Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the minister for attending this evening and for his rather backhanded compliment on my election; thank you very much! I am wondering whether in the course of this next half hour—I understand we may have divisions at six—he might care to explain what he was doing to coral that the member for Kennedy was talking about earlier in question time. I have heard many things happen to coral, but deflowering coral was not one of them until this question time!

I want to talk a bit about the background to the Emissions Reduction Fund and the safeguards mechanism and welcome the opportunity to ask the minister a couple of background questions which go very much to the heart of the $2.55 billion of expenditure in the budget around the ERF and the associated policy mechanisms—the safeguard mechanism in particular. I know the minister has been across this policy area for a considerable period of time and so knows that breaking down what is very contested but perhaps the most complex public policy we have in front of us into basic elements is very difficult; but, if there is one central element around the world, it is the agreement that the nations of the world reached at Cancun to limit global warming to no more than two degrees Celsius—an agreement I know the minister is very familiar with and talks about quite a lot in his public speeches. However, I want to talk particularly about the implications of the energy white paper and just get some clarification from the minister about the degree to which this remains a bipartisan position, because when Cancun was signed the minister then reiterated the coalition's support for that national commitment and has since on a number of occasions.

As the minister would know, in the energy white paper and also in an issues paper the PM&C published earlier—or I might be wrong about that, so I will focus on the energy white paper—the department writing that paper focused on what is broadly known as the four-degree scenario, which the International Energy Agency has published. It is called the new policies scenario, but it is broadly understood as the four-degree scenario, a scenario that contemplates a level of development and consumption of fossil fuels that would on scientific advice lead to four degree of warming. I think the minister understands that there is a bit of consternation in the broader community about how you square the energy white paper, which talks about the IEA's the four-degree scenario in pretty glowing terms, particularly, quoting page 44 from the paper:

Australia has the potential to reap substantial economic gains in meeting future global energy demand, which is expected to increase by over one-third by 2040 …

Given that is the trajectory the IEA assumes to be consistent with the four-degree scenario, is the government predicating an energy policy on the four-degree scenario while in the minister's portfolio continuing to express a commitment to the two-degree commitment that was expressed in Cancun? It is a genuine question that I think a lot of stakeholders in the sector are asking. I think we are going to have limited questions, and while I have got the floor I am also keen to get some clarification from the minister about how he proposes to deal with the different reports that the Climate Change Authority will be publishing as part of the deal that was done between the government and the Palmer United Party to pass the direct action—or the ERF legislation. Without going into political hyperbole about the nature of that deal, there is a targets-and-progress review that is out currently for public consultation. It will be finalised over the course of this month, I assume, as part of a special review requested by the minister.

The CCA Act—the Climate Change Authority Act 2011—has particular provisions in it for government responses to reports from the CCA. I would be interested to hear the government's plans for responding to this report that was commissioned by the minister and also what might be planned for a response to the CCA's report on emissions trading schemes that was also part of the deal with Clive Palmer and that I think is due by 30 November later this year.

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