Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

It is always interesting following the member for O’Connor. I must compliment him on this occasion for a range of very constructive suggestions that he has added to the debate on the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Amendment Bill 2006, particularly in terms of a hydrogen future which many nations will face a little way down the track. I just say to the member for O’Connor how disappointed I am that his constructive ideas do not seem to register in the corridors of power in his government. I think it would be far more beneficial for the nation and for his government to be examining the kinds of constructive suggestions that he has made in this debate rather than, as we have seen, a very diversionary strategy focusing on the potential development of a nuclear industry in Australia.

Unlike the member for O’Connor, I believe that the government is not really serious about the enormous environmental challenges that face us with climate change and global warming. I say this because the government continues to refuse to ratify the Kyoto protocol. Despite the fact that it does have flaws, it is the only international arena in which these decisions can be discussed in a meaningful way. It is true that we do need to involve the developing nations, but I think that they are looking to see what countries like our own are prepared to do in playing our part in reducing the ever-increasing global carbon emissions.

This government is also refusing to take any meaningful action in helping our economy, our community and our business sector to adapt to a more carbon constrained future. Even the business community is now saying to the government that there is a sense of urgency, that we need to act; we cannot just wait. Setting up this diversionary nuclear industry inquiry is wasting time because, on all the best economics, it does not stack up—even your own Treasurer has said that. If we are going to wait around for the next stage of nuclear reactors, which we are told are going to be much safer, it will be a long wait. I think that most people with expertise in this area say it will be at least 10 years before safe nuclear reactors will see the light of day.

I am also very concerned that this government displays a conspicuous lack of support for the renewable energy industry. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, or one of his colleagues, would recall sitting on the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage when we examined the issue of MRET. Many submissions made to the committee said that it was really urgent for the government to take action to increase the mandatory renewable energy target so that business has the sense that the government has a framework, a target and a strategy to move to increase the uptake of renewable energy sources.

I see the Chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage has entered the chamber for this very important debate. I was just saying that it is much to the government’s shame that it has not raised the MRET and that this is having a decidedly negative impact on the renewable energy industry. Let me cite one example. Just recently a company called the Roaring 40s announced that they were halting work on wind farm projects in Tasmania and South Australia. They cited as their reason the government’s refusal to increase the MRET. Ironically, just last month this same company announced a $300 million deal with China to provide three wind farms there. So it is not surprising that the clean energy industry is packing up its bags and looking for opportunities in other countries. What a shame. In the words of the managing director of that company from his press release:

The MRET measure introduced in 2001 successfully kick-started the renewable energy industry in Australia. However, without an increase in the initial target level, electricity retailers are reluctant to commit to long-term REC deals which are crucial in financing renewable energy projects. Consequently, further substantial investment in the renewable energy industry is unlikely without an increase in the target.

They are not alone in expressing that point of view. We have not just failed domestically by not increasing that target but also taken Australia out of the main game of the huge growth in renewable energy in the international arena. We are missing out on significant benefits that would have come to our nation’s economy from the ratification of Kyoto—in particular, through opportunities under the Kyoto protocol’s clean development mechanism and the joint implementation program. Only by being part of Kyoto can Australia seize the economic benefits of the worldwide push for cleaner and more renewable energy. Had we ratified Kyoto, this government would have provided Australia with access to the trillion dollar industry of carbon friendly technologies that is emerging globally, and ratification would have sent a clear message to our business sector that, as a nation, we are taking a planned approach to shifting our economy onto a low carbon growth trajectory, one that will ensure the quest for low carbon growth becomes a significant driver of innovation.

Interestingly enough—and appallingly, I think—the business community is now ahead of the government on this issue. We saw recently the data produced by the Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change and the economic modelling undertaken which showed clearly the economic cost of inaction on climate change. Their modelling and arguments quite rightly point to the fact that rising greenhouse gas emissions threaten our entire economy and, in particular, that temperature increases will put two of Australia’s largest exporter earners—our tourism and agricultural sectors—at great risk, threatening up to a quarter of a million jobs with a no-change attitude. They argue, and any sensible person would realise, that the longer the delay the higher the final bill will be. Their modelling showed that, with early action, setting us on the path to reduce emissions by up to 60 per cent by 2050—which is what we really need to be looking at—was achievable without halting economic growth or job creation in this nation. In other words, it could be a win-win situation, but every day, every week, every month and every year we delay that final bill will be all the higher—and future generations will be left to pay for it as well.

In Labor’s view, we need to set a price signal on carbon. We have proposed all along that the sensible way of achieving these goals of reducing our emissions would be through the creation of a national emissions trading scheme. It is a proposal that has not been taken up as yet by the Howard government, although I do read now and again different opinions on this issue reflected at the cabinet table, so I am hoping that good sense will ultimately prevail. We are going to keep on your hammer because without a national emissions trading scheme we are not going to see the end results that we all know are desperately needed.

I cannot believe our lack of action when compared with China. Just recently, as we know, the Chinese parliament committed their country to a 15 per cent renewable energy target by 2020. China has now become a world leader in solar cell production. The 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing is being used to stimulate China’s solar energy industry with plans for solar power and geothermal energy to be used at various sites. Contrast this with the sorry plight of solar energy and innovation in Australia.

As our shadow minister often says, we could have been the Silicon Valley of solar but we needed national leadership and we did not get it. If you take, as one example, the solar hot-water system developed at Sydney University, the technology could absorb sunlight very efficiently and work below freezing temperatures. The Chinese saw its commercial potential and grabbed it. It is now a huge part of China’s booming solar market, a market which accounts for 80 per cent of the world’s new solar water heater installation and an even larger proportion of the world’s production. Amazingly, invented in Australia and now made in China, it is nothing short of a national disgrace. More and more of our innovative projects are falling over through the lack of commercialisation and the lack of incentive provided by the government and these companies are packing their bags and moving offshore.

I am not going to speak to all the details of Labor’s policy. We do believe we have a positive and economically sustainable way of meeting the challenge of reducing greenhouse emissions without hurting the economy and without hurting jobs. We do believe that Kyoto should be ratified. We believe that you have to set targets for greenhouse gas reduction and we believe you cannot achieve those end points unless you have a national emissions trading scheme. We have committed to generate more of our energy from renewable sources by increasing the pathetically low rate of MRET that we now face.

The main point that I want to get across in the debate on this bill is that to avoid the effects of dangerous climate change we really need to get our act together and we need to act now. We need to commit to sensible alternatives that produce cost-effective reductions in greenhouse pollution. I know that alternative renewable energy is never going to displace base load capacity that will for decades to come be driven on coal, but we are an innovative nation. I think some of the pilot projects in clean coal technology and geosequestration really need an added impetus and boost from this government, but it is not beyond our wit as a nation to provide the necessary industry support for wind power, solar power and wave power. I have a wave power demonstration project in my electorate that not only uses wave power to make energy but also has a desal plant attached to it. There is the whole area of biofuels, and we have talked a lot about the importance of ethanol to our future. As the member for O’Connor said in his contribution, the prospects for hydrogen are also important as is the coal- and gas-to-liquid technologies that the shadow minister for resources has talked about.

But instead of being serious about this what do we find? We find just in recent weeks a politically motivated decision by this government to block a wind farm at Bald Hills because it might threaten, over many years, an orange bellied parrot. It is preposterous that we would stop a wind farm development on the grounds of a tiny risk that a small number of orange bellied parrots could be killed when we all know that climate change could wipe out this species and many others within 50 years. I think we have to get the balance right. I cannot understand why previous wind farm projects that were in the vicinity of orange bellied parrot colonies were approved with sensible management plans attached to them. You have to say that this was a decision driven by political expediency and nothing more than that.

The government needs to be doing more about energy efficiency, which is also part of the equation. You only have to look at a recent UK Climate Group report called Carbon down profits up. It showed that 43 companies have significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions and by doing so saved themselves a total of $15 billion. So it makes good business sense as well as good environmental sense. DuPont, as one example, has cut its emissions by over 70 per cent in recent years, at the same time as increasing production by nearly 30 per cent and saving more than $2 billion in the process.

I want to say something in winding up about the issue of nuclear power. There appears to be a growing chorus of opinion, championed by the PM, who has suddenly discovered that global warming is a serious issue, that believes nuclear power is now the answer to the huge challenge of climate change. I believe that proponents of nuclear energy have always exaggerated the potential of nuclear energy while playing down the risks and consequences. Nothing has changed in this debate in recent times. I am very pleased and so is my community that the leader of my party has said that nuclear power is not appropriate for Australia.

The economics of nuclear power simply do not stack up. Australia is fortunate in having abundant and relatively cheap gas, high-quality coal and renewable resources to meet our domestic power needs. In that regard, clean coal technology and geosequestration will have an increasingly important role into the future. But, for me, the economic arguments against nuclear power are overwhelmed by the fact that no-one to date has come up with a solution as to how radioactive waste can be stored safely for thousands of years. From a sustainability perspective, while the nuclear waste issue remains unresolved, the nuclear power industry will be transferring the risks, costs and responsibility to future generations. There is no community in Australia that has to date signified its willingness to be the repository for relatively small amounts of low-level research and medical waste, let alone the high-level waste generated by nuclear power stations. And which member of parliament has volunteered to have a nuclear reactor situated in their electorate?

Nuclear power is dangerous. There continues to be the risk of accidents. Look at the recent leaks at Lucas Heights and remember Chernobyl. It is a grim reality that 20 years later 350,000 people remain displaced and three-quarters of a million hectares of productive land remain off limits, with experts arguing that the final death toll could be as high as 24,000 people. On top of that in this very troubled world, you have to add the new possibilities of nuclear terrorism. Remember that uranium, like oil, gas and coal, is a finite resource. Renewables are our only ‘in-finite’ energy options. In a recent paper, the President of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Professor Ian Lowe, concluded with the following quote, which for me sums it up:

We are 50 years into the best funded development of any energy technology, and yet nuclear energy is still beset with problems. Reactors go over budget by billions, decommissioning plants is so difficult and expensive that power stations are kept operating past their useful life—

as Tony Blair well knows—

and there is still no solution for radioactive waste. So there is no economic case for nuclear power. As energy markets have liberalised ... investors have turned their backs on nuclear energy. The number of reactors in western Europe and the USA peaked about 15 years ago and has been declining since. By contrast, the amount of wind power and solar energy is increasing rapidly. The actual figures for the rate of increase in the level of different forms of electricity supply for the decade up to 2003 are striking: wind nearly 30 per cent, solar more than 20 per cent, gas 2 per cent, oil and coal 1 per cent, nuclear 0.6 per cent. Most of the world is rejecting nuclear in favour of alternatives that are cheaper, cleaner and more flexible. This is true even of countries that already have nuclear power. With billions already invested in this expensive technology, they have more reason to look favourably on it than we do.

It is time our Prime Minister got the message. We must act now to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. The citizens of Australia must demand this of the Howard government. We must take part in the trillion dollar industry emerging globally in renewable energy technologies. Instead of the Prime Minister’s focus on nuclear power, which is really nothing more than a diversion, we should be out there supporting our clean energy industries in the manner suggested by the opposition in the second reading amendment to the bill moved by our shadow minister.

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