Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I beg your pardon, Mr Deputy Speaker. The member for Flinders this year was saying it would be $300. Apparently, the member for Goldstein has another way of calculating it and he is saying it will be $1,000. The Leader of the Opposition in New South Wales was saying just the other day it would be $500. So in their desperation to whip up fear they are really just making this stuff up, and today’s MPI is no different.

Usually they use electricity prices as the basis of their daily fear campaign. They come in here quoting price rises that have nothing to do with any carbon price. We do not have a carbon price. We on this side know all about the price rises that we have experienced in this country over the last three to five years. There have been price rises in the order of 40 per cent over that time. We also know the causes of that: underinvestment in generation infrastructure and underinvestment in transmission infrastructure. This has been acknowledged by the electricity sector and by industry. They have acknowledged that this underinvestment will not be addressed without certainty around a carbon price.

Today the scare campaign has shifted to food. Again, there are no facts in this; there is just fear. There is no basis for the claims that members opposite are making. Again, if you turn to the facts, you will see in the modelling around the CPRS last year that the estimates were for about a one per cent price rise. But people in the industry are telling us that it is too early to make these claims with any certainty. A spokesperson for Woolworths on 1 March said that they could not forecast potential price impacts until more details of the scheme were released. The National Retail Association agreed with that, saying it is a little too early to tell what will happen with a carbon tax and what the implications are likely to be for prices.

The opposition will not let any facts slow them down in their fear campaign. The facts are that agriculture is exempt from the carbon-pricing mechanism that has been announced. Farmers will not pay any carbon price on their production. In fact, farmers will be able to benefit from the Carbon Farming Initiative that will provide new opportunities to participate in lucrative international markets for carbon credits. Under the Carbon Farming Initiative we will legislate clear rules for the recognition of carbon credits that could then be sold in national and international markets.

In his review of his 2008 report on climate change, Professor Garnaut described this as a historic opportunity for rural areas to cash in on the international push to reduce carbon emissions. He said:

It is potentially transformative in the Australian rural economy. We are in a good position with our large interest in biosequestration to put things in place to create opportunities for our rural community which can then be taken up by the rest of the world.

This is great news for farmers. The Carbon Farming Initiative is just one program that demonstrates this government’s commitment to addressing climate change in real and practical ways that give our important industries the incentive to innovate and embrace new opportunities.

We have said consistently that we will take steps to reduce Australia’s carbon emissions and to transition and transform our economy to one based on clean energy where future growth is not dependent on ever-increasing production of carbon. With the highest emissions per capita in the developed world—higher even than in the United States—Australia’s households and businesses are at risk of being left behind in a global economy that is already moving to cut pollution. If we just ignore that shift in the international marketplace, we risk hurting our economy and losing jobs.

In at least the last two elections the Labor Party advocated putting a price on carbon and doing that through an emissions trading scheme. In at least one of those elections—the one in 2007—the opposition was advocating exactly the same thing. After years of neglect and inaction, then Prime Minister Howard was finally dragged into the 21st century by the member for Wentworth and others in the Liberal Party and convinced that Australia could no longer ignore climate change. What was John Howard’s answer at that time? His answer was pricing carbon through an emissions trading scheme. So the scheme announced by the Prime Minister two weeks ago reflects the economic consensus and previous political consensus that the most efficient and low-cost way to reduce carbon emissions in Australia is through a market based emissions trading scheme.

Our two-stage plan for a carbon price mechanism will start with a fixed price for three to five years before transitioning to an emissions trading scheme. A carbon price is a price on pollution. It is the cheapest and fairest way to cut pollution and build a clean-energy economy. The best way to stop businesses from polluting and get them to invest in clean energy is to charge them when they pollute. The money raised through the carbon permit scheme will be used by the government to assist households and industry. Every cent raised from the carbon price will assist families with household bills and help businesses make the transition to a clean energy economy.

We will stick with the facts in this debate and we will stick with the job of economic reform. We on this side understand that the facts are hard for the Liberals to face up to—the fact that an emissions trading scheme was Liberal Party policy; the fact that, back in 2009, those among the opposition caucus room voted to support the emissions trading scheme negotiated by the members for Groom and Wentworth; and the fact that an emissions trading scheme is the most efficient and lowest cost way to reduce carbon emissions. I do not expect those opposite to take my word for it. They should listen to their colleague the member for Wentworth, who has said repeatedly that he wants to see a market based solution and that the economic market consensus is around an emissions trading scheme as the most efficient and effective way of reducing carbon.

It appears that the opposition have no answer to those facts, so instead they are resorting to a scare campaign. But perhaps that is not altogether true. It seems that they do have an answer: direct action. How does direct action work? It seems that they do not like to talk much about that anymore, and now we know why. When you look at the figures that have been released by the Department of Climate Change today it is very obvious the opposition want to stick to their scare campaign and not talk about their so-called plan to reduce carbon emissions in any way in this debate. The figures from the Department of Climate Change say that the coalition’s direct action policy would cost over $30 billion, rather than the claimed $10½ billion. Even the $10½ billion was coming off the budget bottom line and out of taxpayers’ pockets. Under these figures the Australian average family would be $720 worse off under the direct action policy.

For all that hurt and pain for households, for all that cost to the budget and to taxpayers—and there is no assistance package in this direct action policy of the opposition’s—that plan is still only going to deliver 25 per cent of the carbon pollution abatement required for the coalition to meet the bipartisan target of minus five per cent. This is a complete sham; it is just a con job. The opposition know this because Treasury has told them already that direct action measures alone cannot do the job without imposing significant economic and budget costs. The opposition should spend less time on generating their fear campaign—which, after the Colonel Gaddafi comments, is starting to turn into a hate campaign; and that is something we have never seen before—and more time on developing real responses to climate change and reforming this economy and getting it ready. In the meantime we on this side of the House will stay focused on the facts and the work we need to do to develop the detail of a fair and balanced mechanism to price carbon and get our economy ready for the future.

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