Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Ozone Protection and Synthetic Greenhouse Gas Management Reform (Closing the Hole in the Ozone Layer) Bill 2022, which makes some further changes to the way that we here in Australia operate our ozone protection and synthetic greenhouse gas management arrangements. All of those spring from the Montreal Protocol, which was agreed internationally in 1987, as other speakers have noted. The Montreal Protocol responded to an environmental and atmospheric crisis, when we discovered that a certain class of gases were contributing to the depletion of the ozone layer, which is critically important to the health of our environment and climate.

Any time we talk about the Montreal Protocol and the successful global cooperative effort, it's impossible not to think about the relationship between that effort and the effort that we're all engaged in presently with respect to climate change and the Paris Agreement. The Montreal Protocol was a case of the world, in the 1980s, realising that there was a crisis—that we had a certain kind of industrial activity and certain kinds of manufacturing and consumer goods being produced that were putting gases into the atmosphere and having deleterious effects on the atmosphere that we would all suffer from—and something had to be done. The Montreal Protocol was agreed to relatively quickly. Australia, under the Hawke government, played a very constructive role in seeing that determined, and it has been relatively successful. It's a great indicator of how the global community can respond to those kinds of circumstances and lead us to a healthier and more sustainable and more environmentally protective approach that doesn't diminish our capacity to operate economies and manufacture goods and all of those other things.

It's worth noting, as this new government, in its first six months, brings in this bill which implements some further changes to improve our ozone protection and synthetic greenhouse gas management arrangements, that it flows on from a process that began under the former government. There was a review back in 2014. It was completed in 2015, and the former government responded in May 2016. Unfortunately, the final review report was never released. For members—particularly, new members—it is worth noting that in the previous parliament there was some legislation brought by the previous government that we welcomed and supported. It introduced some belated amendments to the OPGGS Act, but at the time—and I made a contribution to that debate—the assistant minister in the former government said that it introduced most of the remaining measures announced following the review of the program but not all of them. At that point, we did not know what the others might be because the final review report was never released. I'm guessing that, with the new government having had a look at the final review report, those changes are now flowing through lickety-split into the bill that we consider here to make those further changes, and they are important.

It's also worth noting—back on the analogy with our response to the HFC issue and the ozone layer issue—that, as with climate change, from Australia's point of view it wasn't just the case that we shared the view of many countries that the depletion of the ozone layer was unacceptable and something needed to be done about it. We did take that view, but one of the things that became plain for Australians in the 1980s was that there was actually a hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic. The ozone layer in our part of the world had suffered more significantly than elsewhere around the planet, and that was more than likely going to have a particular effect on us. I can remember as a teenager that people were taking hold of the likelihood that skin cancer rates and things like that would more than likely increase and be even greater than they already were—and they continue to be high here in Australia.

We had every reason to be a leading player in the formation of the Montreal protocol, just as we have every reason to be a leading player in response to climate change, and that somehow seems to get lost. As with the hole in the ozone layer, climate change will deliver harm and cost across the board. With respect to the previous speaker, what seems to go missing all the time is the understanding that if you don't take action to deal with these matters—the depletion of the ozone layer or the building up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that leads to global warming, climate change and more frequent environmental natural disasters—you are going to reap extraordinary costs, and they're going to be costs of every kind. They're going to be economic costs, but they are also going to be social, environmental and human health costs. Extreme heat is one of the most consistent killers that we experience environmentally, and not just in the form of bushfires or those kind of events but just in the ordinary way that extreme heat puts stress on the human body and leads to elevated death rates.

Those are the kinds of things that we are seeking to avoid by being a constructive partner with countries around the world in dealing with climate change. Part of what this bill does is align the OPGGS Act—the ozone-depletion-specific arrangements—with our commitments under the Paris Agreement, because HFCs by themselves are significantly more potent in accelerating global warming and climate change in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide alone, some 3,000 or 4,000 times more potent. What we are doing—we are on track to have reduced our use of HFCs by 85 per cent in 2036; that's part of our commitment, and we're on the trajectory—is making a contribution to that effort.

It's worth noting that the Montreal protocol was enormously successful, and it's right that we say, 'Look at what the world is capable of doing and look at the leadership role that Australia is capable of playing.' But the effort is not over. The newspaper articles have stopped, and the discussion of the hole in the ozone layer is not part of our conversation, but the effort will continue under the auspices of the Montreal protocol into the 2060s, or to about 2060. And there have been fluctuations. I was having a look at some scientific literature in preparation for contributing to this debate, and from time to time the available measure of the health of the ozone layer ticks up or ticks down. So it's not as if that effort has completely taken care of the issue; it's not as if we don't need to monitor it.

Back in 2015, before I was elected to this place, when I was the deputy mayor of Fremantle, the United Nations Environmental Effects Assessment Panel—a panel underneath the UNEP that has some specific scientific responsibility for looking at the Montreal protocol and the management of ozone depletion—held an annual conference in Fremantle. I didn't have much warning about that. It's one of those things when you're involved in local government—you get told out of the blue: 'Guess what; there's this significant international scientific group, and they happen to be coming to your part of the world. Would you be happy to meet them and host them in the town hall and say a few words of introduction?' But it was a great privilege to meet those people, who had come from all over the world, to talk about the work that they had done.

So it is really significant that we continue to be very forward leaning in what we're doing, because we have the capacity to do it and because Australian leadership on these things matters. It matters as a demonstration of our values and principles. It matters in the region, where countries that are less developed than Australia but even more prone to the impacts of environmental and atmospheric degradation look to us to do our bit, to show leadership and to take a proportional part of the task.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s we had both the Montreal protocol and the Madrid protocol. The Madrid protocol in 1991 was specifically about the environmental protection of Antarctica, and it was another instance of Australia taking a leading role. Even late in that process there was a suggestion that a compromise might need to be struck that would allow certain kinds of activity—economic activity, mining and things like that—in Antarctica in order to ensure that the agreement excluded the occupation and use of Antarctica for defence and security purposes. Prime Minister Hawke and that Labor government, fairly late in the piece, took a bold interpretation of what might be possible and really turned the tide of those negotiations, to the extent that not just defence and security but also economic activity and mining were excluded from Antarctica.

Here we are, 35 years on from the Montreal protocol and 31 years on from the Madrid protocol. We should look back at those agreements and take heart. We should look back and say that the Australian government, the Australian community and the global community were able to rise to the challenge of very, very serious environmental crises in a positive and constructive way that effectively put the world on a more sustainable footing and avoided what would have been, frankly, quite catastrophic harm. We could do that 35 years ago with the resources and technology we had then, so I don't know on what basis we would say that we are incapable of responding to the challenges that we have now. Certainly that's the view that this government takes. That's the view taken by the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, the Minister for Environment and Water and every other member of the executive. We are absolutely capable of doing the things that are in this bill and the things that we committed to at COP27. Through our increased emissions reduction target and energy transition arrangements we're putting in place, we are 100 per cent capable not only of doing our part in the necessary energy and greenhouse gas emission task but of showing leadership.

The fact that we got ourselves into an unhelpful political trough on those kinds of issues in the last 10 years is a denial of Australia's essential character. Australia's central character is to have confidence in our capacity to be innovators, to have confidence in industry and science, and to have confidence in our political institutions. We look at these challenges that are specific to us—because we will be more affected by climate change than many other countries, but, at the same time, it's something that the entire planet needs to wrestle with—and find ways to be part of it rather than find ways to excuse ourselves from it. Earlier this week in this chamber, another member was essentially suggesting that energy transition and climate change action was akin to a cult that involved the sacrifice of virgins and various other quite bizarre things. That is not consonant with the Australian community's down-to-earth, can-do, common-sense, get-on-with-it approach to tackling big and serious problems.

This government, while it does the big things—like the commitment it made in updating our nationally determined contribution to the Paris Agreement and the things that we were part of in COP27 the week before—is also going to pick up some of the smaller things, some of the incremental things, as this bill does. As I said, the review that led to these changes was eight years ago. The previous government never released that report and took quite a lot of time to introduce some of the measures relatively late in the last term. We supported those. But here we are in the first six months of this government, and we're picking up the rest of that task. I hope that it's something that everyone in the parliament can support.

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