Dave Sharma (Wentworth, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks to the member for Lilley for the light comic relief at the end. I find this kind of a puzzling motion, because when you make an international commitment—and I've been involved in a few in my lifetime—you do that by making a commitment with the treaty organisation that holds the treaty. When we made our Paris Agreement target we deposited what's called a nationally determined contribution, which is a treaty-level instrument with the repository of the treaty—the treaty being the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; the repository being the UN Secretariat in New York. That's how you make an international commitment.

When we signed the Kyoto protocol we didn't legislate the Kyoto protocol in Australia, we made an international commitment. We made the Paris Agreement—we made that commitment internationally rather than domestically. When we formalise our commitment to net zero by 2050 we'll do it in exactly the same way, by making a formal communication to the treaty body repository.

I think what this matter of public importance debate confuses somewhat is what the purpose of legislation is. Legislation is not an end in itself; it's a means to an end, the end being the policy goal and legislation providing the means. Legislation does not of itself fulfil a policy goal. If that were the case, we could simply pass a bill to end child poverty. We could simply pass a bill to effect reconciliation with Australia's First Nations people. We could simply pass a bill to end homelessness. We could simply pass a bill to abolish inflation. If it is that easy, if we just have to pass a bill and do it, let's do it right now. But it's not that easy, because legislation is about providing the means to reach a policy goal.

This is no difference. The legislation we were discussing and debating earlier today, the Offshore Electricity Infrastructure Bill 2021, helps us get down the road towards net zero by 2050. Our appropriations bills, which we pass, discuss and debate in parliament, help us get down the road to 2050, as do new regulations that allow ARENA to fund things like green hydrogen, low-emission steel and aluminium, carbon soil and carbon capture and storage. Those are the mechanisms by which you use legislation to meet our policy goal of net zero by 2050.

I also found this quite puzzling because, having realised this debate was coming on, I went and had a look at the House Standing Committee on the Environment and Energy's report on the climate change bills. That was a bipartisan committee: there were Labor members as well as coalition members on the committee. The majority report of that committee—which means that Labor and coalition members signed up to this—said:

The Committee recommends that the Bills not be passed.

That means that Labor members of the committee recommended that a net-zero 2050 target not be legislated. In fact, in the additional comments provided by the Labor members of this committee—including the member for Macnamara, who's sitting over there—they said:

Labor members support the need for the Australian Government to adopt a commitment of achieving net zero emissions by 2050 …

That was the Labor recommendation in that report—that they 'support the need for the Australian government to adopt a commitment of achieving net zero emissions by 2050'. Well, guess what we've just done. Guess what happened earlier this week. Guess what the Prime Minister announced in a press conference just yesterday. The Australian government is adopting a net-zero emissions target by 2050. I would have thought the member for Macnamara would be up applauding along with his colleague the member for Fremantle. Both of them were co-authors of those additional comments in that report.

How we're going to get to net zero is by continuing to do what we've already done: investing in new technology, providing consumers with choice, and enabling new capital to enter the marketplace to scale up these technologies and make them commercially available. It will come about because we will have helped make the measurement of soil carbon come in commercially at less than $3 per hectare. It will come about because we will be able to produce green hydrogen at less than $2 a kilo. It will come about because we will be able to manufacture large-scale solar that will produce power at less than $15 per megawatt hour. It will come about because we will be able to produce green steel at less than $700 a tonne and green aluminium at less than $2,200 a tonne. This is how we're going to get to net zero—not by passing a bill in the parliament and not by having meaningless debates about that bill in the parliament but by passing enabling legislation like the Offshore Electricity Infrastructure Bill and the ARENA regulations, which will allow us to invest in clean technology, and then allowing the magic forces of new technology, new investment, consumers and investors to do their work.

If only it were as easy as just passing a bill to fix all the social ills of the world! If that were the case, we would have all the answers from those opposite. But it's not that easy. When you make a commitment like this, you have to be serious about how you're going to deliver it. This, unfortunately, is just a stunt.

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