable use of renewable sources of energy. This, in a country such as ours that has a bountiful supply of these sources such as gas, solar, wind, hydro and, in the region, an enormous source of hydro, is really inexcusable.
We are also, as we have heard from the Minister, blessed with what is in some countries considered a curse, uranium. For us as a country we really need to have a national debate about how we use these sources of energy. For far too long the coal lobby has dictated and determined the way in which we generate energy in this country. It is going to be painful but it has to be done, and it is something that we would want, as Cope, to see us being engaged in in a very real way in the committee.
We also want to propose as Cope that, among other interventions that we see from the government, we immediately set up a fund to finance the transformation of all our homes, which are currently inefficient users of energy to being sustainable users of energy. Not only would this be good for our environment, but it can create hundreds of thousands of sustainable jobs; not job opportunities. And I am not saying that to take a dig at the Public Works Programme. We want those job opportunities, but the real source of transformation of this economy is sustainable jobs. That kind of long-term programme of transforming our economy and the way we use energy will create proper jobs for people. This is being done in other countries where homes are turned from being energy inefficient through the use solar power, insulation, double glazing and a whole lot of other things. We could learn a lot from these countries. But that fund, I think, would go a long way towards financing the way in which we do this.
The second point I want to make relates to sustainability and equity. Annie Leonard, in a very entertaining and informative video that you can see online at www.storyofstuff.com, tells the story of ``stuff''. For those of us who are still Marxists, it's a wonderful video, because she describes how our entire lifestyle is relentlessly eroding the quality of our lives in taking our planet to the environmental point of no return. Ben, you have long been out of the party so you don't have to talk here. [Laughter.]
The government must put in place measures to ensure that ... [Interjections.]