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

I think we have seen again, over the course of this question time, that bit by bit, over the last 36 hours, hour by hour, Australians have been coming to understand the price that the member for Wentworth was willing to pay to achieve his long-held personal ambition of becoming Prime Minister. Australians are beginning to understand the extent to which the member for Wentworth, now the Prime Minister, was willing to discard—to throw away—so many long-held and deeply-held beliefs, particularly about climate change and the environment.

Nowhere is that price more stark and nowhere has that price been higher than in relation to climate change and environmental protection policy. This was, after all, going back to 2009, the signature difference between the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, and the new Prime Minister, the member for Wentworth. Many Australians, I know, and members on this side know, held out very high hopes that the member for Wentworth's return to the leadership of the Liberal Party would mean that the conservative parties of Australia would return to the sensible centre on climate change—that there would be the hope of Australia again regaining a bipartisan consensus that would allow us to move forward in the way that so many of our sister nations around the world are doing.

As Australians watch what the Prime Minister has been saying over the last 36 hours—going back to his press conference on Monday night—those hearts are breaking. All those Australians who thought that the return of the member for Wentworth to the leadership of the Liberal Party would actually mean something—that it would actually hold out the hope of a progressive, strong and sensible policy on climate change for Australia—have had their hearts broken, because this Prime Minister has taken the Direct Action policy, Tony Abbott's signature policy, hook, line and sinker. Apparently, he has not just taken it for the time being; he has taken it, affirmatively, for as long as he will ever be the Prime Minister.

I want to make it clear, from this side of the House: those Australians were entirely entitled to hold out those hopes. They were entirely entitled to think that a change of leadership from the member for Warringah to the member for Wentworth would mean something and would lead to some change in the governing parties' attitude to climate change policy. The old Malcolm had been so crystal clear about his belief that the Direct Action policy, in his words, 'was an environmental fig leaf to cover a determination to do nothing'. We heard him again, in question time, move away from his strong advocacy for an emissions trading scheme as the cheapest, most effective and most efficient means of reducing carbon pollution. We have heard him say, so many times over the past years, particularly in that critical period of debate in 2009 and 2010, that a policy like the emissions reduction fund—in this very chamber we heard the member for Wentworth say it—would be 'a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale'.

Well, apparently it is all different now. You do not know whether to ask for lecture notes to be handed out or to take notes yourself, sometimes, when the new Prime Minister answers questions in question time, but apparently it has all changed. This is, according to his words in the press conference on Monday night, apparently now a 'very, very good piece of work'. Yesterday, the new Prime Minister said that this was a policy that was reducing emissions now. This was a policy, particularly the emissions reduction fund, that had had a first auction that was enormously successful.

Mr Hunt interjecting—

You will get your 10 minutes, Minister for the Environment. I advise the new Prime Minister to just catch up on some of the analysis that has been done on both of those counts. Let us talk about the first option of the emissions reduction fund. Forty-seven million tonnes were purchased under this first auction; a quarter of the money—$650 million-odd of taxpayers' money—handed out to companies and organisations that had bid under this. What the Prime Minister has not said is that, of those 47 million tonnes, three-quarters of them, 34 million tonnes, were from projects that already existed, and in some cases had existed for more than 10 years, including big companies like AGL—the largest polluter in Australia. This is taxpayers paying for things that those companies were already doing. This was apparently a 'stunning success' according to the Minister for the Environment and the new Prime Minister. Apparently that was all supposed to be supplemented by the safeguards policy—the great safeguards mechanism that will control emissions elsewhere in the economy, and, particularly, control emission rises from the big polluters, and see those emissions, hopefully, reduce over time.

We saw the design of the safeguards mechanism released only this month, and it exceeded everyone's worst expectations. In question time, I tried to put to the Prime Minister, but he ducked the question, the fact that RepuTex, the leading modelling agency in this area, has provided very clear advice that, under this safeguards policy, the biggest 20 polluters in Australia will not be touched whatsoever. The biggest 150 polluters in this country will increase their emissions under the Direct Action policy—which is a 'stunning success', apparently—by 20 per cent over the next 15 years. The Grattan Institute, everyone would accept, is a central, middle of the road organisation—not a lefty organisation by any means. Tony Wood from the Grattan Institute said in response to the release of the safeguards policy: 'It is called a safeguard, but it is not an environmental safeguard. Greg Hunt is not actually constraining emissions; if it is going to work it is going to have to have teeth, but all we have got is gums.'

So, particularly in combination with Tony Abbott's reckless attack on renewable energy, it is not surprising that we are seeing emissions starting to rise again. It is clear that the Direct Action policy will not achieve meaningful reductions in carbon pollution levels. It simply will not: 2020 levels on carbon pollution will be substantially higher than they are today, and substantially higher than they were in 2000 or in 2005. Whatever tricky baseline the Minister for the Environment wants to choose, they will be higher.

The government's own projections, the only projections or modelling it has been able to release, suggest that in 2020 carbon pollution levels in Australia will be 655 million tonnes against 559 million tonnes in 2000—so not five per cent below 2000 levels, 17 per cent above 2000 levels. RepuTex was more generous to the government than the government's own modelling. RepuTex said only last month that in 2020 carbon emissions will be 613 million tonnes against 559 million tonnes—so 10 per cent above 2000 levels. Not five per cent below, 10 per cent above under this new Prime Minister's policy of Direct Action. You ask why? Land clearing is increasing again, thanks to Campbell Newman's reversal of Peter Beattie's land clearing laws. Electricity sector emissions are up because of the attack on renewable energy. Fugitive emissions up, and they will not be capped at all because there is no discipline in the safeguard mechanism. That is why you need an emissions trading scheme. That is why you need a hard cap on carbon pollution that reduces over time and then lets business work out the cheapest and the most effective way to operate. The member for Wentworth, now the Prime Minister, understood that all those years ago.

You also need strong support for renewable energy, and it is very clear now that you will only get that strong support from a Shorten Labor government because this new Prime Minister dismissed out of hand a 50 per cent goal for renewable energy in this country by 2030—dismissed it out of hand, called it reckless, spat in the eye of all of those Australians who want bold ambition in this area around renewable energy. In his first 48 hours, he completely dismissed any ambition on renewable energy for the 2020s. Millions of Australians are now asking themselves, more in sorrow than in anger frankly, I suspect: how did it come to this? How is the member for Wentworth, who apparently had such deep beliefs around climate change and environmental policy, now a convert to a policy he rightly condemned all those years ago, and which experience has shown deserved that condemnation and that experience has shown will not achieve any meaningful reductions in carbon? The answer, unfortunately, is the answer that is so often the case in these circumstances: base personal ambition. Apparently, Australians are coming to understand that there was nothing that the member for Wentworth was not willing to trade off, not willing to sell out to achieve his long-held ambition to become Prime Minister. We probably still do not know it all. We know it is climate change policy, water policy, renewable energy policy, same-sex marriage policy. If he will sell out on this, how can Australians possibly trust this Prime Minister on anything?

See this speech in context