PGPA Act 2013 and compliance with finance law

As a corporate Commonwealth entity, the CEFC’s activities are governed by the PGPA Act and its subordinate instruments. The PGPA Act imposes various duties, responsibilities and accountabilities on the CEFC Board (both as a collective and as individuals) and on the CEFC Executive and staff members.

There were no significant issues of non-compliance with finance law identified and reported to the responsible Ministers in 2018–19.

Note 1 to the Financial Statements contains more information about how the PGPA Act impacts the financial governance of the organisation and the preparation of the accounts.

Independent Statutory review of the CEFC

Under section 81 of the CEFC Act, an independent statutory review of the operation of the Act was required to have been arranged to occur as soon as practicable after 1 July 2016. This Review was conducted by Deloitte. The resulting report was tabled in Parliament on 14 December 2018 and is available on the CEFC website.

Notably, the Review found that, since inception in 2012, the CEFC has been effective in facilitating increased flows of finance into a range of clean energy projects across a number of sectors, using different financial products, and consistent with its legislated objective. It also found there is evidence to support a finding that in the absence of the CEFC, a range of projects the Corporation supported may not have proceeded and that the CEFC plays a leading role in developing debt and equity markets for clean energy investments in Australia.

Australian Government energy and environmental policies

Broadly speaking, the intersection of energy and environment policy again took centre stage in national policy development and debate in 2018–19 culminating in the development of the proposed National Energy Guarantee, the implementation of the Reliability Guarantee component of that proposal, and the 2019 Federal election.

With the return of the Morrison Government at that election, the main election policies that are expected to impact the CEFC include:

• Energy portfolio: the Australian Government Underwriting New Generation Investments (UNGI) program, where the CEFC has provided assistance to Government re implementation.
• Environment portfolio: a proposed $100 million Australian Recycling Investment Fund through the CEFC, to support the manufacturing of lower emissions and energy-efficient recycled content products, such as recycled content, plastics, paper and pulp.

Other statutory requirements affecting the CEFC

As a corporate Commonwealth entity which participates actively and commercially in the finance sector, the CEFC complies with a range of other statutory reporting requirements. An Index to Annual Reporting Requirements can be found at Appendix A.

Judicial decisions and parliamentary committees

The CEFC is not aware of any judicial decisions or decisions of administrative tribunals in 2018–19 that have had, or may have, a significant effect on the operations of the CEFC. There were also no particular reports about the CEFC made by the Commonwealth Ombudsman or the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

There were no reports about the CEFC from the Auditor-General other than the Independent Auditor's Report accompanying the financial statements, as reproduced in the CEFC 2017–18 Annual Report.

As far as the CEFC is aware, the only Parliamentary Committee reports which substantially involved the CEFC during 2018–19 were as follows:

• Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee Reports on Additional Estimates 2018–19: February 2019
• Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee Reports on Budget Estimates 2019–20: April 2019
• Senate Environment and Communications References Committee report on Current and Future Impacts of Climate Change on Housing, Buildings and Infrastructure: 13 August 2018
• Select Committee Report into Fair Dinkum Power: 28 June 2019.