Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

He is smiling; he knows I am dead right. So what he is seeking to do is to get the Senate to agree to a framework for a scheme that is actually a work in progress.

What about another big industrial sector? We have talked about agriculture; we have talked now about coal. What about the electricity generators? There they are; that is about half the emissions. They have been offered compensation that is clearly, plainly inadequate. It is going to devastate the balance sheets of the generators. So the government has asked the investment bank Morgan Stanley to examine these balance sheet effects and come back and report on what additional compensation or changes to the scheme design could be made. With coal the whole scheme is in negotiation, so the senators do not know what they are voting for there, and with the generators it is all under negotiation again and subject to this report from Morgan Stanley. Most of the detailed regulations governing how various industrial activities are defined and compensated under the emissions trading scheme remain unreleased. Rules for fewer than a dozen of what could be up to 100 sets of sector-specific regulations have been finalised.

Yesterday, by contrast, we presented a proposal from Frontier Economics that would see average annual household power bills only $44 higher rather than $280 higher, as under the Rudd ETS. It presented much smaller and more gradual increases in power bills, and that, of course, dramatically decreases the need for compensation to households, eliminating or dramatically reducing the fiscal churn. Of course, another very profound benefit of the approach recommended by Frontier is that hundreds of thousands of small businesses will also experience a much lower increase in their electricity bills. Under the government’s proposed scheme, many households would be compensated for the large and abrupt hike in their power bills, but no such compensation is envisaged for businesses even though they consume more electricity than households. Rather than the loss of 26,000 regional jobs revealed by the modelling of the CPRS, Frontier’s proposed changes would lead to net gains of 42,000 in employment in regional Australia. The Frontier proposal will see an improvement in employment in regional Australia; the Rudd government’s CPRS will see the devastation of regional and rural Australia.

As I said, this is not something that has been worked up by a policy committee of the coalition; this is the work of one of the leading firms—arguably the leading firm—in Australia, the firm that designed one of the most successful and earliest greenhouse gas abatement schemes in the world, the New South Wales GGAS scheme. That work, instead of being treated with the respect, attention and consideration of thoughtful men and women concerned about the future of Australia and Australians’ jobs, has been treated with contempt, and that speaks volumes for the arrogance and the indifference of the Rudd Labor government.

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