James Bidgood (Dawson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I say through the Deputy Speaker to the other side of the House—I deflect it through you to the other side, Mr Deputy Speaker—that we are working hand in hand with the international community, absolutely. That is why at the G8, when our Prime Minister Kevin Rudd went there, there was an agreement for 20 CCS—that is, carbon capture and storage—projects. I know, Mr Deputy Speaker, you and I were on the primary industries committee when we brought down the report, Down Underaptly named by you, Mr Deputy Speaker! We looked into a wide range of evidence that this is a feasible project to reduce carbon through capture and storage. We can take carbon out of coal, we can put it underground and we can lock it into the natural vaults beneath the earth, which have held carbon naturally for millions of years. It is proven. It is happening off the coast of Denmark. There are case studies there that are in the report Down Under, which the other side can go and refer to. We are world leaders in these new technologies, but the other side of politics wants to jeopardise that leadership. We can be world leaders in carbon capture and storage.

I want to remind the other side of politics exactly how serious climate change is and how serious the science is. Last night was the Prime Minister’s science awards night. I was honoured to be there to see the incredible minds that we have at work in this nation. We can be truly proud of the smartest and brightest people and the way they want to inspire our youth to get a hunger for science and research. It was fantastic. I was also there last year. Professor Penny Sackett, the Chief Scientist, made this very clear statement. She said:

If we just continue on and do nothing, if we just do business as usual and do nothing about carbon emissions into the atmosphere, the sea level will rise one metre by the year 2050.

That is if we do absolutely nothing. What did the other side, the coalition, the naysayers, the flat-earth believers say? For 11 years they did nothing. And that is their policy until 2050—to do nothing. You know the results and the consequences of that—the sea levels will rise by one metre.

We had another report come out this week from the parliament, a bipartisan report about the effects of climate change on our coastline around Australia. If you were to apply that scenario of a one-metre rise by 2050 you would find out very quickly that climate change is a very real phenomenon. In the South Sea islands—PNG, the Solomon Islands—already there is social migration from islands which are sinking because of climate change and rising sea levels. Not only do the sea levels rise but the temperature of the sea changes. As the temperature of the sea changes, conditions of air convection change as well.

We have seen more incidents recently, particularly off the coast of Queensland, such as Cyclone Hamish. I happened to be in Mackay the night that Cyclone Hamish came within 200 kilometres. It was on a Saturday night. For the first time ever, the Mayor and the Deputy Mayor of Mackay issued an evacuation alert warning. This was because Cyclone Hamish was a category 5 cyclone, one category higher than Hurricane Katrina, which caused so much devastation in the United States of American in New Orleans. The locals are very familiar with the routine of getting ready for cyclone evacuation. We are very well drilled and very well prepared. I commend the four councils in my seat of Dawson, the Townsville Council, Burdekin Shire Council, the Whitsunday Regional Council and Mackay Regional Council. They do a fantastic job every year making people aware of the need to have water, torches, batteries, cans of food and dry and waterproof containers for important documents such as birth certificates, passports and other important documents like qualifications and the like. They do a fantastic job.

But everybody is saying in the seat of Dawson that things are not like they used to be. The weather events are more severe. This House will remember the floods of Mackay in February 2008. We had more rain in an overnight period than has ever been seen before. It was unbelievable. It knocked out 8,000 homes. That has a direct relationship with climate change. We have never seen anything like that before. So we need to take climate change very seriously indeed. I just do not see the other side of the House doing that. It is irresponsible for people to say there are two views of the science. The fact is that the ice caps are melting, the sea is rising and things are changing.

Climate change will put jobs at risk and it will put industries at risk unless we act to protect jobs. How do we do that? We have our greatest export, coal—there is also aluminium and uranium—that we mine and then sell overseas. All mining activities need to be cleaner. They need to be cleaner so that, if members of the international community, such as the EU, say, ‘If your coal isn’t produced in a clean way or it isn’t cleaned up, we’ll put on extra tariffs’, and then our coal and our minerals become less competitive on the world market. That is why we have to act. That is why we have to have leadership from the industry associations as well as from the unions.

I would like quote the senior vice-president of the CFMEU mining and energy division in Queensland, Stuart Vaccaneo. He says that coal mining industry employment will continue to grow over the next 20 years; it will not decline. Tony Maher, also from the CFMEU—the national president of the mining and energy division—said:

This scare mongering is purely a cynical bid of mining giants to squeeze more money in compensation out of Australian taxpayers.

Let us just remind ourselves: the mining companies are doing very nicely out of the Australian economy. They are doing very nicely indeed—multibillion dollar profits. We want to see those profits enhanced, because it does add to the bottom line of this nation.

On the issue of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and the evidence, we need to remember that this is one of the hottest and driest continents on earth and that Australia’s environment and economy will be one of the hardest and fastest hit by climate change if we do not act now. This legislation is absolutely essential to safeguard mining jobs. Yes, we need to cut emissions and we need to the legislation to do that—because it will save jobs. It will not lose jobs; it will save jobs. The Rudd government is taking responsible and decisive action immediately to tackle climate change by introducing this Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme will also reduce carbon emissions and ensure that we increase our investments in industries like renewable energy—solar, wind, geothermal—in the future, creating thousands of new businesses and jobs. Just yesterday it was an honour to be with the Hon. Martin Ferguson, the Minister for Resources and Energy, and the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, and Bob Katter, the member for Kennedy, upstairs at the launch of the Australian Centre of Renewable Innovation. This is just fantastic news. This is another billion dollar investment to get the best knowledge, the best minds and the best ideas to work for the wealth and the security of energy for this nation and for our people. Then we will be able sell those technologies overseas. We can help people in developing countries with our technologies. So it was wonderful to be a part of that. It is powering up North Queensland, which is so important because we have so many mineral deposits there which we need to export.

There are also schemes around the world operating in 27 European countries and 27 states and provinces in the USA and Canada. They are introducing emissions trading schemes to reduce carbon pollution, as is New Zealand. Passing the CPRS legislation before the end of this year will give Australian businesses the certainty that they need about the future. That is why business groups like the BCA and the AiG want it voted on this year. Business needs predictability in terms of costs, expenses and incomes. That is how you can manage and steer a business five years, 10 years, 20 years and 50 years into the future. Those in the business world need predictable outcomes.

There are many people on this side of the House in the Labor Party who like me have run small businesses. I spent 14 years in small business and I know about expenses, incomes and predictability. You need to make an educated guess as to what the future is going to hold. So it is with multibillion dollar mining companies. They need to have certainty as to what they are up for in the global and national economy. That is why this is important. That is why business groups like the BCA and the AiG want it voted on this year. They want to get this settled and they want to get it done so that they know how they are going to manage their businesses. The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme will help us tackle climate change in a way that will ensure the future of our kids and future generations.

The National Party just do not want to know. Senator Barnaby Joyce thinks we should go drilling for oil in the Antarctic. Enough said! He does not care, for one minute, that there might be a climate change problem. They are a divided house on the other side—divided completely on their science and on their beliefs—and a divided house always falls. That is what we are seeing at the moment. We see confusion and division, and they will fall.

While our legislation has been available since March, the Leader of the Opposition is now going to put forward a very rushed, last-minute change. They are chopping and changing: ‘Which way is the wind blowing? Okay, perhaps that’s what we should do. What’s the latest public opinion? That’s a good idea; let’s go with that.’ They really do not have core beliefs. Their core beliefs are split in half. The opposition is divided in half.

For 12 years the coalition—and, more recently, Malcolm Turnbull, the Leader of the Opposition—failed to act on climate change. They would not even sign up to Kyoto. That was the first thing we did. This Rudd Labor government is serious about reducing carbon emissions and serious about building the bottom line of this nation—saving jobs, creating jobs and making sure that we have an energy system that is sustainable well into future generations. I totally and utterly commend these bills to the House to save the working miners’ jobs in the seats of Dawson, Capricornia and Flynn. And don’t anyone ever say that we are not the miners’ friends. We are. The Labor Party has been and always will be.

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