Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. The independent committee would make recommendations to government and parliament concerning the implementation of targets under emissions trading. It would be up to the government and the parliament to respond to these recommendations.

Despite Professor Garnaut making this crystal clear in black and white in his report, the coalition has wilfully misrepresented what he has proposed. We have heard it again just now from the member for Flinders. The member for Flinders seems to be suggesting that the entire carbon tax, including the carbon price, and carbon pollution reduction targets would be outsourced to unelected officials—indeed, he has just used that phrase, referring to unelected officials setting tax rates. That is a wilful misreading of this parliament and it is not what Professor Garnaut said today in his speech, it is not what he said in his report and it is not what he said in the summary of his report. I read to the House what Professor Garnaut says:

… some of the governance functions related to the scheme, are by their nature, the prerogative of Government. These include decisions about establishing the scheme, setting the medium and long-term emissions reduction targets, deciding which sectors should be covered by the scheme; the broad principles for providing transitional assistance to emissions intensive, trade exposed industries, and the principles governing the point at which the scheme should switch from a fixed to a floating price.

It is very clear, Professor Garnaut goes on to say, that the ultimate decision on recommendations put forward by the independent committee that he is proposing lies with the parliament. That is what he says:

Should the Government wish to take an approach that differs from the Independent Committee's recommendations, it would be required by legislation to present to Parliament the reasons for its alternative decision.

This approach is similar to the arrangements for setting carbon budgets or national emissions reduction targets in the United Kingdom. That is right: this is the approach that is followed by the Conservative led government in the United Kingdom, and that is why those opposite are so keen to misrepresent the proposal from Professor Garnaut. By the way, this is the same United Kingdom government, now led by the Conservative Party, which is continuing with the emissions trading scheme that has been established in the United Kingdom since 2002. It is the same Conservative led government which just two weeks ago adopted the most ambitious emissions reduction targets of any developed country. To make it clear what those are, it is a pledge, under the annual carbon budget adopted by the United Kingdom government, to cut emissions from 1990 levels by 50 per cent by 2027. It ought to be an embarrassment to those opposite that a Conservative led United Kingdom government, in a bipartisan fashion, has simply continued with the emissions reduction policies of the former Labour government. It has continued with the scheme. It has indeed adopted more ambitious targets. The suggestion which was made to us yesterday in this House that the United Kingdom government has said that there is going to be a review in 2014 is simply appropriate, cautious government. It is the appropriate, cautious government that would be brought by our government to bear on any emissions trading arrangements that we introduce, because the national interest must come first. That is why we are introducing an emissions trading scheme after a fixed price period, that is why we are moving to a carbon price, because it is in the national interest that we do so. The review update from Professor Garnaut could not have been clearer. This is the report that Professor Garnaut released today. Making it clear, he said that climate change is real, it is caused by human activity and it poses a serious risk to the prosperity and quality of life for all Australians. He said:

Since 2008, advances in climate change science have … broadly confirmed that the earth is warming, that human activity is the cause of it and that the changes in the physical world are likely, if anything, to be more harmful than the earlier science had suggested.

It is a view that is based on the advice of expert climate scientists. It is consistent with the advice that the government has received from sources like the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, the Climate Commission and the Australian Academy of Science. Of course, just last week the Climate Commission released its report, entitled the The critical decade. Any serious government—indeed any serious political party—has a clear responsibility to act in the national interest and, consequently, cannot ignore advice of that kind. Only an opposition which is more concerned with its own political self-interest than the national interest would choose to ignore such advice.

I will say again, as was said several times in answers in question time, that Professor Garnaut could not have made it clearer that the appropriate response to the challenge of climate change is a market based mechanism. It is the introduction of a carbon price and it is not the so-called direct action policy that those opposite seem to favour. This is what Professor Garnaut said in his speech today about direct action: 'Direct action, or reducing carbon emissions, is likely to be immensely more expensive than a market approach.' That is consistent with the views of all mainstream economists.

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