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

I thank the member for Isaacs for the question. The fact is that certainty is absolutely critical to the business community and to the Australian community in determining what appropriate measures and actions should be taken to respond to the dangerous threat of climate change. The fact is that action on delivering the necessary investment for clean technologies and for energy efficiencies is absolutely central to our efforts to reduce Australia’s carbon pollution. And for that investment to take place, business needs certainty. The Prime Minister has just referred to that. The Business Council of Australia, the Australian Industry Group and others have made clear on many occasions how important, in terms of economic planning, certainty really is.

The government recognise this because we have brought forward a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme for this parliament to consider, and we recognise it because we are bringing the largest ever rollout of a clean energy initiative seen in this country. I notice today a statement by the Australian renewable energy company Pacific Hydro, who, in responding to a major financing deal that they have announced today in relation to Chile, said:

Australia will benefit from similar significant investment and job creation opportunities once the climate change and energy policies proposed by the Rudd Government are put in place.

Pacific Hydro went on to say:

We call on the Australian Parliament to ensure passage of both the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) and the 20% Renewable Energy Target (RET) this year so we can set about the task of transforming our stationary energy sector into one that is substantially less carbon intensive and better able to compete on the world stage.

That was the message today from one of Australia’s leading renewable energy companies. But what was the message that we got from the opposition?

What we have seen today is a comprehensive failure of the position that the Leader of the Opposition has held ever since he came into political life. What is more, it is a position that shows that economic policy in the opposition has been abrogated to the National Party. The opposition’s position seems to be: ‘We aren’t prepared to do anything, but we’ll call for another report.’ Let us just see how long this has been going on. In 1997 the then environment minister, Robert Hill, established an inquiry into emissions trading. In 1999 the Australian Greenhouse Office released four discussion papers on emissions trading. In 2002 the previous Prime Minister announced Australia would not ratify the Kyoto protocol. In 2003 the then Treasurer and the environment minister took a submission to cabinet to establish an emissions trading scheme, only to see it vetoed. That was six years ago.

Six years ago, the opposition, when they were in government, were looking at an emissions trading scheme. In fact, as the opposition leader said on Lateline on 9 July:

The Coalition’s policy, the Howard Government’s policy last year was that we would establish an emissions trading system not later than 2012.

And he went on to say—

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