Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Innovation and Industry) Share this | Hansard source

Human caused climate change is the great issue of our age. It represents one of the greatest challenges which have been faced by humanity. It represents one of the greatest challenges faced by public policy makers. So there has never been such an important time for people in this building, for people in this place, to conduct their affairs in such a way as to pursue the national interest. History will judge us on what we do here or what we do not do here, whether we like it or not. History will surely condemn the coalition for failing to rise to this challenge and instead allowing itself to slip into the indulgence of its own political interest.

The challenge which is faced by the globe is stark. We have heard that if we were to stabilise emissions right now there would be an increase in global temperatures of 0.6 per cent. If we do nothing and continue on a business as usual approach, we face global increases in temperatures of five to six per cent. The effect that that would have on the delicate balance of the global ecosystem is hard to completely comprehend, but what we absolutely know is that the effects will be drastic. Garnaut says that we will face a 34 per cent increase in the cost of supplying water to our urban communities. He says that we will face an additional 4,000 heat related deaths every year in Queensland alone.

The Rudd government has approached this challenge with seriousness and with clarity. The very first thing we did was take this issue to the people at the 2007 election and seek their mandate, a step in the democratic process which, if we are to judge our opponents opposite on the way in which they brought Work Choices into this place, is a very novel step indeed. We then commissioned Professor Garnaut to provide us with a report, which he did in the middle of last year. We put in place a consultative process, with a policy proposition in the green paper presented to the Australian people in July of last year. Then in the white paper a government position was presented to the Australian people in December of last year.

What that position contained was a cap-and-trade scheme, the kind of scheme which is being embraced by economies around the world, tailored to Australian circumstances—a scheme which will deliver an unconditional reduction in greenhouse emissions of five per cent by 2020 but as much as a 25 per cent reduction, depending on the pace of the rest of the world; a scheme which will place a price on carbon across the broad breadth of our economy, covering 75 per cent of emissions in the economy; a scheme which will provide assistance to those sectors of the economy which are most dependent upon carbon, such as aluminium, where 90 per cent of the permits to that sector would be provided free; and a scheme which would provide assistance to low- and middle-income earners so that they can deal with any increase in household costs associated with the scheme.

Then in May of this year, with the global economic crisis having an impact upon our economy, we changed the proposition in these respects: we delayed it by a year, we put in place a fixed price of $10 a permit in the first year and we increased the assistance to those sectors dependent upon carbon. That proposition was put to this place in May, it was passed by the House of Representatives in June and it stands before the Senate for a vote in two days time. This has been a considered and measured approach.

Far from there being a failure to consider changes to the ETS, as is proposed in this matter of public importance today, there has in fact been a consideration of thousands of submissions and representations which have been made by all sectors of our society to the government. I doubt there has ever been more consultation for a government proposition as we have seen in relation to the CPRS—and rightly so, given how significant the CPRS is to our economy. We have seen participating in this great national discussion the AiG and the BCA; the ACTU and unions across the country; the Aluminium Council and companies like Alcoa; the cement industry and companies like Blue Circle cement; the automotive industry and companies like Ford; and the environmental sector and groups such as the ACF. But there is one group which has been absent, and that is the coalition.

Whilst this great national discussion has been underway, the coalition have treated us to a practical demonstration of chaos theory. They have been hopelessly split on this issue. We are told that the Leader of the Opposition is in favour of an emissions trading scheme, and yet the member for Warringah said on 27 July this year that he thinks the science behind climate change is ‘contentious, to say the least’. The member for Goldstein is on the record as saying that we should be putting more into proving up the science. How do you reconcile that with the position taken by the coalition to the election last year, as famously disclosed to the Australian people through the Liberal source to Phil Coorey in the Sydney Morning Herald on 28 July last year when he said that the reason that the coalition supported an ETS was that ‘We were staring at an electoral abyss. We had to pretend we cared’?

Despite all that disunity, the coalition have been unified on one thing. Far from dealing with the national interest, they have been completely unified on the fact that the way to deal with this issue is to pursue their own political interests. Trying to reconcile that with the extraordinary divisions amongst their own side has led to inertia and procrastination. We have been asking for a policy from the coalition and what we have got back from them is: ‘We’ll tell you after the Garnaut report’, ‘We’ll tell you after the Treasury modelling’, ‘We’ll tell you after the white paper’, ‘We’ll tell you after the Pearce report’, ‘We’ll tell you after the Senate inquiry; in fact, why don’t we have a Productivity Commission inquiry’—even though the Productivity Commission has already stated a position on this—and finally, in May of this year, they said, ‘We’ll wait until after Copenhagen.’

Given what we know to be the position of the Leader of the Opposition, his failure to put a position on the part of the coalition represents his greatest failure of leadership.  The Leader of the Opposition now is the coalition’s own wheel of fortune. Every time he walks into a party room meeting, at the beginning of that meeting the party room gives him a big spin—and it is anyone’s guess as to where he will end up. Yesterday he ended up with the Frontier report: ‘greener, cheaper and smarter.’ It is greener, we are told, even though the Frontier report, if it were to become policy, would mean forgoing tens of millions of tonnes of greenhouse emissions compared with the CPRS by 2020. It is cheaper, we are told, even though it would certainly give rise to an increase in uncertainty. You do not have to believe me on that; listen to the BCA. They say:

The BCA is concerned that a baseline and credit model will bring additional uncertainty over time as such an approach may require changes to the baselines to achieve emissions targets and the quantum and timing of such changes is unknown …

And it is smarter, we are told, even though the rest of the world is embracing a cap-and-trade scheme and, were we to go down the path the opposition wants us to take, we would be isolated from the rest of the world. This is a proposition which does not add up. It gives 100 per cent exemptions to emission-intensive industries. It gives 100 per cent exemptions to methane emissions from coalmines. It doubles the assistance to the electricity industry. It does not cover the agricultural sector or the energy sector, even though they represent half the emissions equation in this country. And yet, magically, what has been proposed is a doubling of the emissions reduction target by 2020. If the coalition go down this path, then Malcolm Turnbull will become the David Copperfield of this debate: the great illusionist—and make no mistake, this is a great illusion. But what it is clearly not is opposition policy. That is one thing on which Malcolm Turnbull has been very clear.

We still have not seen a single amendment from the opposition in relation to this scheme. All we are told this represents on their part is a grunt. The reality is that in May of this year the Liberals left this great national debate. What this country knows is that it has to change in relation to climate change. What this country wanted was a say in how we get there, and they got that through the procedure that the government has delivered. The Australian people want the two great parties to work together on this issue, but the fact that the coalition walked away from this issue in May of this year is something for which they will stand condemned by history. What the people of this country want is certainty. They want it from the coalition, they want it from the government, and they want it from this parliament—and it can be given to them if the coalition votes for the government’s legislation in two days in the Senate.

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