Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on a number of issues regarding a carbon tax, energy alternatives, nuclear energy and the economics of climate change. Let us assume that global warming is indeed occurring and it is man that is causing it. My views on this topic are well known. Although I would consider myself a climate agnostic, for argument’s sake let us say that global warming is anthropogenic.

I will assume that the government have taken action through the various international treaties to which we are signatory yet which have no parliamentary oversight. The many failures in international institutions such as the UN, the World Bank and the IMF are well documented, and most have less than average track records in public policy. Yet here we go again, letting them dictate to Australia, a sovereign nation, what we should be doing with our environment. Let me be clear: every time we sign up to an international treaty, Australians lose more of their right to self-determination. These treaties bypass parliamentary procedure and mean that we are tied to the whims of these non-democratic international institutions.

How did pricing carbon become the only way to tackle climate change? Global action on climate change was effectively mandated by the UN General Assembly in 1987. The assembly welcomed moves by the World Meteorological Organisation in cooperation with the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program. The action was to explore and, after appropriate consultation with governments, establish an ad hoc intergovernmental mechanism to carry out internationally coordinated scientific assessments of the magnitude, timing and potential impact of climate change. Again, I take umbrage at the ‘appropriate consultation with governments’. This parliament would never have voted on the accord if it had known the scope that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, had over Australia’s sovereign right to self-determination.

Carbon pricing resulted from a number of reports commissioned by numerous scientific sources but was given a legal framework by the Kyoto protocol. Under this treaty, signatories must meet their targets primarily through national measures. However, the Kyoto protocol offers additional means of meeting targets by way of three market based mechanisms: emissions trading, known as the carbon market; the clean development mechanism; and joint implementation. Basically, the need to price carbon has come through creative thinking by non-parliamentary, undemocratic NGOs—and I wonder if anything could go wrong. I was going to take the time to explain the massive issues with the carbon market itself, but the width and breadth of issues in the European market alone would need several debates to flesh out.

The overarching issue I see at hand is the way Australia is ignoring the experiences of other countries with a carbon tax. The international market is factoring out the solution. Look at the Chicago Climate Exchange, which no longer exists after a complete collapse—so much for the vaunted market mechanisms. This was something put forward by Al Gore and was much vaunted by him, but it has collapsed. The European market has similarly failed. When Hungary sold two million credits of emissions reductions onto the open market last year, there were suspicions about the validity of the certificates and the market price dropped from €12 a tonne to €1 a tonne in one day. ICE Futures Europe, the largest exchange for carbon trading, are now trying to restore investors’ trust after online thieves targeted emissions permits. Spot trading in Europe has been disrupted since 20 January after the EU regulator closed all 30 national registries following a hacking attack by thieves who have illegally transferred permits, valued at about €60 million, in past months. With a market based emissions trading system there is a very real prospect, based on international examples, that the government is giving the green light for polluters to pollute even more by simply buying cheap credits—hardly the point of what we are trying to achieve.

Has the government learned from these mistakes? Will the government guarantee the integrity of Australia’s carbon markets? Climate minister Greg Combet is not sure yet. He says all of that detailed work is yet to be done. Again, I am willing to put the huge issues with the market itself aside to discuss the validity of the idea of a tax merging into an ETS. Obviously, the national debate has progressed through the recommendations of the Kyoto protocol and through understanding that taking action through a trading system is the way forward. But is it? Is pricing carbon the only way to reduce our emissions, or have we been following a massive example of public debate groupthink? Are there alternative options for reducing our emissions other than taxation and creating a new market for bankers and financiers to get even wealthier? Yes, there are and some of these ideas have come from the IPCC itself although ignored by the government. One of Ross Garnaut’s original recommendations, overlooked by the Gillard government, was that governments should reinvest some revenue raised by putting a price on carbon to help make low-emission technologies more accessible.

During the period 1993 to 2003, China’s R&D expenditures grew faster than those of any other nation, pushing China’s share of world R&D investment from 3.6 per cent to 9.5 per cent. Australia’s R&D expenditure as a proportion of GDP remains lower than the OECD average, although it has increased in recent years. China has made the seemingly obvious connection between R&D investment and the multiplier effect on its GDP growth and a more energy-efficient future. While I think certain renewables have promise, they are not there yet and will need Australia to lead the world in innovation.

Let us look at dismantling the department of climate change. After all, we all agree that climate change is happening. What exactly is this department doing? And let us have a look at doing all of this with minimal government intervention and minimal wealth redistribution. A nation trying to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to pull himself up by the handles. I would argue that the same goes for the carbon tax debate. We do not need a tax or an ETS to bring about change. The carbon tax dance is now outdated. As the International Climate Science Coalition notes:

Attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change.

Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing human suffering.

Australia produces only 1.5 per cent of anthropogenic CO2 emissions worldwide. How will a small reduction in Australia’s emissions, generated by a sizeable tax, actually affect the climate? We all know it will not have any effect. At least we will be leading the world by example, you say. That presupposes that big polluters are actually influenced by Australia. I doubt that our country has much impact on any policies of the US or China. Proponents of a carbon tax argue that it will generate greater economic growth than we would have without it and that it will create new efficient industries as old ones are taxed out of the market. Yet, by that logic, coal fired power plants are at present far more economic than solar farms.

The Gillard government is allowing social factors to influence economic matters. BlueScope Steel CEO, Paul O’Malley, was bang on the money when he labelled the carbon tax as ‘economic vandalism’. Furthermore, Labor and the Greens cannot continue to say that climate change is the most important issue to confront our society but then say that the one method that is capable of making a massive dent in carbon emissions, nuclear power, should have a legislative ban associated with it.

McNair Ingenuity Research showed that between 1979 and 2009 those in favour of the construction of nuclear power stations increased from 34 per cent to 49 per cent, with around 10 per cent undecided. More people are in favour of nuclear power than are opposed. It is not the will of the people to take nuclear energy off the table. Australians are open to change, while the Greens and Labor are not. If the Greens and Labor do not embrace nuclear power as a possibility they are not serious about addressing climate change. They also cannot continue to argue that we should have a nuclear ban as it is economically too expensive. If they really believed this they would allow the repeal of section 10 of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998, knowing that power generators would not build a nuclear power plant if it were economically uncompetitive. Repealing section 10 would be a worthwhile step forward. It would remove the prohibition on a Commonwealth body operating a power reactor and would allow nuclear energy to be one of the options explored for most efficiently conserving and producing cleaner energy for Australia in the longer term. In the national interest, it is time to move past the politics of fear.

An interesting by-product of this decision to introduce a carbon tax is the revelation of who is really running the government. Julia Gillard is predicting a fast and furious debate over her carbon tax plan and has promised to give as good as she gets. In reality, she only has to beat the drum for another four sitting weeks in parliament. When the Senate changes in July and the Greens gain the majority in the Senate, a quick call to Bob Brown will ensure a free flow of legislation. As a coalition, we have long been saying that the Greens have the government singing their tune and the Green tail is wagging the Labor dog—an appropriate aphorism for this dog’s breakfast of a policy. The announcement has demonstrated Labor cannot sing from their own hymn sheet. Our PM has devalued the standing of her office with her view that she can quite comfortably lie to the Australian people in order to obtain votes. Election promises and the will of the people should be sacrosanct. The fact that the PM did not just keep quiet on the issue of a carbon tax during the election campaign and the fact that she lied about it clearly show that she knows that the majority of Australians do not want a carbon tax. If most Australians did support it, she and Wayne Swan would not have felt it necessary—

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