Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition cannot support this seriously flawed legislation that will lead to job losses for Australian workers without materially cutting our 1.4 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions. This legislation will export jobs, investment and emissions through the design flaws in this emissions trading scheme. Some of the flaws in this complex scheme are quite fundamental. I have coal-fired electricity generators in my electorate. Under this legislation they have simply been assumed away. The legislation is framed around the national energy market which operates a gross pool system, allowing costs to be passed through in the way electricity is sold.

WA is an energy island. The market is primarily a bilateral contract system with long-term contracts of typically 15 years, with a minor percentage of the market traded. Unless several years ago a generator made provision for carbon costs, the generator will have to pay this cost under the proposed scheme. There is no transitional allowance at all for the private energy generator in WA.

A further structural flaw is the treatment of fugitive emissions. Collie has been allocated the highest default factor when the state mining engineer acknowledged that Collie coal does not produce methane. I have a major alumina refinery in my electorate which operates in a global market where prices are set by international supply and demand. In the words of the Aluminium Council, our major concern with the proposed CPRS and renewable energy target is the magnitude of costs being imposed on Australia producers that is not being imposed on competing suppliers from other countries.

Costs of tens of millions of dollars per site will be imposed only on Australian producers. Given the ETS represents a major structural change, the government should have provided complete detailed analysis and modelling of the costs of the scheme, how it affects each industry and regional community and whether it is the most cost-effective option for Australia to reduce its emissions. Industries need a globally competitive, level playing field. The proposed US emissions legislation will provide 100 per cent protection to US export and import competing industries until 2025.

Coming from the dairy industry, I well understand how difficult it is to compete in global markets without a level playing field. My industry competes with heavily subsidised competitors that have a direct economic advantage. We have lost numbers of farmers, jobs, small businesses, investments and Australian owned processors. It has come at a huge social and economic cost. Any assumption that we should be first to make concessions and the rest of the trading world will do the same—the assumption the Rudd government is making—is wrong. Farmers and exporters will continue to carry the cost. Treasury modelling has not even considered any impacts on agriculture. We know that the agricultural, horticultural and viticultural industries will, under this scheme, now also have to compete with imported products from countries that have the advantage of no flow-on costs from the creation of an ETS. The forestry industry has been excluded as well.

No-one in my electorate should underestimate the very direct impacts this flawed ETS will have on every individual, business and industry—mining and resources, manufacturing, agriculture, forestry and tourism, every small, medium and large business as well as every home and family. That is why, prior to the introduction of an ETS, it is essential that we see a Productivity Commission review, the Copenhagen decisions and US legislation are known and there is coordinated global action.

For Australia to implement a flawed, complex, bureaucratic emissions trading scheme which fails to make a measurable impact on reducing global emissions would cost Australian jobs, affect industrial output and investment, damage the economy and increase the cost of living for Australians. Yes, businesses and individuals in Australia need to be globally competitive and environmentally effective in their emissions mitigation decisions. Businesses do need certainty—I agree. They need certainty that they will actually still be in business after the introduction of this government’s flawed emissions trading scheme legislation. I do not support these amendments.

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