Keith Wolahan (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Safeguard Mechanism (Crediting) Amendment Bill 2022. Last year, my wife told me, 'You need to speak with Leo.' Leo is my son, and he's 10. She said, 'He wants to talk to you about climate change.' I said, 'Okay; why does he want to talk to me about climate change?' She said, 'He saw that documentary on Netflix.' I said, 'What documentary on Netflix?' She said, 'It was David Attenborough:ALife on Our Planet.' I know many other members of this place often cite that documentary because it came out of a time when most of Melbourne was locked down, so most of Melbourne watched it. For those of you who haven't seen it, it is quite a moving documentary. It charts his life as a person as well as the issue of climate change, and he makes a point at the end. There will be criticism about the form of advocacy and whether things are properly fact-checked, but as a piece of art it was very effective and it was moving. It goes back to when he was a young boy; he's sitting in what is an old Welsh mine and he's looking at the different gaps in the soil and talking about how the earth has changed. It then breaks through different pictures of him travelling around the world as he ages but there's a clock ticking down at the same time, and it's got this loud clicking motion, and it is the percentage of wild areas on earth. As he gets near the end, there's a crescendo of how much of the wild areas of earth have gone in his lifetime—it's quite moving—and he draws the link between that and the challenge of climate change. You would have to have a very thick skin not to be moved by the way that was put.

That's often used as a reason to support a particular bill or a particular proposal—that any actions taken in this place are somehow going to affect the visuals you saw in that documentary. It's dishonest to view it in that way because the things we do here must not only be important for the environment but be important for the issue globally and also in a responsible way for our economy. So let me quickly outline what it is we're dealing with because a lot of people outside of this chamber who might be listening or viewing may not know the details of this proposal.

In 2005, we were, as a country, emitting 621 megatonnes per year. The policy put to the election by the colleagues opposite was to reduce that by 43 per cent by 2030, which would take you, in 2030, to 354 megatonnes a year. The proposal that we have before the parliament now has a focus on 215 facilities which have been picked as the largest carbon emitters. They include mines, gas manufacturers, airlines and concrete facilities. Altogether they account for 28 per cent of emissions. This proposal sets limits on those, and that will have impacts on many different areas. But it's important to note that a lot of those sectors have made great strides in reducing their emissions to date. In particular, electricity, waste and agriculture have cut between 10 and 20 per cent of their emissions over the terms of the last government, but many others haven't. Transport and industry processors have not been able to obtain the same cuts. So the proposal is to give each facility a cap on their emissions and then to reduce that by a percentage each year. I think it's 4.9 per cent per year. If it's below cap, the facility can then sell to another facility, and they can also offset those with carbon credits, including by land restoration and other projects.

It's important to note that the coalition, when in government, achieved a lot of this without the burden which is going to be imposed on facilities and which will have an impact on inflation. It will probably have very little impact on the environment and almost no impact on the visuals that were shown in that documentary that my son watched. In government, the coalition had significant achievements in nine years of office. The government met and exceeded Australia's Kyoto targets and signed on to achieve net zero by 2050. The government reduced emissions by over 20 per cent on the 2005 base level, putting Australia well on track to beat Paris treaty commitments. It was a decade of balancing emissions without significant reductions in economic growth. In fact, the economy grew.

Labor is now rushing to impose this bill, which would lead to drastic cuts for Australian businesses. Labor is taking a scheme that did exist, but they are changing the scheme from one whose purpose is to stop emissions by encouraging businesses and to encourage them to back technology to a scheme whose purpose is to penalise businesses through taxes. The coalition, when in government, supported a carbon trading system that rewarded businesses that voluntarily reduced their emissions. Our plan for the safeguard mechanism was to create incentives and support businesses that made the transition to net zero. If the proposed bill is successful, businesses will be hit with what is, in effect, a carbon tax. By pricing carbon dioxide at $75, Australia will have a price that is three times higher than the one set by the previous government, and this will rise to $100 by 2030. This will make Australian businesses extremely uncompetitive, to the point that they will be driven offshore. You will have affected the economy in a serious way and you will have done nothing for climate change because those businesses will then be going overseas.

Many of our trading partners and international competitors for key industries, including aluminium, cement, copper, coal, gas and iron ore, do not have any national carbon pricing scheme and certainly not one on this level. Our exporters will struggle to compete in these markets. That means not only lost export revenue but less investment and fewer jobs. The economic activity will relocate overseas in markets with no climate policies and high rates of emission—in many cases more than double the emissions of Australian companies. So this will lead to higher building material costs, higher fuel costs and higher transportation costs at the very time when the last thing this country, the economy, families and small business need is higher costs. It's the very last thing we need at this time.

It should come as no surprise that Labor have rushed this proposal through. There's no evidence of the impacts of the policy to introduce a carbon tax. Instead, Labor promised a $275 cut to household electricity bills, and I know that side get very sensitive—

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