Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

meant that 100 jobs were lost in Tasmania. The Vestas Nacelle wind turbine assembly plant in Northern Tasmania will close as a result of the failure of the government to increase the mandatory renewable energy target. We all know about the Bald Hills wind farm, where one theoretical parrot being killed every 1,000 years stopped a $220 million wind farm project. And, in July, the Roaring Forties company, based in Tasmania, announced $300 million to provide three wind farms to China, which has a 15 per cent mandatory renewable target, but at the same time they are not proceeding with projects in South Australia and Tasmania worth $500 million because of the failure of the government. There is a trillion-dollar emerging industry in renewable energy technologies, and we are not a part of it. Our innovation and our ideas are being taken offshore. Companies like Pacific Solar are moving offshore—an absolute tragedy.

Argument No. 4 against ratifying Kyoto is that somehow technology will solve the problem: ‘We are about supporting this new technology.’ Who is opposed to new technology? Nobody. That is a given. The question is—this is Economics 1A—how do you get that technology to actually be applied and commercialised? How do you bring it on? What do you do? There is something called ‘a market’. You use market based mechanisms. What is extraordinary about this mob is not that there are climate sceptics in the cabinet; it is that there are market sceptics in the so-called right-wing, free-market government who oppose emissions trading and who insist on trying to turn it into a tax when the fact is that there are two price signals that you can have for carbon, and one is trading a market based signal. They say a price signal is necessary; that means they must support a carbon tax, because that is the other way that you have a price signal.

Argument No. 5 against ratifying Kyoto is related to the first: ‘AP6 is the alternative to Kyoto. We’ve got something else.’ Except they failed to mention that most of the partners in AP6—of course, everyone except us and the United States—is also a part of Kyoto. Korea, China, India and Japan—funnily enough—are part of Kyoto. They missed that one! It is extraordinary. You actually hear them argue: ‘Japan and China aren’t a part of it.’ Where do you think Kyoto is, Parliamentary Secretary? I say that to you.

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