Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

It's quite sad that we actually have to debate this motion here today. If we lived in a commonsense world, if the parliament adopted a commonsense approach to this, we wouldn't have to debate an issue such as this. If we were in a commonsense situation, we would all accept the scientific evidence of climate change—that it's occurring and that it is a real threat to our economy, our living standards, our environment and our children's future. We would accept that the major cause of climate change is burning fossil fuels to produce energy—that is the major source of carbon emissions here in Australia and throughout the world. If the parliament adopted a commonsense approach to this issue, we'd accept that, if we care about our kids' future, we must, over time, reduce the amount of energy that we produce from fossil fuels and increase the amount of energy that we produce from renewable sources. And, if we were in a commonsense situation, we'd be mature enough to work together on policies that achieve the outcome of reducing reliance on fossil fuels and increasing renewable energy. If we did this—if we made an orderly transition to a situation where we did have 50 per cent of our energy produced from renewable sources by 2030—we'd have a cleaner environment, we'd have lower electricity prices, we'd have new industries being generated in Australia, we'd have more jobs created in the energy sector in this country, and, importantly, we'd be making a smooth transition to a cleaner future with as little disruption as possible to our economy and the livelihoods of Australians.

That's how it works in most of the world. In most countries throughout the world they've adopted a commonsense approach to this important issue. But the actions of this government represent everything but a commonsense approach to this issue. The major source of conflict in this government over the last decade has been the issue of climate change and energy policy. In fact, it's fair to say that a policy war has been going on in the Liberal Party for the last decade, which has resulted in indecision, a lack of actions, increases in emissions, a lack of a mechanism to make an orderly transition to a cleaner future—in fact, the mechanisms that the previous government put in place were dismantled—and a lack of investment and creation of jobs in the renewable sector. Most importantly—and this is the government's greatest shame out of the lot of them—we've seen skyrocketing electricity prices in our economy. This has made it harder for families, for workers, for pensioners, and for small and big businesses to make ends meet in Australia.

Those opposite come in here and start arguing and blaming Labor, but the reality is that they've been in government for five years. For the last half a decade there's been a Liberal-National coalition government. You've had plenty of time to work on developing a policy in this area—just work on one policy that you can agree on to reduce emissions and make a clean transition to a cleaner energy future. Because of that policy indifference, because of the war that's been going on, Australians have suffered. And it's our kids who will suffer in the future because of a lack of decision by this government on this issue.

It is winter now, and I regularly speak to pensioners in my electorate who can't afford to switch on the heater because of the increase in electricity prices. Families are entering repayment plans with their electricity provider, because they can't afford to pay the bill up-front. This lack of policy certainty and this government's war and indecision has created a lack of investment in a new generation of renewables in this country. On this issue alone the government do not deserve to be elected at the next election. They've had five years to sort this out, and they've failed.

They've come up with several policies. They came up with the Clean Energy Target—they had two goes at that. They asked the Chief Scientist to come up with a policy, and twice they've rejected it within their own party. Labor said that we'd agree to it with some amendments, but they couldn't even agree on it. Now they've got the National Energy Guarantee. Again we've said that we'll agree on it, albeit with higher emission standards for the future, but they still can't agree. Guys, before you come moving motions like this, sort yourselves out in your own party room about climate change and energy policy.

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