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

The Minister for the Environment says that it is false. I am not sure where the leak came from on the front page of The Australian newspaper, but on those reports it would appear that the Minister for Foreign Affairs has yet again been overruled in her portfolio by a sceptical Prime Minister.

But in any event the target is out there now for the Labor opposition and others in the parliament and, most importantly, people in the Australian community to analyse and assess. To do that—I will repeat the points we made in question time—we need to see the modelling and the data on which the government has based this decision. But first impressions are that this target will place Australia right at the back of the pack. They have shifted the baseline from 2000 to 2005. As a matter of principle we do not quarrel with that. It allows better comparisons between nations. But, frankly, it would have been better if the government had been more transparent and up-front about this and had not tried to compare apples with pears, being the old commitment from 2000 levels, to the commitment announced only this morning, from 2005.

But using the same time frame—2005 to 2030—the United States has made a commitment of 41 per cent, to 2030. Germany has made a commitment of 46 per cent. The United Kingdom has made a commitment of about 48 per cent, to 2030.

Mr Hunt interjecting—

The Prime Minister tried to pretend the United States' commitment was a 2030 commitment. So don't talk to us about misleading the House, when in question time the Prime Minister stands up and tries to verbal the United States President as having made a 26 per cent commitment to 2030, when it is quite clear that that is a five-year earlier commitment. So do not try to lecture us about misleading the parliament. It is a 41 per cent commitment that the President of the United States has made when you straight-line out their 2025 commitment. The critical question is whether this commitment is consistent with our commitment to the rest of the world to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius—a solemn commitment made to the rest of the world but most importantly a solemn commitment made to future generations, to our children and our grandchildren, that we will do everything we can to limit global warming to that extent. President Obama said last week or maybe the week before that ours is the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.

The importance of this commitment cannot be overstated. This government, this minister, must demonstrate how this target is consistent with that commitment. Even on this most fundamental question the government cannot get its facts straight. The environment minister, to his credit, tweets regularly that the government policy remains the two-degree limit. But in the energy white paper the government's entire policy is predicated on what the International Energy Agency describes as the four- degree warming scenario—not a two-degree warming scenario but a four-degree warming scenario. I ask the government to show us the data, show us the modelling, so that we can determine whether this target is consistent with those two things.

It is also a commitment that cannot just be given lip service. It needs a proper suite of policies that will actually deliver on the commitment that we have made to our children and our grandchildren, and this government does not have that suite of policies. Only last week RepuTex modelled that in the next 10 years this government's policies will allow Australia's emissions to rise by 20 per cent—not decline by 26 per cent but rise by 20 per cent, because of this government's hopeless policies. This year alone we have had a taste of that with emissions from the power sector rising by four per cent. After reducing in 2013 by seven per cent and reducing in 2014 by four per cent, they are now rising by four per cent under this government.

The central policy to deliver on the two-degree commitment we have made to our children and to our grandchildren must be a big expansion in renewable energy. Only a Shorten Labor government will deliver a big expansion of renewable energy in Australia. It is hard to think of a nation better placed to do that expansion, to surf the wave of the renewables revolution that we are viewing all around the world. We have the best solar resources, wind resources, wave resources and geothermal resources in the world. We have the best scientists and the most innovative businesses to take advantage of this revolution. PV solar, which has been taken up by citizens in every continent on the globe, was largely developed at the University of New South Wales. Wave energy is being developed innovatively in Western Australia by Carnegie, working off Fremantle. We can be leaders in this industry—and we were leaders in this industry until last year. We were the fourth most attractive place on the face of the earth in which to invest in renewable energy, until the Prime Minister launched his attack on renewable energy—until this Prime Minister launched an attack on billions of dollars in investment, thousands of jobs and significant reductions in carbon pollution. That reckless attack led to an 88 per cent decline in investment in large-scale renewables last year alone. We went from being the 11th-biggest investor to the 39th-biggest investor in just one year. We slipped below Myanmar, Honduras and Panama, among other countries. Hundreds of jobs were lost and, as I said before, carbon pollution for the first time in two years actually started to increase. We want to see Australia back in the lead, back at the head of the pack in taking up the enormous opportunities in investment, in jobs and in reductions in carbon pollution that are presented by this renewables revolution.

The Australian people are awake to this Prime Minister. He is not interested in the future. He is stuck in the past. He pulls his cardigan over his head every time there is a debate about the future of this country and locks himself with a ball and chain to the past. We are not going to do that. The renewables revolution will give millions of Australians more control over the way in which they generate and use electricity. The Prime Minister's own hand-picked panel said that the expansion of renewable energy places downward pressure on power prices for households across the country. In only the last couple of weeks, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said that a four- kilowatt PV solar system on your roof combined with a five-kilowatt/hour battery will within five years be cheaper for households in Australia than taking electricity from the grid.

Today confirms that the Prime Minister wants Australia to follow. He does not want Australia to lead. He does not want Australia even to stay in touch with the rest of the world on the issue of climate change and the enormous opportunities that are presented in investment, jobs and households' control over their energy by the renewables revolution. Labor wants to keep faith with future generations on climate change. We want to embrace the jobs and the investment opportunities that are available in a clean energy future.

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