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

At the outset, as a South Australian MP, can I add my remarks to the words of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and others about the bushfire disasters in South Australia over the last 36 hours. My wife's family has lost two farms—her auntie's and her cousin's. My thoughts are with Helen and Andrew, Belinda and Ed. All our thoughts are with the volunteer firefighters, the firefighters, and other members of the community who are dealing with these awful disasters in my state of South Australia.

The Prime Minister is off to get on a plane and jet off overseas to attend another series of summits: CHOGM in Malta and then the much awaited Paris conference on climate change. I think most people in this House are pleased that there is very good reason to hope that this conference in Paris, the 21st conference of the parties, will be a very positive conference that will finally yield an ambitious agreement, including all significant countries in the world seeking to reduce carbon pollution levels and ensure that global warming does not extend beyond two degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels. We are not there yet, but it is certainly a much better position than I think anyone thought we would be in only 18 or 24 months ago.

I think it is fair to say also that the international community, by and large, has greeted the demise of the member for Warringah as Prime Minister of Australia and Stephen Harper as the Prime Minister of Canada with unadulterated glee. Both of those prime ministers were regarded, rightly or wrongly—we say rightly; some others may say wrongly—as the twin proponents of the argument not to achieve an ambitious agreement in Paris. For that reason I think it is broadly thought that the new Australian Prime Minister and the new Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, will be received very warmly indeed, just for not being the previous prime ministers of Australia and Canada.

Indeed, Justin Trudeau, as we know, will bring a substantially different policy platform for Canada—a promise to introduce an emissions trading scheme, a promise to look at more ambitious targets, a very ambitious program of green energy. But the Australian Prime Minister, although he will undoubtedly be presenting a friendlier face to the international community on climate change, will still be selling the old wares that were developed by the member for Warringah, precisely with the ambition of doing nothing. In that sense they are working, because they are doing nothing.

He will be presenting 2030 targets that put Australia right at the back of the pack. He will present no long-term target for carbon pollution reduction at all, because the member for Warringah stripped from the statute books the idea that there should be a mid-century ambition about decarbonising this economy. It was stripped from the statute books. Although there is lip-service to the two-degree commitment, and certainly we think the Minister for the Environment genuinely sees that commitment as important, there is still the four-degree scenario of the International Energy Agency right the centre of this government's energy white paper.

But the biggest immediate problem this country has, which the Prime Minister continues to endure, is the lack of a policy framework to constrain emissions at all, let alone to reduce them. The Climate Action Tracker, an international NGO that not only assesses the targets that different countries are bringing to this conference but also assesses the policy mechanisms to see whether those targets are going to be achieved, has found that, notwithstanding the fact that Australia's targets are at the weaker end of the global spectrum, Australia still has the largest gap of any nation between the targets that the Prime Minister is taking to Paris and the policy mechanisms to achieve those targets.

If you watched the National Press Club address yesterday, you would be forgiven for thinking that Australia is leading the world and that people are flocking over here to learn all the wonders of the Emissions Reduction Fund and the safeguards mechanism. Although the Minister for the Environment is not usually one for overstatement and triumphalism—I will say that—he was a little bit triumphalist yesterday. He dropped a couple of stories and said to the National Press Club that Australia was going to achieve its Kyoto 2 target. He did not present any new data about this. He had a PowerPoint for the joy of the Press Club, but there was no year-by-year data to update the March data that was published by the department.

It is probably true in a technical sense that Australia, happily, will achieve its Kyoto 2 commitment. It is probably true, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with this government's climate change policy. There are three reasons why we will achieve the Kyoto 2 commitment. The first is the carryover from the first period of 129 million tonnes. The second is the fact that in 2013 and 2014 we overperformed. We had emissions significantly below the average for the eight-year period between 2013 and 2020—unsurprisingly, really, because of the impact of the renewable energy targets, the reduction in emissions from the national electricity market and the high point of reductions in emissions from the Queensland land sector because of land-clearing restrictions put in place by the Queensland state Labor governments of Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh. So those two reasons have nothing whatsoever to do with this government's policies.

The only thing this government can take credit for in the reductions in the total abatement task that the minister published is strangling economic activity. The coalmining sector and the heavy manufacturing sector are slowing down, as a result of which 200 million tonnes or thereabouts is stripped from the projections of emissions between now and 2020. That apparently is a cause for celebration by the Minister for the Environment.

There is no data year on year between now and 2020 other than the data that the department published in March that would indicate that by 2020 pollution levels will be 17 per cent above 2000 levels—not five per cent below, but 17 per cent above. We do not think that is going to happen—we think it will be substantially lower than that, but there is no question that emission levels under this government are rising. There is no question that emission levels under this government will be higher in 2020 than they are now. The minister did not present any year-on-year data at the National Press Club yesterday, and he did not answer the question that was asked of him in question time as to whether or not emission levels in 2020 would be higher or lower than they are now. We know that emission levels will be higher. RepuTex says, using the same datasets the department uses that were incorporated ambiguously into the powerpoint yesterday, that emission levels will be six per cent higher in 2020 than they are today, in spite of the fact that strangling economic activity has yielded a dividend for this Minister for the Environment, and four per cent higher than 2000 levels—not five per cent below but four per cent higher.

Under the last Labor government emissions came down by eight per cent, from 600 million tonnes in the last year of the Howard government to 550 million tonnes in the last year of the Labor government. Under this new Prime Minister, with a friendlier face on climate change, emission levels will increase between him taking over as Prime Minister and 2020 by six per cent. Why? Because the attack on the renewable energy industry last year has meant that electricity emissions rose by four per cent alone in the NEM in the last financial year of 2014-15; emissions are rising in the land sector because of Campbell Newman winding back the Peter Beattie-Anna Bligh land clearing restrictions; and there are whole range of other reasons.

Let us recap: what will the new Prime Minister be taking to Paris? He will be taking weak targets. He will be taking no ambition on renewable energy beyond 2020. When the Leader of the Opposition asked the new Prime Minister whether he would join with Labor in a 50 per cent goal for renewable energy by 2030, he called that goal reckless. The office of renewables innovation in the minister's department got a bit of a rap again yesterday. That brings in the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and ARENA. Of course the minister did not repeat the fact that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation Abolition Bill is still on the agenda for this House. The Minister for Finance is still banking as a saving all of the money allocated to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, yet still this minister trumpets the idea that there is an office for renewables innovation and that incorporate two agencies that do fantastic work, creatures of the last Labor government, who are in the gunsights of this government.

We have a safeguards mechanism that the Prime Minister will take to Paris that will do nothing to constrain emissions of the 20 biggest polluters between now and 2030—absolutely nothing. It will do nothing to constrain the emissions of four-fifths of all polluters covered by it, which is why we need a cap on carbon pollution. And of course he will take the Emissions Reduction Fund that he himself, the Prime Minister, in a moment of honesty, said five or six years ago would be a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale. So Paris will receive a friendlier face on climate change but there will be the same old policies. (Time expired)

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