David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make some brief comments about this report. I'd like to thank all my colleagues on the Standing Committee on the Environment and Energy and the chair and the deputy chair for the review process. It is quite educational when you get involved in these reviews, and there were some take-home messages from this inquiry. Australia does have a very extensive and accurate national greenhouse energy reporting system in place. Our figures can be believed—unlike some other nations in the world that fudge their figures—and we do report scope 1 and scope 2 emissions, which is the requirement.

The inquiry resolved in the negative, not to support the amendments that were proposed. The reason for that is pretty straightforward: it would mean that Australia would be taking on the obligations of other nations who are end users of our raw products. We all have to contribute to CO2 reduction, but what we are doing as a nation, providing energy that powers Asia and India and our own industry, is we have a lot of natural gas—which reduces the greenhouse footprint compared to coal by about 20 per cent, plus or minus a few per cent. There is less particulate matter that goes up into the atmosphere and there's less C02.

The other thing is the energy density of our coal. The black coal that is exported and highly valued sells incredibly well on the international market. The reason these other countries want it is that it improves the energy density of their fuel stock. A lot of them don't have energy-dense, rich black coal. By sending our raw product overseas we are helping reduce their footprint, rather than using brown coal or less energy-dense black coal, with lower thermal energy. It means we would be double counting. Our responsibility would go up exponentially and our competitor nations would be getting off scot-free. There'd also be double counting on the international figures, because they have to account for it as well.

It was just a question of practical common sense and equity, in the greenhouse reporting schemes, that all the nations in the world should undertake. I would like to commend the report to the House. Thank you very much.

Debate adjourned.

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