Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

Do you want to listen to the content of the debate or continue to make inane comments across the dispatch box? Labor recognises the urgent need for progress on emissions trading but, as I said before, that does not excuse poor process or lack of consultation. Emissions trading is a significant economic reform, particularly as we address dangerous climate change, and we need to ensure that we get the underlying structures right.

This bill has several shortcomings. A major concern is the provision for the all-powerful Commonwealth reporting power to potentially usurp or marginalise state laws and programs. In the absence of federal government leadership on climate change, state governments have led the way and their efforts should be supported rather than handicapped. This power is clearly unnecessary. Additionally, the thresholds and time lines are loose and slow so as to prevent an ‘as soon as practical’ introduction of emissions trading. Perhaps this was to be expected given the government’s plan for a slow and modest start to emissions trading by 2011 or 2012.

Labor referred the bill, which was introduced with almost no notice, to the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts for review. That Senate inquiry heard that this bill was put together without due consultation over a few weeks between July and August. That is not nearly substantial enough time to produce legislation as important as this. We note on our side of the House the hasty and ill-prepared way in which this legislation was brought in for consideration. Extraordinarily, the department admitted that they had not consulted specifically with any of the stakeholders during the drafting of this bill. I guess this should come as no surprise to us given the hasty way in which legislation has been introduced by the minister previously into this House. A notable and well-remembered example would be the Water Bill drafts. Again, not even the National Farmers Federation, farmers groups, environment groups or state governments received an opportunity to look at that bill before it arrived here in the House. It was only when Labor insisted on the necessity of a Senate inquiry as the government tried to rush that bill through the parliament that that extremely hasty process on a matter of substantial national significance was enabled to give at least an amount of consideration to what was contained in the bill. Frankly, the government’s arrogance in basically dumping proposed legislation into the House with very little opportunity for due and proper consideration is a matter of some concern and reflects very poorly both on the government’s approach to general issues of introducing and having us consider legislation and, more particularly, on the minister himself and his approach to his portfolio.

All the stakeholders who gave evidence to the inquiry identified significant problems with this bill. The inquiry heard amongst other things that the bill could deliver unintended consequences, such as significantly raising compliance costs, producing a fractured system which may not include all major emitters, obliging companies to seek judicial review, undermining current and future state laws and programs on climate change which are working, and potentially cutting across other state laws and programs which are not at all connected to greenhouse issues. A number of representations to the Senate inquiry, including from environment organisations, made the point that the reporting thresholds had all the appearance of being too loose and that it was critical that more information be publicly disclosed about the reporting under the proposed legislation.

I note that the Investor Group on Climate Change, which represents some $375 billion of funds under management from those institutions and companies which have a direct or indirect climate change interest, was critical of the fact that the stipulated time frame is so slow. They said that phasing-in of reporting should be accelerated. It was very clear that they had concerns about the levels of uncertainty attached to the government’s approach to climate change generally, particularly the time delay in the establishment of an emissions trading scheme. Those problems were identified and recognised when the inquiry heard from interested parties on the bill.

Additionally, as the bill is now being rushed through parliament, we need to consider the particular reasons it is being rushed through. I think the answer is very clear. Up until this point in time, the Howard government has done virtually zip in addressing climate change. There has been a systemic pattern of denial and inaction on climate change and that systemic pattern goes to, amongst other things, the question of setting up Australian businesses and the community so that we can deal with climate change and have a market within which to operate so emission reductions can have value.

It is a matter of record that, on a number of occasions, the government had the opportunity to consider emissions trading. That includes receiving cabinet submissions on that very matter which were rejected. As they now find that climate change is a matter of real interest to the Australian community, that the question of a framework within which to address climate change is a matter of real concern for companies in Australia and that there is a European emissions trading scheme operating out of Kyoto, which the government still do not want to have anything to do with, the government realise that there is a huge gap in their public policy position. As a consequence, they now have to get legislation into the House which shows that they are reacting in some way to the deficiencies of the past as a consequence of them not being willing to embrace emissions trading as a way of dealing with climate change.

As a consequence, the politics behind this are particularly ordinary and so was the drafting of the bill as it was put forward. The circulated amendments bear out the fact that this was a poll driven, last-minute effort, because there are amendments coming from the government at the very last minute on the basis of the Senate inquiry, which identified all the shortcomings in the legislation that was being proposed by the government in the first place.

I guess a sloppy bill like this really tells us pretty clearly that, at the time it was introduced, perhaps it was the case that the environment minister did not even have a chance to have a look at it. As a consequence, we have eleventh-hour efforts to draft and rush this bill through parliament. This process is undertaken at the expense of good governance and the responsibilities that we have in this House to look closely at legislation that is proposed by the government, but, as I said, it is consistent with the government’s record of delay and inaction over the past 11 years or so.

Rather than reducing uncertainty for industry, the bill in its current form has the potential to increase uncertainty due to unintended consequences including the introduction of legal ambiguities in relation to some of the clauses proposed. I note that the government circulated amendments yesterday. It is good that the environment minister finally found some time—in what I know has been a fairly busy last couple of days—to give some attention to his portfolio responsibilities. But, true to the arrogant form that we consistently see from the Howard government, the House has been given less than 24 hours to review the amendments, to undertake appropriate consultation and to seek the necessary advice. This is completely unacceptable. It is completely unacceptable that we should have less than a day to consider and review these amendments and to seek the necessary advice on these matters. The approach of the government and the minister is to ram it through, get it into the House and never mind the details. It is particularly disappointing with this bill because it has some significance to it—it will underpin significant economic reform in years to come. Labor reserves the right to move further amendments in the Senate depending on further scrutiny of and advice on this bill and on the government’s amendments.

I want to go for a moment to the issue of the government’s approach to climate change and the inconsistencies in their approach in general, which we saw only too well in question time yesterday. Just yesterday in relation to the government’s position on issues to do with the ratification of Kyoto the environment minister said during the debate on a matter of public importance:

Kyoto may be amended, and we hope it will be. We will be part of that. We want to amend Kyoto.

That was what the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Mr Turnbull, said yesterday in a debate in the House. What an extraordinary statement from the minister. I do not think I have heard anything like it. If I have been hearing the government correctly for the last 11 years, it has been all about bagging Kyoto. It has been all about talking about the Eurocentrism of this multilateral agreement that is already underway. It has been denying—and decrying those who claim—that Kyoto has an important role to play in addressing climate change. And now we have Minister Turnbull saying: ‘Kyoto may be amended, and we hope it will be. We will be part of that.’ How does the minister propose to be part of it if we are not going to ratify it? That really is the essential question that the minister has to answer: how is he going to be part of the process of amending Kyoto when he and Mr Howard refuse to ratify the protocol and therefore cannot take a place at the table and vote on the protocol itself? The government has got itself into an extraordinary, illogical, preposterous and ridiculous situation on this issue. It absolutely beggars belief. No wonder international commentators and international political leaders look upon the position that the Howard government has taken on the Kyoto protocol with some bewilderment. We are aware of the fact that they wanted to ratify it in the first place, but now they have got themselves into such a tortured, convoluted and contorted position. We had the environment minister saying here in the House yesterday: ‘We will be part of that. We want to amend Kyoto.’

I reckon I have heard just about everything from the Howard government on climate change, but this beats everything we have heard up to this point in time. No other statement so clearly shows the total illogicality of the position that the government has taken. Just to bear this out, in the other place, the Senate, Senator Minchin was saying at the very same time, and I quote:

Kyoto is a failed doctrine. ... Therefore, by definition, it is doomed to fail.

That was the government’s old position—that it is a failed doctrine and therefore by definition it is doomed to fail—but yesterday Minister Turnbull had a new position. He said:

Kyoto may be amended, and we hope it will be. We will be part of that. We want to amend Kyoto.

And yet the government is not willing to ratify the protocol. As they say in popular culture: go figure. The question that we need to ask ourselves in the House and that Australians need to ask themselves is: which is it? Which is the Howard government’s position? There is total confusion now on this issue of the ratification of the protocol. Is it a ‘failed doctrine’ or should we commit ourselves, as Minister Turnbull has, to amending Kyoto? The plain fact is that these views are completely incompatible with one another. A senior minister in the Senate, an acknowledged climate sceptic, is in complete opposition to a senior minister in the House who is trying to run a line now on Kyoto which suggests in some ways that he actually thinks there is merit in the protocol after all. I must say that I somewhat suspected it.

There is one more thing that needs to be pointed out in terms of the recent Sydney declaration and the government’s position on climate change. In July last year, in a speech to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, the Prime Minister said:

A central flaw of Kyoto is its reliance on a distinction between developed and developing countries which makes little sense when translated into global emissions.

But last Sunday the Sydney declaration—the Howard government’s latest and, I have to say, pretty heavily confected climate change triumph—actually put the view and said specifically:

The future international climate change arrangement needs to reflect differences in economic and social conditions among economies and be consistent with our common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.

That is the Kyoto approach. That is the specific Kyoto approach. Article 10 of the protocol says that all parties should act:

... taking into account their common but differentiated responsibilities and their specific national and regional development priorities, objectives and circumstances ...

This has become one of the most farcical public policy positions that any federal government has ever held. It is being exposed day after day, minute by minute it seems, by the contradictory statements of ministers such as those we have witnessed over the last 48 hours about Kyoto. Additionally—notwithstanding the fact that the Prime Minister had been hostile not only to the idea of ratification but also to the notion that it would be the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that would be the appropriate pathway to build multilateral agreement on climate change treaties into the future—we now have from the Sydney declaration a specific recognition that the UN framework is the acknowledged and accepted pathway for future global climate change negotiations and formulations.

There is one other thing to note in this debate on the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Bill 2007. That is, as a consequence of the government’s public policy position, there has been an economic impact on the Australian economy. If it were not for the fact that we have seen some robust economic activity taking place in the well-endowed resource states, particularly Western Australia and Queensland, I believe there would have been much greater attention paid to the economic consequences of not only the government’s failure to embrace clean and renewable energy here in Australia but also, by being so blind minded and blind eyed on the issue of Kyoto ratification, its denial of the opportunities that Australian companies could have and should have to be involved in clean development mechanisms, joint initiatives and other measures that are linked to the protocol.

The fact is that renewable energy companies have voted with their feet. In August 2006 Vestas Nacelles announced it would close its wind turbine assembly plant in Northern Tasmania. The cost was 100 jobs; 100 Tasmanian jobs went as a result of that decision. In February 2007 Pacific Hydro announced it was investing $500 million in Brazil because Australian renewable energy projects had been stalled by the government’s refusal to ratify the Kyoto protocol. That is a direct economic impact and a direct economic burden on our country, Australian workers and Australian industry as a consequence of the government’s position. Vestas has subsequently announced its Portland factory will close in December 2007 because further investment cannot be viable in current market conditions. The reason it cannot be viable in current market conditions is that the government has not established a market to enable these companies to operate and to provide the necessary services for reducing emissions and providing energy at the same time that many other countries have begun to. There is no market here for us to do it. As a consequence these companies are stranded and stuck, and the investment goes offshore and the jobs go with it. It is very clear that there is a strong business case that lies with us accessing the Kyoto protocol. The lost opportunities associated with emissions reduction projects are estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions. There are lost opportunities associated with the clean development mechanism in other countries.

The minister is fond of coming in here and criticising the clean development mechanism because of some of the difficulties that it has experienced and some of the anomalies that have resulted after its implementation, conveniently ignoring the fact that the clean development mechanism is a major producer of investment in reducing greenhouse emissions—some $US6 billion is attached to the CDMs. But Australia and Australian companies continue to miss out. There is opportunity for Australia to become a regional leader in the CDMs by establishing low-carbon projects in Australia that can generate carbon credits to other countries. And there is an opportunity for Australia to become a regional hub for a global power carbon market—which is what many Australian businesses would like to see, particularly, I know, business leaders in Sydney and Melbourne. All of these opportunities have gone begging as a consequence of the Howard government’s obduracy in respect of climate change and ratifying the Kyoto protocol.

As I said at the beginning of my remarks, we reserve the right to move further amendments. I move:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:“whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1)

notes that:

(a)

the Bill was hastily drafted without any genuine consultation with stakeholders, including state governments, industry groups and environment groups;

(b)

the Bill was hastily drafted and introduced so as to prevent due public and parliamentary scrutiny; and

(c)

significant government amendments were circulated less than 24 hours before the second reading debate so as to prevent due public and parliamentary scrutiny;

(2)

is concerned that the Bill does not reflect the urgent need to establish an effective emissions trading scheme; and

(3)

therefore demands that:

(a)

the Government amend the legislation according to the unanimous recommendations of the Senate inquiry’s report”.

See this speech in context