Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Energy Efficiency Opportunities (Repeal) Bill 2014. Before I start on the bill I would like to congratulate the member for Parramatta because she just said something that was very correct, and that is that the government needs to get on and govern. She is exactly right. We appreciate the opposition's support on this bill. But we would appreciate the opposition also supporting us to get rid of the carbon tax and to help pass a lot of other legislation that they are currently blocking in the Senate. At the moment the opposition are stopping us from getting on and governing this country.

Turning back to the bill, this bill repeals the Energy Efficiency Operations Act 2006. That act created a compulsory compliance and reporting obligation on 460-odd of the largest energy users in the country. So we in government said to those companies: 'We want you to write to us and tell us how you are going to become more energy efficient.' When I read through some of the sections of the original act, I could not help but wonder what was in the water down here in 2006 that such legislation was actually passed. I will give you the example of sections 26 and 28 of the act. Section 27(1) of the act authorises a government bureaucrat to enter any premises during normal business hours or, if the entry is made under a monitoring warrant, at any time specified for that warrant. So the act we are repealing allows government bureaucrats to enter those businesses' premises to check if they have filled their forms out properly.

It gets more bizarre. I move on to section 28 of the act. It says it gives the powers for government bureaucrats when they enter a business premises. It says they have 'the power to search the premises for any thing on the premises that may relate to compliance with this act'. Under subsection (1)(b), it gives government bureaucrats 'the power to examine any activity conducted on the premises that may relate to information provided' under the act. Subsection (1)(c) gives 'the power to examine any thing on the premises that may relate to information'. Subsection (1)(d) gives 'the power to take photographs or make video or audio recordings' or even sketches. That is right: this act gives a government bureaucrat the power to enter premises and take sketches of what is going on in case the company has not filled out its government forms correctly yet. Subsection (1)(e) also provides 'the power to inspect any document on the premises that may relate to information provided' on this government-required form. There is 'the power to take extracts from, or make copies of, any such document' and 'the power to take onto the premises such equipment and materials as the authorised officer'—read government bureaucrat—'requires for the purpose of exercising powers in relation to the premises'. And it provides criminal penalties for a private business getting on with work and getting on with driving the economy, driving economic growth and creating employment and exports. This act creates criminal penalties for these people unless they comply with this act to provide the government with a report about how they are going to increase their efficiency. Of course, it goes on. Under section 37(1) of the act, those companies are required to provide that government bureaucrat 'with all reasonable facilities and assistance for the effective exercise' of his powers.

This reads like something out of 'Collectivist Centralised Economic Planning 101'. Then there is section 15 of the act, which requires private businesses to set out their five-year plan and report that five-year plan to the government. Firstly, we all know where we have heard 'five-year plans' before. They have been constantly used by centralised central planners from way back. They love those five-year plans. But that just shows how ridiculous this legislation is, because the technology in energy efficiency—the technology we are seeing in compact fluorescent globes, in LEDs, in dimmable systems, in dimmable PLs and in motion sensors—is moving so quickly. To think that you have to do a plan for five years and you sit there and leave it and do nothing in that for five years time and that creates all this great efficiency is just absolute nonsense. That is why this bill needs to pass the House, and that is why this original legislation should be repealed in great haste.

I asked myself: what happened in 2006 that allowed this legislation to go through? Going back to the explanatory memorandum of the bill, it notes that even the Productivity Commission was against this. It says that the Productivity Commission 'had strong in-principle reservations' about these energy efficiency opportunity reporting requirements and that the program targeted 'high-energy users as opposed to inefficient energy users, was counterintuitive and counter evidentiary on the basis that energy intensive businesses already have a strong incentive to use energy efficiently'.

So what was in the water here back in 2006? We are talking about energy efficiency, when as a nation we have 111 years supply of black coal, and we have over 539 years supply of brown coal in our nation. So what drove this back in 2006? If we remember 2006, that was the height of the climate fear and the hysteria. The public were told that the science was settled; the time for debate was over. We were told that the drought was endless. We were told that even the rains that fall were not going to fill our dams. We were told that the polar icecaps were going to melt away by 2013. We were told that there would be an increase in the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones. We were told that children in Europe would grow up without knowing what snow was. We were told that the warming would continue and that there was a strong correlation, a locked correlation, between CO2 increases and temperature increases.

We can look back from 2014 in a rational way and reflect that this was nothing more than alarmist nonsense. We know that the rains fell. Our dams are full—full to the top—again throughout the country. We know that the icecaps have not melted away. In fact, today there are 767,000 square kilometres of additional ice over and above the 1981 to 2000 average. There is more ice than there was back then. We also know that there has been no increase whatsoever in the incidence and intensity of tropical cyclones. In fact, you can look at the statistics from the Bureau of Meteorology. You actually see a decline. But this was the environment back in 2007, so there perhaps is some excuse for why this legislation was brought in.

I have heard speakers from the opposition say that this scheme actually saved $300 million, but they forget something. They think that it was driven by government regulations. They simply do not understand how markets work or how business thinks, and they lack belief in free markets and competition. They fail to understand our economic history—that efficiency improvements and the advances that we have seen are not driven by government bureaucrats forcing firms to fill out forms; they are driven by the requirement of firms to be in competition with each other. Innovation, experimentation, risk taking, entrepreneurial effort—that is what drives efficiency in markets, not government regulation. Just look at the energy efficiency and other efficiency improvements we have seen in our lifetimes—in communications, in photography, in motor vehicles and in jet aircraft, just to name a few. These efficiency improvements did not arise because central planning required firms to fill out some form to submit to some government bureaucrat to say how they were going to achieve these efficiencies. It was the complete opposite: they came about through letting firms get on with the job. That is what this repeal bill does. We do not want firms in this country to be wasting their time filling out bureaucratic, inefficient forms. We want them to get on with the job of being efficient. That efficiency is driven by the market. It is driven by competition.

There have been many calls for this act to be repealed. A study that was done said that over 60 per cent of companies that are required to fill out these bureaucratic government forms said, 'Please stop it now.' They basically said that over 40 per cent of the government forms that they have been required to fill out over the past few years were completely and utterly useless. Businesses can allocate their time better than in dealing with red tape and green tape. This will save firms $17.7 million and let them reinvest their time in getting on with doing the job and being efficient, as they have done for decades.

While we are on the subject of energy efficiency, the great irony is that, while we are asking private firms to fill out government forms to explain how they will increase their efficiency, we in government have been running red-tape schemes which have actually decreased the efficiency of electricity generation in this country. I refer to the RET. We are simply mandating the production of electricity through an inefficient source. The fact is: generating electricity from wind turbines is inefficient. No-one would build a wind turbine unless they were given a government subsidy. Many of the promoters of these schemes, mainly generated from overseas, have been running around the parliament in New South Wales and here claiming that, if we have this inefficient method of production, it will somehow lower prices. They talk about lowering the wholesale price. This is simply voodoo economics. The only things that count are the cost of production, the cost of distribution and the competition to get it through to the retail level.

I hear the member for Parramatta down there laughing. The member for Parramatta supports a carbon tax which pushes up prices by $550 for every household in her electorate. They sit there and they think this is funny—a $550 hit on every household in the electorate of Parramatta. They want to impose more red and green tape. They are not satisfied. They want to continue to push costs up.

If we are going to sit here in this parliament and talk about energy efficiency, we have to lead by example. We cannot mandate in this country inefficient methods of production, irrespective of what they are, because that will be paid for, in higher prices, by the consumer. That is exactly what is happening in this country today. That is why we need this bill. It should be passed. I commend this bill to the House. The original act needs to be repealed. We want to free the hands of our companies, take away the red tape, take away the green tape and let them get on with doing what they do—let them get on with business, let them get on with being efficient, without having to fill in bureaucratic forms to report to some government agency. I commend this bill to the House.

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