It's pretty clear that sensible debate in this chamber, outside this chamber, in the US and around the rest of the world has moved beyond whether or not we should be increasing investment in renewable energy. It's moved on to how we best support the continuing evolution of low-emissions technologies for energy generation. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation Amendment (Grid Reliability Fund) Bill 2020 could have been a real opportunity to finesse what the Clean Energy Finance Corporation is already doing really well, but it isn't an opportunity to do that. Unless there are amendments to this bill, we will not be supporting it.

I want to take you back about a decade, when the shockingly sensible idea of finding a way to reduce the cost of capital for important investments that benefit the country led to Labor establishing the Clean Energy Finance Corporation in 2012. The CEFC provided $10 billion of funding to support new and emerging renewable technologies and projects designed to reduce emissions. The projects it invested in have also, over those years, created jobs. It wasn't done with true bipartisanship then or now, and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation has been attacked on multiple occasions by this government. Along with attempts to abolish it, there have been continued attacks to undermine its role and dilute its purpose. We will not support legislation that continues to do that. We established the CEFC, and on this side we have consistently protected the integrity of it as a renewable energy financing body.

The CEFC has a proven track record of leveraging private investment. It isn't just doling out taxpayer funds; it works together with private funds and has helped drive more than $27 billion in additional private sector investments and return more than $718 million to taxpayers since its creation. By that measure, it's been an enormous success. Even the Prime Minister, in 2019, was quoted in The Australian as saying the CEFC is 'the world's most successful green bank'. I don't think there's any dispute about that. However, government has consistently tried to take the CEFC away from its original purpose. Prime Minister Tony Abbott, in 2015, said it was no secret he wanted the finance corporation to be abolished. There was the attempt to stop the corporation from investing in wind or rooftop solar. Now they're trying to expand it into areas that it shouldn't be investing in. Those opposite have also tried to limit the ability of the CEFC to support new technology deployment.

This bill continues the attempt to weaken the brief for the corporation. That's been criticised by energy experts who say it needs to be an independent body, it needs to have a low-emissions remit, it needs to be able to support economically viable projects and it needs to avoid investing in fossil fuels. We support those principles. They make sense. Our amendments make sure that those principles are maintained. Whether this bill will pass with our support is in the government's hands. They can accept our amendments or not.

There are some things we do support in this legislation, and one of those is giving the CEFC an expanded role to upgrade the electricity network so it better copes with renewables. In fact, anyone listening to opposition leader Anthony Albanese's budget reply last year will recall our 'rewiring the nation' policy to drag the electricity grid into the 21st century with a greater connectivity for renewably sourced energy. We agree with the need to invest in transmission, storage and reliability assets of the netwo