If you shake hands with Malcolm Turnbull, you best count your fingers to see whether they are still there.

In short, he’s “keeping” ARENA, except that it has no funds, its grant function will be terminated and organisationally it will be absorbed into the CEFC. He starting a new fund, called the Clean Energy Innovation Fund, a subsidiary fund of the CEFC, to lend out to bankable ‘innovative’ ventures, but the funding is less than is already there, and will be dribbled out at the princely rate of $100 million per year for the next 10 years so as “not to overwhelm the market.”

In other words, pretend you are brave and forward-looking, but don’t do anything that might disrupt coal’s predominance any time soon. Continue reading Turnbull’s clean energy stunt →