Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In 50 years time I think there will be people looking back at some of these speeches on the Renewable Energy (Electricity) (Charge) Amendment Bill 2010 and cognate bills and wondering what the hell was going on in the climate change debate in Australia in 2010. It is a bizarre world we live in. We had the member for Flinders spending most of his speech trying to prove that the opposition are actually the champions of renewables. The government cannot be the champions of renewables because the opposition are the champions of renewables! The coalition are the champions of renewables; they did it all, they had all the ideas. Given the seriousness of the issue of climate change, it is time for us all to be champions of renewables and to recognise that that is actually what we need in this House. We need to acknowledge each other’s support for this and get on with it and stop arguing about whose idea it was. Let us just deal with it.

The first mandatory renewable energy target was introduced by the Howard government in 2000. It was set at that stage with a 9½ thousand gigawatt target by 2010. There was a report done in 2003 known as the Tambling report which made a number of recommendations, including that the target be increased to 20,000 gigawatts by 2020. That recommendation was not accepted by the government of the day. Nevertheless, they did introduce some programs—rebates for solar panels, for example. All of that should be acknowledged. But we should also acknowledge that, at the moment, where we are in Australia is a hell of a long way from 20 per cent renewables by 2020. In 2006 we were at four per cent. We still get the vast majority of our renewable energy, electricity, from the Snowy hydro scheme—still, now.

The world has known for 30 years. Governments of the world first met in the 1970s to talk about the need for action on climate change. So we have known about it now through the Whitlam government, arguably, the Fraser government and the Hawke and Keating governments—although the need became greater and the knowledge became greater. We certainly knew about it through the Howard government and we know about it now. It has been a long time coming, and the time for arguing about whose idea it was is well and truly over. It is time for consensus on this. We thought we had that when we introduced the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Certainly, both parties went to the last election promising an emissions trading scheme. We thought we had it up until two days before the final vote in the Senate. It is time for us to get that consensus back so that this nation can play its role in acting on climate change.

We have heard two extraordinary speeches. We heard the member for Groom, who voted against the CPRS, lamenting that this piece of legislation will not make the kinds of reductions in emissions that we need to make to meet our five per cent target by 2020. Of course it will not. It was designed to work in operation with the CPRS; it was designed to be phased out after 2020 as the CPRS became more mature. This bill is part of a strategy. It alone will never lead us to meet that target. We need the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme to do that.

What we have at the moment is an opposition, the Liberal and National parties, that voted against action on climate change. Many of them do not believe in climate change. The Leader of the Opposition himself said openly that he does not believe in climate change. We have the Greens party that voted against it.

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