Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister to the Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

I'm elated to be able to speak against this motion. I do so for a very simple reason. I think I must be one of the few people who have actually read the bill. Many of my constituents and constituents in other areas have contacted their representatives to talk about the member for Warringah's bill and whether we would vote in favour of it. Now we have a motion wanting to bring the bills on. I actually read the bill and tried to understand what it was trying to achieve and what its objective was. It's quite clear what its plan is: it's to establish a new bureaucracy. If you actually look at the detail of the bill, what it talks about is building a bureaucracy so that they can then go on to develop a plan. It isn't a plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions, it isn't a plan to improve the Australian economy and it isn't a plan to take the Australian community with us.

I'll show you what a plan is: it's the plan that the Prime Minister tabled in the parliament yesterday—130 pages that goes through, step-by-step, how we're going to work towards delivering a net zero target by 2050 for the Australian community. It is a plan that is comprehensive. In fact, it's the first economy-wide plan to achieve net zero by 2050 that has ever been presented by a government in this country. That is a critical change from the past. By comparison, the member for Warringah's bill focuses on how we build a bureaucracy to be empowered over this parliament to make those decisions for us.

Make no mistake, I am a democrat and proudly a democrat. The foundation of the Morrison government's approach is to make sure that we take positions to the Australian people, we get them endorsed at an election and then we go on and implement them. The alternative under the member of Warringah's bill that she presented previously is to create a new climate czar and a series of bureaucrats that would literally have veto powers over this parliament. That is not just an attack on this parliament—though it is—it is an attack on the Australian people and their capacity to be able to have a voice, to have a discussion and to be part of the process of considering and developing policy to reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.

To her credit, the Member for Warringah outlined this in her speech only moments ago. She spoke explicitly about taking climate policy 'out of the hands' of democratically elected representatives. Frankly, I can't imagine the members of even the Labor Party would agree with such a plan to take climate change policy out of the hands of democratically elected representatives, but this is consistent with her approach where she has sought to undermine not just our democracy but also the Australian people in being part of this conversation. We want to make sure that Australians are part of this conversation, because it's not just a discussion about improving the environment, though it is. It's not just a discussion about the future of the Australian economy, though it is. We want to take rural and regional communities and those communities that may have disproportionate impacts on them along on the journey, because we want to improve their communities and seize the moment and the opportunity.

The other thing we heard from the member for Warringah was a comparison with the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom they have thousands of pages of legislation in different areas of strategies. Well, the simple reality is, yes, we have a 169-page plan without a giant new bureaucracy established by this parliament, as was tabled by the Prime Minister in question time yesterday, but it builds across the pillars that the government has already built in areas such as our Modern Manufacturing Strategy and our Critical Mineral Strategy, where we will seize the moment and the opportunity to extract minerals to be part of the technologies of the future, particularly renewable technologies. It also integrates environmental standards that go into things like the Building Code.

The member for Warringah then went on and said: why not legislate a target? Firstly, we took our target to the people at the last election, and it was endorsed by them. The Labor Party took a different target, and they were defeated. But, more critically, we actually did an international analysis of the number of countries that have legislated targets. Of the 193 countries or there abouts that have made international commitments, only seven have legislated their targets. The state governments of Western Australia and Queensland have not legislated targets.

But the member opposite, the member for McMahon, raises the United Kingdom, and I am quite happy to talk about that. One of the reasons why we didn't go down the path of legislating targets is that it empowers people outside this parliament to override it. We know from the member's legislation that she previously presented to this parliament that she wants to appoint bureaucrats who could veto this parliament on climate change policy, as despicable as that is. But you just need to look at how—and the member for McMahon raised what's happening in the United Kingdom. They legislated their target, and now activists are using that as a vehicle to use the courts to shut down democratic decision-making. We just need to look at it here:

Campaigners have launched a legal challenge to try to prevent billions of pounds of taxpayers' money being spent on a huge road-building programme, which they say breaches the UK's legal commitments …

I'm a democrat. I believe that parliamentary sovereignty matters. I think that the people who are elected to this parliament should decide the law. And it isn't just new road projects; they're trying to shut down the development of new airports. It doesn't matter what push the Labor Party and the independent member for Warringah have, I will stand by the Australian people.

We've seen now the human consequences of the European approach. In the lead up to this winter, we had a backing by bureaucrats on a small number of technologies and the rising risk of higher energy prices, with many people increasingly unable to afford the capacity to heat their homes. That is a despicable approach in terms of public policy. We're going to take an approach that backs the Australian people, that backs households and, of course, that backs building the future of the Australian economy so that we can take the community with us. That's why yesterday we hit such a milestone: a coalition government hitting out a target for net zero by 2050 and then a comprehensive plan, a 130-page plan, about how we are going to get there.

Let's look at that in comparison to the Australian Labor Party. We know that they don't have a 2030 target. They have a 2050 target, but literally the detail of that plan could fit on a fortune cookie. You compare that to the coalition: We take targets to an election. We get them endorsed by the Australian people. We then go on and develop a plan, and, of course, we then go on and implement said plan. The planet that doesn't care about good intentions alone; it cares about outcomes. Let's look at the record of outcomes. The average emissions reductions since 2005 for OECD countries is seven per cent. Australia has already reached 21 per cent emissions reductions since 2005. That's times three. If you look at comparable countries, the United States has only achieved about 10 per cent. Then you look at a country like China, which, of course, has seen emissions rise by nearly 70 per cent over the time frame. What we are showing is leadership. We are showing leadership as to how we are going to cut our emissions and provide the pathway for so many other countries to follow that leadership, in an Australian way that focuses on building the foundations of the Australian economy.

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