Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Energy Efficiency Opportunities (Repeal) Bill 2014. I thank the member for Wills for reminding me of those comments by the now Prime Minister Tony Abbott when he was opposition leader about carbon dioxide being odourless, colourless and I think he said weightless as well, the implication being it cannot be dangerous. Of course, it is not weightless; it does have weight, it is heavier than air and, in the right sorts of concentrations, it is used quite often to euthanise animals. That is clearly quite a ridiculous position to take. I contrast that to the extraordinary knowledge and skill of our science community. Early in May, some German scientists and two scientists from the ANU discovered a new element. That does not happen very often. There are only a small number of them in the world and we have found most of them, but they discovered a new one, No. 117. I think they managed to create four atoms which lasted about one-twelfth of a second. For those of us who enjoy chemistry, it was an extraordinarily exciting day. There was quite a bit of celebration in my office among some of my staff; others were a bit bemused by it. When we have scientists of that calibre in this country it is surprising that the government does not take more notice of their wisdom and their warnings and the evidence they produce on the nature of man-made climate change.

It is hard to know whether the repeal of the Energy Efficiency Opportunities Bill is due to an ideological opposition and refusal to believe in climate change or rather an ideological hatred of regulation itself, maybe misplaced. It is hard to know which of those two ideologies is responsible—perhaps both—for the repeal of this bill. Certainly in climate change Australia is acting in a completely opposite direction from the rest of the world. Australia's backtracking of climate policy progression has been highlighted by the release of the GLOBE Climate Legislation Study, February 2013. The study of 66 countries across the globe, where the European Union was considered one entity, found Australia was the only country to be taking negative legislative action on climate policy. All the other countries are moving forward.

There are two tragedies in that. One is that Australia is not playing its role with this new government in addressing climate change. The other is that Australia is missing out on this incredible opportunity that new technologies bring, as the rest of the world move towards new renewable technology and enormous wealth generation. You can see its growth already right across the world. You can see in silicon valley and in Singapore, for example, where they are investing heavily, trying to be the owners of the New World, trying to make sure the patents belong to their own nationals. We in Australia are walking away from it. We are walking away from our future. We are ripping up incredibly important pieces of infrastructure which support the development of new technologies such as the price on carbon, the Renewable Energy Target and even this rather modest piece of legislation.

This legislation is incredibly important. It was originally introduced to this parliament by the John Howard government. It grew out of Australia's first white paper on energy efficiency in 2004, was introduced in 2006 and had bipartisan support across this parliament. Both sides of this House agreed that this was an incredibly important thing to do because it ensured that our biggest companies, our biggest businesses addressed their need to reduce their energy costs. In fact, it addressed a market failure, according to the explanatory memorandum back in 2006, relating to the availability and use of energy efficiency information. It required large businesses to assess their energy use and to identify cost-effective energy savings opportunities. It was mandatory for organisations that used over 0.5 petajoules of energy annually and it could be undertaken voluntarily by medium energy users as well.

Quite often in this House, particularly from people who are now on the government side, there is some scepticism about renewable energy and becoming more energy efficient. I would like to make this point. In many cases the way we use energy is historical. In the US, for example, power plugs in the home do not have switches. They just plug straight into the wall, which means that you can never turn them off at the wall—you have to unplug them. This means that any appliance that is plugged in stays on all the time, constantly using a little bit of energy, with transformers warming up and using energy even when they were not being used. It is an incredible waste of energy but that is the way it was always done and that is the way their appliances come, so that is the way they do things.

In Australia, we have plugs on the wall but we also have switches on the wall and are able to turn ours off, but quite often we do not. Even in my household where I have been reducing energy use and managing to keep my electricity bills relatively stable for the last six years, I discovered there was one charging device which I had left on for nearly two years. I used the appliance maybe twice a week, so it probably needed only 10 minutes of charging of week. So for two years that charger has been draining energy unnecessarily.

Recently I was talking to a woman about the price of electricity and how, now that it has gone up, she has to go around and turn the lights off in rooms she is not in. For years she has left the lights on in other rooms. It is not something we did as children because we were struggling financially. Even as children when electricity prices were low, we turned our lights off when we were not in the room, but this woman had a habit. So there is waste built into the way we do things. There is waste built into the use of old technology in lighting and in air conditioning, in letting heat dissipate rather than recycling it. There are all sorts of ways that business and households historically have wasted energy because we did not think it was a problem. The point of this program was to cause the biggest energy users in the country to consider the way they used energy and to find ways to reduce its use. It has been incredibly effective.

The Energy Efficiency Opportunities Program has been effective in driving down emissions and has saved industry approximately $323.2 million per year in power expenses. So this is a bit of regulation that requires business to actually do a bit of work, to do a bit of planning, to look at their circumstances, to come up with a plan. But it has saved them $323.2 million per year in power expenses. The program has been reviewed independently by ACIL Tasman, and the review of the program found that it delivered benefits to participants well in excess of their costs—an extraordinary success for this quite simple, highly targeted program that just looked at the energy use of major users of power.

I heard the government speakers talk about the need to reduce red tape. Yes, of course. Of course we do. We did that when we were in government. In fact, we were remarkably effective and reduced compliance costs by about $6 billion per year across the COAG reform agreements. But regulation, where it actually provides a benefit in excess of its costs, is actually good regulation. The government is talking about managing to save the business sector $17 million per year in compliance costs. That is $17 million per year in compliance costs for a saving in power bills of $323.2 million. That is $322 million per year in savings and a $17 million per year compliance burden. I think in anyone's language that is a success.

There has also been quite a lot of unhappiness in the industry because, as has become the pattern with this government, there was not consultation on this. In fact, according to energy efficiency groups it was a surprise. Media reports and quotes from them use words like 'shocked' and 'livid' about the fact that the government had cut funding to a Howard-era program that made it mandatory for businesses using large amounts of energy to improve their efficiency. The Sydney Morning Herald reported:

The Energy Efficiency Council said members were ''livid'' about the surprise cut in funding of millions of dollars for the Energy Efficiency Opportunities program in the mid-year economic forecast.

There is a quote from Rob Murray-Leach, who is the Chief Executive of the Energy Efficiency Council, who said:

The Abbott government has just created huge uncertainty in a fragile economy—people are absolutely livid … The government haven't scrapped the Energy Efficiency Opportunities program because it's legislated, but they've cut funding to administer the program after June 2014. People are confused and very, very angry.

It is not surprising that that is the case. The Energy Efficiency Council also points out that every dollar invested in the program delivered $2.90 of benefits to Australian business, and that cutting funding to help business save energy was just going to hurt the economy.

I would like to stress again that this was an incredibly effective program introduced in the Howard years as a result of Australia's first energy efficiency white paper. It has been incredibly effective, resulting in savings to industry of approximately $323.2 million per year for, in the government's own words, a compliance cost of $17 million. We know, from looking at other estimations of compliance costs, that there will be some very rubbery figures in there. I have not been through the regulatory impact statement on this one to see if it is as shonky as the one for the Paid Parental Leave Amendment Bill. But, given their track record, I think we can assume that there is a lot of fat, even in that compliance burden of $17 million. But savings of $17 million in compliance that has managed to save an industry $323 million is a false economy at best.

I would suggest to the government that in future it consult more broadly on matters like this. We will support the bill and let it go through the House because there are many more pressing matters for us, and the government does need to be able to govern. But they might like to just reconsider their ideology against regulation, particularly if it is effective, and they might like to rethink their attitude to climate change as well. The rest of the world is acting very fast, and if we do not act with them we will be left behind in terms of not just our environment but our ability to compete in the world that is coming through new technology.

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