Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

National Party senators, like Ron Boswell, who sits in his inner-city high-rise office in Brisbane, the ultimate Queen Street farmer, needs to get out of his deep leather chair and talk to the real farmers. Imagine the legacy of the National Party 100 years from now as the party from the bush that sells out the bush on climate change, if that is their legacy. We cannot continue to ignore the science that excess carbon pollution is causing the climate to change in dramatic and previously unseen ways. Extreme weather events, higher temperatures, more droughts and rising sea levels are happening. In Australia, our environment and climate are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Apart from Antarctica, we are the driest continent.

This bill will help drive down emissions by introducing a cost on carbon pollution. The bill establishes the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. The Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority will issue a limited number of emission units which will be available for purchase. Companies will compete to purchase these units at auction or in a secondary market. The price will be fixed at $10 per tonne before full market trading gets underway from 1 July 2012. The scheme applies to all greenhouse gases under the Kyoto protocol, including CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons and others. It includes energy, transport, industrial processes, waste, fugitive emissions from oil and gas production and forestry. For some entities it will be cheaper for them to reduce emissions than buy units, which is an aspect of the scheme that those opposite seem to ignore. Of course, this is the whole idea of the CPRS. It will provide the motivation that industry needs to invest in renewable energies, like solar and wind, and build the momentum needed to get new technologies like clean coal and geothermal out of the science laboratory and into the practical solutions to climate change. As well as creating alternative energy sources, these emerging industries will also be a source of thousands of new low-carbon green jobs.

This bill introduces a massive shift in the Australian economy, but it also includes appropriate measures to protect Australian jobs and shield our trade-exposed industries. The last thing we want to see is vital Australian industries shipped overseas to high-polluting countries. We achieve nothing by simply shipping the emissions overseas. We fully understand this. That is why the scheme will allocate some free permits to firms in emissions-intensive, trade-exposed activities. Permits will initially be provided at a 90 per cent rate for the most emissions-intensive activities and at a 60 per cent rate for activities that are moderately emissions intensive. The rates of assistance per unit of production will be reduced by 1.3 per cent per year to ensure that emissions-intensive, trade-exposed industries still share in the national reduction of carbon pollution over time.

An additional global recession buffer for trade-exposed industries will also apply for at least five years at a rate of five per cent for activities receiving assistance at the 90 per cent rate and 10 per cent for activities receiving assistance at the 60 per cent rate. All industries will face new costs for carbon, but those impacted the most will receive the most assistance. This bill establishes a $2.75 billion Climate Change Action Fund to provide targeted assistance to business and community organisations. This bill sets Australia on a course to a low-pollution future.

I know there are some people still coming to terms with whether or not climate change exists who want us to wait or do nothing, and there is this strange conundrum of ‘I accept the call to action by not acting,’ which seems to be the Leader of the Opposition’s policy. However, inaction is inflationary. To do nothing will cost more later. There are others who think that our targets do not go far enough. I understand their concerns. However, the bill before the House delivers a reasonable and responsible approach. The Rudd government is committed to reducing carbon pollution by five per cent by 2020. We also know that we can achieve 15 per cent if other major economies come on board. We hold out hope for the talks in Copenhagen.

One of the modern world’s greatest scientists, Stephen Hawking, said of Galileo Galilei that perhaps more than any other person Galileo was responsible for the birth of modern science. We have all heard of Stephen Hawking and how important his praise is and obviously at school we would have studied Galileo Galilei. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church had some problems with this great Italian renaissance scientist. Galileo was first tried by the Inquisition in 1615. He had to renounce his heretical theory that the earth revolved around the sun, and yet it moves still.

Sadly, Galileo Galilei ended up spending the end years of his life under house arrest. One month after I made my first speech in parliament, last year in 2008, the Catholic Church proposed to complete a rehabilitation of Galileo by erecting a statue of him inside the Vatican walls. Also, in December of last year, during events to mark the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s earliest telescopic observations, Pope Benedict XVI praised his contributions to astronomy. So it only took one of society’s oldest institutions—the Catholic Church—nigh on 400 years to admit that it might have got things completely wrong about Galileo’s theory about the earth revolving around the sun. Not that the Vatican’s timing really mattered, with all due respect to Papal infallibility—the earth kept on revolving around the happy old sun, irrespective of any Papal bull from Rome.

Sometimes it takes time to turn the big ships around. But we do not have 400 years to get it right. We do not even have 40 years. We need to listen to logic. We need to listen to the scientists. We need to listen to the voices of our unborn great-grandchildren. For heaven’s sake, please listen. For the earth’s sake, please listen. The time for those opposite to talk to their friends and colleagues who inhabit that other place over there is right now. I commend the bill to the House.

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