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

I'll make a start on my contribution to the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2022, which I support. It makes an important change to a mechanism that we need if we're to tackle climate change and if we're to reduce carbon emissions in Australia and if we're to be part of global efforts to reduce carbon emissions across the board so that we don't get dangerous global warming and all of the extreme climate impacts that follow, which we've seen here in Australia.

This measure picks up a significant shortcoming in the safeguard mechanism that the former government put in place but in a completely ineffective form. It was completely ineffective in a couple of different ways. Fundamentally, it didn't actually set an effective decarbonisation path, but it had another shortcoming, which was the inability for those who overachieve on their baseline emission reduction targets to be able to share the benefits of that overall performance with others covered by the mechanism who haven't met their baseline. That's a perfectly sensible and effective market mechanism in the task that we have before us. It goes precisely to what the shadow minister before asked over and over again in his 30-minute contribution: how? It's about the how. It's funny to have that question put by those opposite. To the extent that there was a question of how, from their point of view, it was: 'How do we do nothing?' or 'How have we done nothing?' or 'How do we pretend to so something while essentially doing nothing?' Those were the only forms of the question 'how' that they had any interest in. We're serious about achieving emissions reduction of 43 per cent by 2030, which will require 82 per cent renewable energy in the system by that stage. We're going to do it through our Powering Australia policy, and all of its elements set out the how. In about nine months worth of government, we've already begun to implement the measures that will get us there.

Debate interrupted.

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