Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

This scheme in this form at this time as presented by the government will send jobs straight to Shanghai. This is a recipe, a plan and a proposal which will send Australian jobs with Australian workers straight to Shanghai and in so doing will achieve the unique double of sending emissions to a higher emissions environment and raising global emissions. Jobs will go to Shanghai and global emissions will go up. However, we had this presented as a choice between action and inaction. That is the false dichotomy which our friends in the government would present and that is the debate which they would want. But they are flat, dead wrong. It is not a choice between action and inaction. It is a choice between job-destroying action and the impression of activity on the one hand and job-creating action and real reduction of emissions on the other hand. That is the difference.

We have a very clear plan. It is a plan of protecting the planet whilst protecting Australia. I will run through our four key planks. But I want to deal with the issue of jobs going straight to Shanghai first. To follow on from what Mr Robb, the member for Goldstein, has said, let me speak first about Sun Metals. I speak about them because they are on the record. Other companies have come to the member for Goldstein, the member for Groom, the member for Dunkley, the Leader of the Opposition and me but are not yet willing to speak on the record for fear of retribution.

Sun Metals employs directly or indirectly 450 people in Townsville. They make zinc. They smelt zinc. What they have said is that under this government’s scheme, because they will be competing against countries which do not have such a tax in exporting their materials to China, in exporting their materials to Asia, they will close and they will move their jobs to China. What will happen to those 450 workers in a global downturn? They will be unemployed. They will lose their jobs and the rest of Australia will have to pick up the price. And their jobs and their families and their livelihood will all suffer as a consequence. What will happen to global emissions?

Sun Metals produces about one million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per annum. When Sun Metals moves to China, because of the different processes and the different energy supplies, global emissions will go up from one million tonnes to two million tonnes for the equivalent body of production. That is one company. Visy is also on the record as saying that they will move two Australian paper recycling plants, probably to China, under the government’s emissions trading scheme. That is 160 jobs gone. The ludicrous situation is that we take our waste paper, send it to China, process it in China and it is then re-exported to Australia. That is truly an absurd exercise.

We mentioned Energy Developments today. Energy Developments harvests the waste coal seam methane gas. It uses that gas. It will probably save, on present estimates, as much in the way of emissions as the government’s entire $3 billion so-called energy efficiency program by 2020, unless of course the CPRS is applied to it. What we see from Macquarie Research’s note of 26 February is:

… the future is in the hands of the government.

The headline is:

CPRS outcome in June remains the key share price driver.

Further down it says:

ENE’s—

that is, Energy Developments, earnings are:

… under threat from a potentially poor outcome from the federal government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

The risk is that the government implements the white paper. That is what happens to a renewable energy company under the scheme. What we see is the destruction of Australian jobs in zinc, paper recycling and clean energy companies. They should be ashamed of themselves. Everybody in this House who believes in lower emissions and Australian jobs should think of Sun Metals, Visy and Energy Developments, because these are real companies with real jobs which are really going offshore.

What are the great flaws in their system? First, as the member for Goldstein set out, is the lack of a level playing field, which will see Australian firms burdened with a price that other firms in other countries are not and will see the export of Australian jobs and the driving up of global emissions when those jobs go to a lower emissions environment.

Second, what we see is the absence of green carbon, and I will deal with that in more detail in a minute. It is extraordinary that green carbon has been utterly left out of the government’s scheme. Whether it is Professor Flannery, Professor Garnaut, the National Farmers Federation, the Australian Farm Institute, the Australian Industry Group or the Business Council of Australia, all have called for the inclusion of green carbon in the scheme, yet it is left out of the government’s scheme. It is for one simple reason—they are using last century’s European model rather than this century’s Australian model. That is the difference. They are using a 12- or 13-year-old model which looks backwards and is not designed for Australia and does not maximise the savings of emissions we could make rather than using a model which would be right for Australia, which would save real emissions, which would improve our farms and soils and which would help Australia have lower emissions and to reduce those emissions at low cost.

The third of the key elements is the issue of timing. We have always said 2011 or 2012 for the simple reason that we are on track. We are one of five countries to be meeting their target and we are already delivering. But to drive the price of carbon up and to impose an impost on Australian businesses that are engaged in trade prior to other countries is to place a millstone around their necks. That is what we see from our friends on the government bench opposite.

What we have is a very simple proposition: we can protect the planet and Australia through four key planks or pillars. The first is that Malcolm Turnbull outlined a green carbon initiative. One hundred and fifty million tonnes of CO2 which would not be saved under the government scheme can be saved. It is less than one-sixth of that which has been outlined by Professor Garnaut and it uses soil carbons, biochar, revegetation of mallee and mulga, and forestry. It uses the 11 different elements which Professor Garnaut himself outlined but on a far more conservative basis. All of this is excluded under last century’s scheme, which they are trying to impose on Australia today. That is a disastrous model for emissions reduction, a disastrous model for costs within Australia and an extraordinarily lost opportunity for Australian farmers. Do not take our word for it; take the word of the National Farmers Federation, the Australian Farm Institute, WWF, ACF, the Australian Industry Group, the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and I can go on.

The second element of our proposal is a very simple one: we put on the table over a year ago the concept of a clean energy revolution, terminology which we see has been appropriated. That is fine. But what we will do under the clean energy revolution involves two parts. On the one side there is demand reduction—50 million tonnes of CO2 from energy efficiency on a per annum basis by 2020. Again, this element is entirely excluded under the government system. If mums and dads make savings at home through putting solar panels on their roofs, it will not make one gram of difference to the 2020 target under their system. Senator Wong set that out yesterday and conceded it. The other part of the clean energy revolution is what we will do with renewable energy, what we will do with clean coal and the two stations that we will build by 2020 as part of a broader clean energy revolution focused on solar, wind, tidal and geothermal energy.

Then we turn to the emissions trading scheme and the flaws I have outlined. We have said that there is a role for a price for carbon but not one done in a way which drives our exports out of Australia, drives our export businesses offshore and destroys Australian jobs. That brings me to the last element, the fourth plank or pillar. That is, we must have a real global agreement with China, India and the United States with real incentives for protecting the great forests of the world. That is the difference— (Time expired)

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