Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

I am glad the member for Fadden finally realised what bill he was actually talking to and remembered that the government bill before the House is being supported by the opposition. Indeed, we are amending an act that was introduced by the Howard government in its last term of parliament. I suppose the one good thing is that when the ETS legislation is introduced he will already have his speech to give, because he has just given it now.

It has been quite interesting listening to this debate. The opposition members have not talked about the substance of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Amendment Bill 2008 or come to the realisation they are actually in support of the changes to their initial act. As I said, it will save them all a lot of time when they finally get around to the ETS legislation. I am glad they are thinking about it, because for 12 years they did not think about it, and that is why there is a need for urgency. That is why there is a need for a rush—because of the inertia on this issue. This issue is too great for us to play politics with. The thing that the opposition has not realised is that the public out there are saying, ‘Please stop playing politics with this. It is about our environment. It is about our future.’ For most people it is about their kids and their grandkids, and they want to see us all come together and do something rational about it.

Professor Barry Brook is the Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change and the Director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Adelaide. After the Manning Clark House conference, he said:

The Manning Clark House Conference: Imagining the Real Life on a Greenhouse Earth is quite unusual for a climate change conference—perhaps unique.

... a representative cross-section of the views and perspectives of the wider community, who shared a common concern—the severity of the problem of global warming and the absolute urgency of the need to take action to avoid dangerous consequences. That is what makes this joint statement (approved at the conclusion of the meeting by the conference speakers and other participants) so powerful. When confronted with the immediacy of this issue and a realistic vision of possible futures under unmitigated carbon emissions, the consensus for a rapid societal response was overwhelming. There is no time to lose.

The joint statement from the conference reads:

Global warming is accelerating. The Arctic summer sea ice is expected to melt entirely within the next five years,—decades earlier than predicted in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report.

Scientists judge the risks to humanity of dangerous global warming to be high. The Great Barrier Reef faces devastation. Extreme weather events, such as storm surges adding to rising sea levels and threatening coastal cities, will become increasingly frequent.

There is a real danger that we have reached or will soon reach critical tipping points and the future will be taken out of our hands. The melting Arctic sea ice could be the first such tipping point.

Beyond 2ºC of warming, seemingly inevitable unless greenhouse gas reduction targets are tightened, we risk huge human and societal costs and perhaps even the effective end of industrial civilisation. We need to cease our assault on our own life support system, and that of millions of species. Global warming is only one of many symptoms of that assault.

Peak oil, global warming and long term sustainability pressures all require that we reduce energy needs and switch to alternative energy sources. Many credible studies show that Australia can quickly and cost-effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions through dramatic improvements in energy efficiency and by increasing our investment in solar, wind and other renewable sources.

The need for action is extremely urgent and our window of opportunity for avoiding severe impacts is rapidly closing. Yet the obstacles to change are not technical or economic, they are political and social.

We know democratic societies have responded successfully to dire and immediate threats, as was demonstrated in World War II. This is a last call for an effective response to global warming.

[Approved by the delegates of the conference, 12 June 2008]

That is why we need to take urgent action and that is why this bill is before the House today—to make amendments to an act which was, as I said, introduced by the previous government, to make amendments to the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Amendment Act, because we need that reporting and data to start a system. We need to collect the data so people can understand.

The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System will collect robust and comparable data across the Australian economy which will underpin the emissions trading scheme and provide better information to the public. We need to have that data. It is one of those ‘tipping points’, as it keeps being described in the terminology of climate change, so that is why this bill is so important.

The bill amends certain things. It will expand the number of items which can be published relating to a corporation’s greenhouse gas emissions and energy use, including separate public disclosure of direct and indirect emissions. There are some very good schemes already being undertaken by socially responsible companies who are doing great trade-offs, and they should have the ability to have those schemes reported.

The bill will also provide some clarification about what can be publicly disclosed, including allowing publication of data according to a corporation’s business unit confirming that totals may be published as falling between a specified range of values, in cases, to avoid revealing trade secrets or commercially sensitive information allowing publication of information relating to offsets. People want to know this information. People are actually looking for this in the area of investment and also in the area of purchasing power. Corporations can apply to have information withheld from the public if it would reveal trade secrets or commercially sensitive information. This will be expanded to cover the new matters which are subject to publication.

The bill will allow offsets to be reported separately from greenhouse gas projects. Currently the act only allows offsets to be reported if they arise from a project carried out by the corporation. This will include the possibility of reporting offsets created by other activities that we have already seen corporations doing.

Why do we need this information? Why do we need this data? One of the things disclosed in the bill is information that the public needs. But I have discovered that our schoolchildren do not need this information. On this issue they are among the most well-informed people I have come across. I would like to read from one of the letters I have received from a grade 5 student at Our Lady’s Primary School in Wattle Park. All of the grade 5s wrote to me. There were some fantastic letters, but this one is a standout. They were all terrific, but Annabelle’s was quite amazing:

Dear Ms Burke,

This term, my class has been learning about energy and power.

Energy is vital. We use it in everyday living. We have a big problem though. We use power so much and most of our energy comes from burning coal that we are having a really bad impact on our environment. We also need to use our cars less. If we don’t do something now, we may have some trouble in the future. Each household releases 200,000 black balloons per year, each black balloon contains 50 grams of greenhouse gas, so each household produces 10,000,000 (ten million) grams of greenhouse gas each year, but just think about it, that’s only one household!

After thinking about what might happen to our world, I have thought of some ways to conserve energy and to make our future better. I think that at least more than 5 schools in Whitehorse should have some sort of renewable energy source. Any source would be fine but my preferred energy source is biomass because it’s doing a few things at once. It’s reducing the amount of waste and greenhouse gas. Biomass energy is made from landfill. They use things like manure, wood, seaweed, plants, food scraps and rubbish. When we throw rubbish away, at one stage it will be put somewhere and begin to rot. It’s known as landfill. As the rubbish begins to rot, it creates a gas. Normally, this gas would just seep into the ground and out into the atmosphere, causing global warming, but biomass reduces that. It is still being fully developed so we might have to use another energy source.

We could have another earth hour, it will reduce some greenhouse gas. We need to do everything we can to save the environment or the following might happen:

• Antarctica is melting and so are the glaciers, which will make our sea level rise and cause floods.
• We won’t get enough rain and all our crops and animals will die which will be hard for farmers.
• Our climate will change.
• San Francisco will sink.
• Essential things will run out like coal, oil and gas.
• Some animals may die out (extinct).

So please, I hope you can be more environmentally aware and help people realize that we need to be more aware about the environment and conserve energy.

I hope you can do some more about our terrible effect on our environment.

Please do something!

I hope you can write back soon!

Keep up the good work! You’re doing really well!

Yours sincerely,

Annabelle ...

11 years of age, grade 5

Student at Our Lady’s Wattle Park

It is pretty remarkable that an 11-year-old at Wattle Park understands this concept better than most of the members of the opposition do. There is another terrific letter, from Isobel. Her father is involved with a steel company and he came and spoke to the class about environmentally friendly products. There is a letter from Laura. There is a letter from Jonathan. There is a letter from someone who, sadly, did not sign his name. There is a letter from Kate.

I went to visit the grade 5s at Our Lady’s Primary School in Wattle Park and we had one of the most enlightened discussions I have ever had about climate change and environmental issues. They wanted to know more information. One of the sad parts, though, was at the end, when the teacher told me that some of the kids are having nightmares about this issue. They are having scary dreams and thoughts about what their world will be like if we politicians do not address the problem of climate change. Reading this information frightens some of the kids so much that ‘we’re trying to tone it down a bit’. I thought that was just terrible.

The grade 5s at Our Lady’s Primary and many other schools in my electorate are doing some of the best work on sustainability and dealing with the impact on the environment of the way we live our lives. It is a testament to what we can do by providing information and by learning from our children. I had a great day with them and I want to thank them for bringing their concerns to my attention. But I do not want to have 11-year-olds being scared about their future. I want to introduce legislation such as the legislation we have before the House and do something about it. I do not want to be terrified of going into the breach. If we do not go into the breach, what are we leaving our children and grandchildren?

I had the pleasure recently of visiting the Monash Sustainability Institute, which is in my electorate of Chisholm. The Monash Sustainability Institute is a terrific organisation. If anybody gets the chance, I would really recommend they go down and have a look at the institute and the school education unit. The Monash Sustainability Institute delivers solutions to sustainability challenges through research, education and action. For government, business and community organisations, the MSI is a gateway to the extensive and varied expertise in sustainability research and practice across Monash’s faculties and research institutes.

In the early 1970s, Monash University was among the first universities in Australia to begin research on environmental issues. Building on this history, the MSI brings together sustainability researchers and practitioners from across Monash and beyond to work together to promote sustainable practice by individuals, organisations and communities.

The MSI is a multidisciplinary, cross-faculty institute that coordinates, strategically guides and represents the wealth of sustainability expertise in Monash’s faculties and research centres. The three core functions of the MSI are research, education and action. They really want to put those things into place. They want to coordinate cutting-edge, cross-disciplinary research on today’s sustainability challenges. They want to educate individuals and institutions in sustainability best practice. They have a terrific program which students do in addition to their actual course load. They electively undertake this program. This program has been given to students and corporations. I really recommend that people look it up and I encourage people to partake.

The MSI facilitates actions by individuals and organisations to embed sustainability into their future goals and present activities. The global challenges we face pay no heed to the boundaries between academic disciplines or between universities, governments and the community. Meeting the sustainability challenges of the 21st century requires new forms of collaboration and inquiry that encompass environmental, social and economic dimensions and that engage all relevant stakeholders. The MSI is committed to such an approach.

The MSI is directed by Professor David Griggs. Professor Griggs previously led the secretariat for the science working group of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was the joint winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, and was director of the Met Office Hadley Centre, the UK government’s official centre for climate change research.

So we have sitting in our midst one of the leading experts on climate change. He is leading this interdisciplinary group at Monash, which is working collaboratively with the CSIRO and with other universities across Australia on research into this area. The data that will be captured from the bill before the House will be a vital tool in the work they are doing at the sustainability centre, because they want to do more than research it; they want to put it into action.

One of the issues we discussed extensively at the MSI when I was there recently was the economics of this argument. I would have thought that the opposition got the concept of the economics of the argument, but they are not even talking about it. The MSI are concerned that we are not looking at the economics issue. I think we are, but they believe more needs to be done. In a paper they have provided to me they say:

Not only is climate change the pre-eminent environmental threat in the world today, it is also a major economic challenge. The 2006 Stern report on the Economics of Climate Change declares that climate change threatens to be the greatest and widest ranging market failure ever seen. Stern stated that, ‘our actions over the coming few decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century’. Since then the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released its Fourth Assessment Report, with projections that up to 250 million people may be short of water in Africa by 2020 and up to one billion may be short of water in Asia by the 2050s.

The paper goes on to put the case for greater modelling of the economic consequences of inaction on this issue. It notes that it is quite a difficult thing to do but that we need to get onto it. It talks about the Garnaut review and the nature of modelling that it undertook, saying the review acknowledged that:

The nature of the modelling undertaken by the Review does not allow for feedback of impacts from climate change in an internally consistent or integrated way. The domestic economic modelling framework is a traditional market model. It does not explicitly account for feedback from environmental changes to changes in economic factors or activity.

The paper says:

The Garnaut review is not the only modelling team to have struggled with these challenges. In the recent OECD Environmental Outlook for example, while economic and population growth are fed into the environmental models, the economic models themselves are run without feedback from environmental changes.

It then quotes this from the OECD Environmental Outlook:

The OECD Environmental Outlook … shows the impact of the global economy’s development on the physical world; i.e. the environment. It does not, however, reflect the environmental impact back on the economy. Failing to provide this fully integrated picture has two implications. First, the Baseline fails to reflect GDP loss from environmental damage, so GDP projections may be higher than justified. Second, since without that feedback environmental policy will always show a loss of GDP, there is a misleading implication that environmental policy always decreases welfare.

So one of these issues is about the modelling. The bill before the House today will provide the mechanisms to gather the data to look at which companies are putting out emissions and how much they are putting out. With that we can build the economic models to address issues that will have an impact on the businesses in our community. We need to make businesses understand that without these steps to reduce our carbon footprint they might not have an economic argument to run in the future because the business just will not be there. The environment is at risk but so is the economy. These things need to be taken into account and dealt with.

The MSI is looking at numerous projects, particularly brown coal, which in Victoria is a big issue. Coal in Victoria is so plentiful that we do not look at alternative energy sources. We need greater research, particularly into brown coal. There are fewer and fewer researchers who have experience in brown coal technology. We need to look at how we can utilise that energy source into the future without having a detrimental effect on our environment—if it can be done. The researchers at Monash believe they have solutions to the problem in respect of brown coal but that there is not enough attention being focused on it.

The MSI also wants to look at behavioural change to facilitate sustainability. At the end of the day, that is the greatest part of what we are going to be doing. The No. 1 issues my constituents in Chisholm write to me about are climate change and the environment. Currently I am on the end of a lot of emails about extending the train line from Huntingdale station to Monash University. They are being generated by the lovely university students at Monash University, and I strongly support them in this endeavour. Currently the train line ends at Huntingdale and you have to get a bus to Monash University, which is ridiculous. Monash University campus at Clayton is the largest university campus in Australia. Something like 40,000 people descend upon it every day. To get a bus from Huntingdale to Monash is virtually impossible. A bus arrives and gets full, the next bus arrives and gets full, and you cannot go anywhere.

So people are looking at ways and means of transport and the impact on the environment. Most of the students are saying to me, ‘We are trying not to take our cars to Monash.’ I confess, having been a student at Monash, that I drove there most days because getting there by public transport was a pain in the neck. The students are writing about their impact on the environment and are trying to switch their habits—trying to understand what behavioural changes we need to make to ensure that we are facilitating sustainability.

My constituents write that they are putting in water tanks and looking at solar panels. They are looking at things like their Bokashis. I hope everybody is going out and getting their Neco bags of fill so that they can reduce the waste that is going into their bin. I hope they are burying it in the garden—like I attempt to do. They are doing those things because they want to make their own personal change for our environment. People in my electorate are doing amazing things. The number of chook sheds and worm farms that have gone in is amazing. As I said, the schools are doing it too. So behavioural change is there. The community is leading the way and we as parliamentarians need to learn from the people we are representing. We need to pass the legislation before us today and introduce good systems so that we have a future environment and an economy to protect.

See this speech in context