Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Amendment Bill 2008 follows legislation previously introduced by the Howard government. It is legislation that is connected with the government’s promise that it would introduce, if elected, an emissions trading scheme, of which this is a precursor. The opposition therefore does not oppose this legislation. However, it gives me the opportunity to raise the many matters of concern that I have with the progression of an emissions trading scheme as a solution to the problems being experienced throughout the globe in climate variation and, of course, the issue of energy security for future generations of Australians. I have grave concerns about the efficacy of an ETS to deliver those outcomes. Governments of Australia over a long period of history have set the energy policy of Australia. The government now turns upon the community and tells them it is their personal responsibility to fix the problem and/or to pay very significant premiums—taxes, if you like—to continue in the lifestyle to which they have been used. I think this is a very important issue. I am not disputing that something has to be done.

During this speech I will propose what governments today could do without ripping the heart out of our industry or imposing unnecessary cost on the people the parliament has just discussed—age pensioners and others. They have enough financial problems and certainly do not need to experience electricity increases of between $250 and $300 per household, as was predicted by the Australian Conservation Foundation in a publication it prepared in conjunction with ACOSS and Choice. The Conservation Foundation put the argument that that would be too big a burden to bear and that government should compensate those people. I am sympathetic to those people but I must ask: if you are in the habit of using carbon based energy to heat or light your home, you have an increase in your electricity account of $300 and a kindly government says, ‘Here is the $300 back,’ what incentive is there for you to reduce electricity consumption—that is, to reduce the amount of coal being burned in a nearby power station for that purpose? Of course, this matter goes much further than that.

For the people who will read this speech in Hansard, let me point out what an emissions trading scheme is. Basically, it is a process by which, as I said earlier, a government handballs to the general population a responsibility that should be its own. It says: ‘Progressive governments have messed up; they have burnt the wrong sorts of things, taken the wrong energy options—something we have only just discovered—and you must pay.’ If you are a businessman in the export industry and your purchaser overseas is not prepared to pay, you are obliged to either close your business or move it overseas. We have an example of that in the present environment. Fisher & Paykel in Queensland has just moved overseas and 300 workers have been retrenched. Boeing, with 500 workers, has just announced its closure. As an international company it will obviously be passing that employment to people in other parts of the world. Then we have Ford, which is reducing its workforce but presently staying in business. Mitsubishi closed down. It is still selling plenty of cars in Australia, just not making them here anymore. Why the sudden exodus? In the case of Boeing I can announce one reason: it knows what is coming.

The Business Council of Australia was a great proponent of the certain wonders of emissions trading and the profits that were going to accrue to its members in the finance industry. I happened to note on radio one morning a New South Wales state minister salivating over the profits that Sydney would accrue from conducting carbon trades. If profits are made, somebody loses; somebody pays. Here we have this system with all these costs, and suddenly the Business Council, having heavied government before the election for this miraculous means of reducing carbon emissions, is saying the carbon plan is a ‘company killer’, according to the Australian of 22 August.

What are the government doing? They are saying: ‘We’ve got the answer for you. Come and see us and we will either exempt you or compensate you. Don’t worry too much; we are only going to start selling you carbon credit certificates.’ I noted in other media coverage that the tax office is already factoring $11 billion of revenue for the government into its calculations for future tax policy. That is one certainty of an ETS: the government is going to take a very large chunk of money out of the community.

It has also been reported that the emissions trading scheme could be a flop. Unfortunately, the problem for Australia is that it does not matter how successful it is in reducing emissions in this country. I believe we should make a realistic attempt, but the fact is that if we were to evacuate Australia and close everything down then that effort would not change the climate of this continent for the next 50 years, because we are 1.4 per cent of the global emissions footprint. Ministers have come to my electorate and told the farmers, ‘If you don’t take the pain and suffering it is going to be worse.’ The fact is that, whatever the level of pain and suffering, the climate will be whatever it is going to be unless man-made CO2 emissions are the one and only determinant of current global weather conditions and unless the major polluters are also party to these arrangements.

Of course, in their anxiety to get into the business of carbon trading, the financial industry has employed a true expert. The lady’s name is Liz Bossley. She has had 30 years in this business. She is a noted author and is highly respected. Some pretty interesting comments of hers were reported again on 4 August in the Australian. Ms Bossley said:

… the indicative carbon price of $20 a tonne—the so-called “soft start” to the scheme—would not create incentives for new clean technology.

Yet that is what is proposed. In other words, in her view, people will pay the tax but will not clean up their act. She goes on to say:

The low-carbon technology that we really need to get going will not be incentivised at $20 a tonne.

Then, of course, as I have already mentioned, there is the problem of getting the rest of the world to participate and save this continent. What does she say about that?

We will see the Kyoto talks collapse unless we start thinking out of the box, because to bring the US in, to bring China in, to bring India in, and try to get them all capped is just not going to happen. The longer we think that it might happen the more time we’re going to waste in trying to find alternative solutions.

So here we are. The government have gone to the people and said: ‘We have a miracle. We’re going to fix it. It’s called an emissions trading scheme—an ETS.’ They are progressing it with green papers and white papers. The business community are getting increasingly frantic. I understand that Woodside in the north-west of WA is not even renewing contracts with its subcontractors—their service and shipping contractors and things of that nature—at the moment. I do not know why, but until they know more their boards are not going to meet and carry on with the massive investments that Australia needs to maintain the prosperity we enjoy today.

What is the purpose of tracking and delivering the reduced carbon emissions that come from a trading scheme? We know one thing for certain: it is going to put up the cost of living and the cost of doing business. We cannot legislate to tell people that they have to maintain their business in Australia or open a business in Australia. It is a so-called market solution, and the market gives them the right to close down or leave town. I think there are two reasons why Boeing walked away from Australia. One of those is probably the 12-month strike. A small percentage of their workforce participated—with picketing and that—but Boeing resisted. Of course, they know that resistance will be futile once this government introduces its new labour laws—and that is the wonder of it. Fairness, we used to say, is in having a job; fairness now is having a job in a trade union.

But that is outside the realm of my problem today. My problem is that you cannot fix carbon emissions with a trading scheme that most of the world appears not to be interested in. You cannot fix it if people just pack up and leave. You cannot fix it if companies which have a captive market, such as with electricity, just put up the prices. If you go down the road of exemptions and compensation, you must clearly defeat the purpose, which is, of course, to increase the cost of carbon based products and consequently encourage people to reduce their use of them. On those two issues, Ms Bossley tells us it ain’t going to happen unless you make it really tough and very painful.

So, having told you why I think an ETS will not work, let me return to the solution to the problem. I have said that government created this problem over the last 100 years. Why can’t government—from either side of this place—fix it, not by handballing the problem to the general community and business but by investing some of those magnificent surpluses that we keep hearing about into new infrastructure that will connect one of the world’s greatest perpetual, renewable energy resources to our general network? Anybody who wants to consult my website, www.wilsontuckey.com.au, and go to ‘Securing Australia’s energy future’ will find my proposal there—and costed.

We can save the coal industry by partnering it with the tidal industry. They are extremely compatible because tidal movements are entirely predictable. Arguably, we can interconnect these two industries using the same technology that is crossing Bass Strait and delivering coal-fired power into Tasmania during the day and hydro back into the mainland during the night on the same set of HVDC bipolar wires. We can interconnect the tidal energies of the Kimberley—CSIRO informed me years ago that it has six times the capacity of Australia’s presently installed electrical generating capacity—and we can produce in my $10 billion package 10 per cent of that figure from a totally renewable resource. Because of its predictability, the manager of a major coal-fired station could take his fishing box with him to work and calculate when his station has to make a major contribution. I might add that this government wants to lock up the wonderful resources of the Kimberley in a heritage order and deny Australians an energy resource currently equivalent to all our energy consumption. I have this proposal on the best advice; this is not some made-up scheme. I have talked to ABB Australia—Asea Brown Boveri—which is one of the biggest electrical companies in the world, and I have talked to people with new tidal generating technology that has been approved by the David Suzuki Foundation.

It is a magnificent and very simple concept. Of course, it is difficult to describe it here in this House, but it was proposed for a major project of 2.8 gigawatts. That is a huge amount of electricity. Let me say, that amount proposed was estimated by the World Energy Council. The Kimberley of Western Australia is a continuous area of fjords and bays. The World Energy Council, quite independently, selected Walcott Inlet and Secure Bay and identified them as having the capacity to produce what is, in fact, 120 per cent of the presently installed capacity of Western Australia.

Furthermore, when you bring that power down the line to Perth and then across to intersect with the eastern states’ grid at Roxby Downs or Port Augusta, with minor deviation you can certainly pass through Mount Newman, which creates the opportunity to electrify the entire region that is producing such wonderful export revenue. Imagine converting all the railways in that area to electrification founded primarily on renewable energy. Of course, with 12 per cent of the world owning a motor car today, which will increase to 16 per cent with an additional two billion population by 2020, the price of fuel, whether available or not, will continue to escalate. We need that renewable power to manufacture hydrogen so that people can start and run those cars.

You can run your existing car on hydrogen. CSIRO have already developed a little hydrogen generator. It is the size of a microwave oven. You can put it in your garage and produce enough hydrogen to fuel your new vehicle to travel 1,000 kilometres a week. That is not Fuelwatch; that is a proposition to take people to the next generation and guarantee that future Australians will not be locked into the Middle East or anywhere else for their fuel and energy supplies. Why take a dud trading scheme when you can—(Time expired)

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Amendment Bill 2008. The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System is a fundamental plank in the government’s efforts to tackle climate change, as we move to establish an emissions trading regime, now known as the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. The greenhouse emissions reporting system will play an important role by more precisely quantifying the greenhouse gases that Australia produces. For the first time, we will be provided with robust and comparable information on the greenhouse and energy profiles of Australia’s large corporations.

From 1 July, businesses emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases have been required to monitor and measure their emissions ahead of reporting them to the government by October next year. Corporate groups that each year emit 125 kilotonnes or more of greenhouse gases or produce or consume 500 terajoules or more of energy will be required to collect data to meet annual reporting requirements. Corporations controlling facilities that emit more than 25 kilotonnes of greenhouse gases or use or produce 100 terajoules or more of energy will also need to collect data. I should indicate to the House that 25 kilotonnes of greenhouse gas emissions are equivalent to the annual emissions of more than 6,200 cars and that 100 terajoules equate to the annual energy use of around 1,900 households. In terms of monitoring and measuring, the system kicked off in July, but relevant corporations will have until 31 August next year to apply to register under the scheme and until 31 October next year to submit their first annual greenhouse gas and energy report.

It is hard to overstate the urgency of the global warming issue. Recently I read the book Climate Code Red by David Spratt and Philip Sutton—and I commend it, as well as Al Gore’s most recent speeches, to my colleagues. Scientists are now saying that there is a 75 per cent chance that within five years the entire North Pole icecap will completely disappear during the summer months. This will increase the melting pressure on Greenland, which is already melting. Scientists are also saying that the West Antarctic icesheet is melting. When these areas melt, they will generate sea level rise far in excess of what scientists were predicting just 10 years ago. Furthermore, the North Pole, Greenland and the South Pole, because they are bright white, reflect a lot of the sun’s rays. As they change from ice to water, they will absorb the sun’s rays instead, further heating up the planet and speeding up global warming. Rising sea levels and more severe cyclones and hurricanes bring with them the prospect of climate refugees, not just a few thousand from low-lying South Pacific islands but hundreds of millions from Bangladesh and other parts of Asia, which will destabilise nations right around the world.

To tackle global warming requires a massive change in how we do things. We have changed the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 280 parts per million, as it was for thousands of years, to 380 parts per million and rising. Carbon is coming from many sources but mostly from the coal we use for electricity, the oil we use to run motor cars and the clearing and burning of forests around the world that is done to feed and house the world’s skyrocketing population. We have a dangerous overreliance on carbon based fuels. It is at the heart of the three great challenges we face: the economic challenge, caused by increasing petrol and food prices; the global warming challenge; and the national security challenge. Al Gore recently said to Americans:

We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of [that sentence has] got to change.

That is also true of Australia. The good news is that ending our reliance on carbon based fuels will not only address the global warming emergency; it will help the economy by getting us off the treadmill of ever-rising petrol and electricity prices. It will also mean—again to quote Al Gore—that we can ‘guarantee our national security without having to go to war in the Persian Gulf’.

So how do we end our reliance on carbon based fuels? Some of the detail of the answer is not yet known; but we know the heart of the answer. We have to move to renewable energies—solar energy, wind energy, geothermal energy. We need to move away from large, centralised power generators and towards local neighbourhood or household based power generation. A sustainable world of the future will have solar photovoltaic panels on every household roof, every commercial and industrial building and every school, church, town hall or community facility.

I am a strong believer in the idea of feed-in tariffs—that is, paying households for power that they can generate and feed back into the electricity grid. I was, therefore, really pleased that this week the Western Australian Labor government announced a plan for a solar energy gross feed-in tariff—a plan to pay households a premium for all the solar energy they produce. And here, in the ACT, there is legislation for a gross feed-in tariff.

I was not the only one pleased to hear the Western Australian government announcement. The Clean Energy Council welcomed the announcement and made a number of important observations on the way through. Firstly, gross feed-in tariffs are recognised worldwide as a key to driving industry maturity. Secondly, a national gross feed-in tariff is the next logical step, given the initiatives being taken around the states. A national policy would ensure a nationally consistent approach, industry certainty, less policy complexity, and it would encourage widespread adoption of solar PV and other renewables. Thirdly, the Council of Australian Governments meeting in Perth on 2 October provides an excellent opportunity to discuss a national feed-in tariff policy. Fourthly, now is the time for a long-term industry policy which will transition the solar PV industry away from rebates. Gross feed-in tariffs set high enough and for long enough will deliver long-term investor certainty, energy security and reductions in carbon emissions.

It is also worth noting that Britain is headed down the feed-in tariff path as well. It is following Germany, which achieved a dramatic expansion of home generated renewable power, such as domestic wind turbines and electricity generating solar power, with a scheme enabling householders to sell power back to the grid for four times the standard electricity rate for 20 years. The scheme can dramatically reduce payback times for renewable energy.

We also need to live less extravagant and wasteful lives. Until the last generation or two, it was regarded as bad form to throw things out which could be mended or repaired, or to leave electric lights or appliances on if no-one was in the room. However, the age of television and television advertising, in particular, have fostered a culture of waste and extravagance. A lot of people now show no interest in turning off appliances which are not needed or in putting on or taking off a jumper rather than reaching for the switch of the heater or the air conditioner. We need to get out of petrol-guzzling cars and into using alternative fuels and public transport. This is not only good for the planet; it is good for our wallet and good for our physical health.

We need to protect forests around the world—such as the forests of the Amazon, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Carbon emissions are continuing to rise and countries around the world keep saying: ‘We won’t do anything unless other countries take action first.’ They are fiddling while the planet burns. It is as if we are living in a home where no-one does the dishes, no-one washes the clothes, no-one puts the garbage in a bin and no-one cleans the toilet, and everyone says that they will not do their bit until someone else does theirs. Pretty soon the house becomes a pigsty. This attitude also reminds me of the idea of a large boat with 100 canoeists all paddling towards Niagara Falls. At some point the canoeists realise that they are paddling towards Niagara Falls, but each one of them keeps on rowing, saying, ‘I’m not going to start rowing in the other direction until everyone else does.’

The carbon emissions reporting measure before the House is all about reporting emissions generated by the production of energy. But there are other significant sources of carbon emissions which also need to be considered in any debate of this kind. The areas of agriculture and forestry and the issue of soil carbon also warrant our attention. I know these areas are proving much more difficult to measure than energy based emissions, but they are important; and we need to do everything we can to get them involved and included.

Recently, the parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, which I have the honour of chairing, heard evidence in Darwin from the Charles Darwin University based Dr Russell-Smith, a senior member of the Tropical Savannas Management Cooperative Research Centre, concerning the problem of tropical savanna burning in the Northern Territory. Savanna fires are a massive source of carbon emissions in Northern Australia. They constitute half of the Northern Territory’s carbon emissions. Depending on the extent of the fire season, they constitute between one and three per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions in any given year. In 2002, 28 per cent of the whole of the Northern Territory was burnt. Dr Russell-Smith said:

... I should point out that the Kyoto Protocol gives us a marvellous opportunity to address a very significant land and economic issue in Northern Australia, which probably does not pertain as greatly to southern Australia. I would like to at least leave with you the importance of the protocol and where it leads us.

Dr Russell-Smith said that moving away from late, dry season fires of high intensity towards early dry season low-intensity burns cuts carbon emissions in half—a 48 per cent reduction to be precise. Dr Russell-Smith drew to the committee’s attention the West Arnhem Land Fire Abatement project. This project is funded by ConocoPhillips, under a contractual agreement of 2005 with the Northern Territory government, to have Indigenous landowners in Arnhem Land manage the fire regime. This project gives a win-win-win or a triple bottom line benefit. There are Indigenous jobs, the unique wildlife of the area is better protected from fire, and carbon emissions are slashed. It is an excellent project and we need more of it.

One point which Dr Russell-Smith made, which I think the House might benefit from, was to point out the difference between sequestration in forestry projects, under the Kyoto protocol, and agricultural emissions abatement, including things like savanna burning. With the forestry projects it is the sequestration of carbon into the living biomass above and below ground that is being accounted for. With savanna burning it is actually management against a baseline. You basically have to demonstrate the preproject level of fire extent in that landscape for, say, the 10 years prior to the project and then you can calculate the emissions. You manage against that baseline. The credits you get are against that baseline.

In the West Arnhem Land project, if we reduced the amount of emissions from 40 per cent, of which 32 per cent were late dry season, to 30 per cent or 25 per cent, we would get a very big emissions abatement. It is a quite different approach from sequestration and it can be measured year by year. It seems to me from this evidence that the measurement model for savanna burning is sufficiently sophisticated and advanced for it to be considered as part of the carbon pollution reduction scheme presently under development by the government.

There is also the issue of forestry and forests as a potential low-cost form of carbon abatement. One of the attractions of looking closely at forestry, agriculture and soil carbon is the potential to bring together a number of important social and environmental goals which have missed out over the years by not having an economic value assigned to them. Problems of climate change, salinity, running out of water, declining biodiversity, species extinctions and lack of Indigenous jobs all tend to be considered as separate problems and, while money does get thrown at them and an endeavour is made from time to time, one cannot help but think that our land management outcomes would be much better than they have been if we put all the issues together and assigned a proper economic value to them.

Recently I met with Rob Youl and Matthew Reddy from the Landcare CarbonSMART project. Landcare is a terrific project and Mr Youl and Mr Reddy are seeking to have it play a role in tackling climate change and indeed to find ways of rewarding landholders who act to tackle climate change. Their efforts should be applauded. They did draw my attention to the existence of some risks in some of the carbon offset programs which are currently being marketed. In particular, the idea of forward loading is a problem—people paying for the planting of a certain number of trees then claiming a carbon credit on the basis that those trees are going to grow pretty much indefinitely. Such claims are not verified and may well turn out to be wrong. Seedlings can die; they can be destroyed by fire and so on. These schemes lend themselves to fraud and double counting and they reduce the credibility of forestry offsets. Landcare CarbonSMART believes that the practice of forward loading should be banned and that carbon credits should be based on year-on-year outcomes against established baselines, much like the evidence that the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties heard in relation to savanna burning.

This bill will amend the administration of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act and make modifications to what information can be published by the government under the act. The act has established a national mandatory corporate reporting system for, and dissemination of information related to, greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption and production. The reporting obligations under the act will lay the foundation for the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme which will be introduced in 2010 and they will also assist the government to meet Australia’s international reporting requirements.

I think that most corporations want and need to be able to play their part in the effort to reduce our greenhouse emissions, and the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System will provide a framework for them to better understand their greenhouse gas emissions and energy use profile. The system will provide the government with a better understanding of corporate greenhouse gas emissions and energy use to target efficient action to address climate change. This knowledge is fundamental to identifying effective ways to manage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Many leading Australian businesses are already there and many of them have been there for years. They have realised that this is coming and they have been taking action to measure and manage and report their greenhouse gas emissions. Data collected by the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System will facilitate policy making on greenhouse and energy issues. The data will be available to state and territory governments and to the Australian public to inform effective climate change action at all levels in Australia.

An important goal of the system is to eliminate the duplication of industry reporting requirements under what is an existing patchwork of state, territory and Commonwealth greenhouse gas and energy programs. It provides a repository for data which may potentially serve the needs of all Australian governments. The government is working with the states and territories through the Council of Australian Governments to identify opportunities for streamlining national reporting requirements via this system.

The amendments set out in the bill are for the most part administrative amendments to improve the functions of the act. They do not impose any new regulatory burdens on industry, nor do they have a budgetary impact. In some cases the amendments are required to better reflect the original policy intent behind the act when it was introduced. In other cases the administrative amendments will increase flexibility for business to comply with the act.

This is an important reform. It will provide the government with a solid platform for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. I believe that there are enormous economic opportunities from responding to climate change and that we as a community must invest in a response to climate change so that we are prepared for the future and prepared to confront it as an economic challenge. And responding to it is all about economic responsibility. Unfortunately, as I indicated yesterday, those opposite are not willing to deal with this in an economically responsible way. They continue to look for a political angle to exploit rather than real policy solutions.

This is a government which has a comprehensive plan, in the tradition of reformist Labor governments, to genuinely address the issue of climate change. I said yesterday in the House—I have said it before and I will say it again—that global warming is the great challenge of our time. It is the ‘what did you do during the war?’ question that our children and grandchildren will ask of us. The national greenhouse emissions reporting scheme is a step in the right direction and I commend the bill to the House.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Leader of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Amendment Bill 2008 today. The bill will make amendments to the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act, which was put in place by the coalition government last year. These amendments will simplify the reporting requirements of corporations and cut red tape by simplifying the regulatory burden and increasing the flexibility associated with the registration of corporations under the act by confirming that the obligations of a registered corporation to comply with an external audit extends also to the corporation’s group and clarifying the provisions relating to the reporting of greenhouse gas projects and offsets of emissions.

This bill also gives greater power under the act for the government to make mandatory and separate public disclosure of direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions and confirms the ability of the minister to specify conditions for the use of alternative methods to calculate greenhouse gas emissions and allow publication of information relating to those methods.

Debating this bill provides an opportunity to examine what the current government is doing in relation to the planned emissions trading scheme. As members would be aware, the coalition has a strong record in relation to an emissions trading scheme. Indeed, the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act, which was put in place last year, provided the platform for the introduction of an ETS. The reporting system that was put in place by the act was formulated after extensive consultation with stakeholders. This is an important point because having open discussions between government, industry and the community is vital to the success of any emissions trading scheme.

However, since it was elected to power last November the Rudd government has displayed a concerning pattern of behaviour. Across a range of portfolios there are numerous examples where Rudd government rhetoric is not being matched by its actions. In fact, in many cases the actions of this government directly contradict its rhetoric. This is causing tremendous uncertainty for many Australians and is further undermining business confidence, which we are all aware has collapsed since this government came to office. In challenging economic times, people turn to their national government seeking certainty, seeking reassurance and seeking leadership. It is a sad reality that the current government is failing to deliver in these critical areas. Indeed, the Prime Minister is relying on spin and hollow rhetoric in order to ignore the substance which is necessary in key areas of policy. The Rudd government’s approach to the environment is a perfect example of this. On the surface we see the Prime Minister prancing around the world stage, extolling the virtues of addressing climate change. According to the Prime Minister, the world is on the precipice of an Armageddon because of greenhouse gas emissions. Anyone who questions the PM’s position is derided as a denier, a sceptic who has their head stuck in the sand. But when you look past the Rudd government rhetoric on the environment, a different picture emerges.

For example, one of the solutions to reducing the CO2 emissions from households is the adoption of solar technology. Prior to the election, Kevin Rudd travelled the country talking about the merits of solar power. Encouraging more Australians to adopt solar technology was a more sustainable way to deliver clean energy to households than coal or other alternatives, said the Prime Minister. Yet behind all the hot air there was precious little substance, because on budget night in May this year the Rudd government announced that it would means-test the solar rebate. Quite clearly that rebate was not a matter of social security; it was designed to engender a course of action to encourage households to take up solar energy. But what does means-testing it for families earning over $100,000 a year do? Is that going to increase our take-up of solar energy and solar technology? Is that going to buttress our response to climate change? Quite clearly it is not. The introduction of the means test shows the hypocrisy of this government. On the one hand it will tell you that solar power is the solution, whilst on the other hand incentives are only available for families that earn less than $100,000 per year. This is classic spin from the Prime Minister. When you look at his government, it is important that one does not listen to what it says but rather looks at what it does.

Across the environment portfolio there are other examples of hypocrisy. For example, this government has scrapped the Community Water Grants program, which provided almost 8,000 community groups, including many schools, with grants to improve water efficiency. The $200 million program set up by the Howard government provided grants of up to $50,000 to community groups to help them save water through projects such as harvesting rain or stormwater. It was a very popular program and it reflected the desire of Australians to better manage such a vital resource. So what did the Rudd government do once it was elected? It trumpeted the need for better water efficiency and then it closed down the Community Water Grants program. There are other examples where this government’s rhetoric on the environment is not being matched by its actions. Cuts to Landcare funding are another example of the Rudd government failing to deliver improved environmental outcomes.

It is against this backdrop that Australians are starting to get very concerned about the Rudd government’s rushed introduction of an emissions trading scheme. Australians are quite comfortable about the introduction of an ETS but they want the government to get it right. They are depending on their government to get it right. It is important that an ETS does not simply move jobs offshore. It is important that an ETS does not simply redistribute the carbon load, as it were, to another country. We have to have a scheme that works, not a scheme that is founded only on rhetoric.

It is essential that pensioners and families are not unfairly burdened with substantial increases in the cost of living. I know that in my electorate of Cowper there are many pensioners who are genuinely concerned about the haste with which the Prime Minister is seeking to introduce an emissions trading scheme. They are acutely aware that the government is trying to spin the line that an ETS can be introduced without having a detrimental impact on low-income families. They are also aware that the Rudd government has this propensity to say one thing and then do another. And all the signs are there that the introduction of an ETS will be no exception.

Look behind the gloss of the ETS green paper and there are some worrying signs. For example, the Rudd government plan to introduce a new tax on petrol but they have delayed its introduction to after the next election. Also, if you look at the issue of LPG, the cleanest version of fuel that is going to run our cars, it is going to be hit with a brand-new tax. What is the logic in imposing a new tax on a cleaner fuel? It defies logic—it really does.

The introduction of a carbon tax will also push up the price of virtually all consumer goods. Electricity, groceries and other consumables will rise under the Rudd government’s emissions trading scheme. This is in stark contradiction to the rhetoric used by Kevin Rudd, who went to the election last year leading Australians to believe that he was going to deliver cheaper petrol and cheaper groceries. And what did we get? We got Fuelwatch, hardly a leading light in policy formulation, and we got GROCERYchoice, derided by the entire grocery industry as nothing but a farce.

Despite the hip-pocket assault on Australians, the Prime Minister has refused to explain who will be compensated for the extra cost-of-living pressures and by how much. The government have adopted a very underhanded approach to the whole consultation process. They have released a green paper and announced that they will be consulting with stakeholders, but they have refused to release the modelling upon which the emissions trading scheme is based. It is beyond belief that industry and consumer groups are expected to finalise their submissions when the government have not released the modelling upon which the emissions trading scheme is based.

The ETS represents one of the biggest structural changes in Australia’s history. A decision to introduce an ETS should not be taken lightly and requires proper consultation and consideration by all Australians. That is why the coalition believes that government should take its time to get the detail right and look towards introducing a scheme by 2012. Australia runs the risk of paying a very high price for the hasty introduction of a scheme in 2010. What is the magic in a 2010 start date? Is it written in stone somewhere that we have not seen? Why does the date have to be 2010? Why do we have to throw caution to the wind in order to get a start-up date of 2010?

Australians know that the coalition is better able than Labor to run an economy and better able to implement an emissions trading scheme which does not harm that economy. Harming the economy will reduce the standard of living of the present generation of Australians and future generations of Australians while not providing a meaningful reduction in the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. It is vital to the Australian economy that we do not get too far ahead of the rest of the world. We need to play our part, we need to be part of an international effort, but we as a nation cannot stand alone. Mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions can only occur if there is a truly global response. The size of emissions reductions in Australia should be influenced by international developments and in particular the evolution of global emission reduction agreements which include all of the large emitters, such as China, the USA, India and the European Union.

The Rudd government seems intent on setting an emissions target that ignores what the rest of the world does. This means that Australia could bear a disproportionate burden of reducing the world’s emissions, and this could significantly reduce our leverage in international discussions. The government’s ETS needs to deal better with uncertainty. The effect of the ETS on prices, inflation and compensation needs will fluctuate on a daily basis. The government has not made it clear what will happen if it designs a compensation regime at a carbon price of $20 per tonne, for example, and the cost of carbon rises, as it invariably will. Would low-income families fail to be compensated by an increase in the carbon price? Will they just have to bear that cost? We just do not know what the government is planning there. With global inflationary pressures being felt, it is vital that the implementation of an ETS is managed carefully so as not to increase inflation and inflationary expectations with the result of higher interest rates. So it is important that the government takes its time to get the structure and detail of an ETS right.

To return to the intention of this bill, the coalition supports these amendments because they build on what the Howard government put in place. When it comes to an ETS and the emission of greenhouse gases, the coalition is committed to striking a balance which recognises the environmental challenges of our time but respects the need to get the detail right. The Rudd government in this case seems to present the ETS as some form of magic pudding—a magic pudding where everybody benefits and nobody seems to pay, where everybody is compensated but no-one foots the bill except for governments and corporations. And that is far from the truth. The cost of carbon emissions will be borne by the whole of the Australian economy—every company, every government department and every individual consumer. The Rudd government has to take the time to get an ETS correct so that it does the least damage to our economy whilst achieving the environmental outcomes that are required.

It was interesting to note an interview on ABC radio where Paul Howes, the National Secretary of the AWU, raised his concerns. He is hardly typically a supporter of the conservative side of government. He said:

If Ross Garnaut was implemented without any amendments then I would see large proportions of trade-exposed industries in a state like South Australia going offshore, particularly industries like LNG, oil and gas, and cement. You’ve got severe impacts on the Whyalla steelworks, and I think a lot of people in the community don’t understand that what we’ll be actually doing is just closing industries for good, but actually closing these industries and they will be reopening overseas. The level of greenhouse gases will still be being pumped into the sky.

It is an important decision for Australia. The government needs to get that decision right. It should not be rushing to complete an ETS by 2010. Such haste is not in the best interests of Australia. I commend the bill to the House.

Belinda Neal (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Amendment Bill 2008. The bill provides amendments to the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007. This Australian government is committed to reducing greenhouse emissions, which is quite contrary to the intentions of the previous government. This bill is a further step in the Rudd government’s commitment to addressing climate change.

In the electorate of Robertson, which I have the pleasure to represent, climate change is a real and important issue. Located between the Brisbane Water and the South Pacific Ocean, Robertson’s rapidly growing population lives close to the problems of climate change. The coastal environment of the Central Coast is fragile and under increasing population pressure. Residents there will be among the first to be affected by climate change. Coastal erosion and rising sea levels are just two of the consequences that will bring the reality of climate change home to the residents of my electorate. In Robertson, climate change is not just some esoteric, academic argument, as we sometimes have about these sorts of issues. It is very real and it has the potential to have an impact on the lives of my constituents. So it is vital that the Rudd Labor government continue to take bold action on climate change.

The other day I had the pleasure of addressing Broken Bay’s community organisation. Broken Bay is a little enclave community along the border of the Brisbane Water. It only entails about 600 houses but, on a rough calculation, I think we worked out that with a one-metre rise in the water approximately two-thirds of those houses would be underwater. So you can see that this issue very much has their attention.

In meeting the challenges of climate change, it is important to look at measures such as we have today. Robust, accurate and reliable data is essential to achieving this goal in the most efficient and effective way. The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System, NGERS, will collect data across the Australian economy which will form the basis of the emissions trading scheme and provide better information to the public. The first reporting period under the system commenced on 1 July 2008. NGERS establishes the framework for mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions, energy production and consumption by industry. Corporations which exceed certain thresholds are required to apply to register under the system by 31 August 2009 and to provide data concerning these emissions and energy use commencing in the 2008-09 financial year. The first corporation reports by industry are due by 31 October 2009. The original act established a national mandatory corporate reporting system and dissemination of information relating to greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption and production.

I noted the comments of the previous speaker, who said that what we should be doing is delaying. My view is quite the contrary; we have delayed enough. It is time, after careful thought and consideration, to proceed to take action and not wait another two years or another two years after that, or whatever delaying tactic is put forward by this opposition.

The reporting obligations under the act are intended to lay the foundations for the proposed national emissions trading scheme due to be introduced in 2010. One of the objects of the act was to introduce a single national framework to underpin the introduction of the emissions trading scheme in the future. Both the Garnaut climate change review and the carbon pollution reduction scheme green paper state that, although the National Greenhouse Energy Reporting Scheme will be the basis for the carbon emissions scheme, it will need to be strengthened to support the special financial importance attached to the emissions reported under the scheme.

The bill before the House brings that strength to the original act and makes significant and essential enhancements to it. The act requires mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and energy data by large corporations. The bill expands the amount of corporate information which will be published by the government. In other respects, the bill is consistent with existing policy. In some cases, the amendments are to ensure the act better reflects the original policy intent. The bill imposes no regulatory burden on industry beyond that originally intended by the act, and the measures will not have a budgetary impact on the government.

There are a range of specific enhancements to the act that are contained in the bill. They will make mandatory the separate disclosure of direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions. The bill will allow the minister to specify conditions, rating systems and the particular rating for the use of alternative methods to measure greenhouse gas emissions. The bill will allow publication of information relating to those methods of measurement where the use of those methods satisfies the conditions. The bill will extend the obligation to comply with an external audit to members of a registered corporations group. The bill will also amend provisions relating to reporting requirements.

The NGERS will eliminate industry reporting requirements that are currently duplicated under a patchwork of existing state, territory and Commonwealth greenhouse gas and energy programs. It will allow more flexible and streamlined methods by which corporations must publicly disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and energy use and the methods used by the corporation to calculate those emissions and uses.

The bill will also provide some clarifications about what can be publicly disclosed, including: allowing the publication of data according to a corporation’s business units; confirming that totals may, in certain cases, be published as falling between a specified range of values to avoid revealing trade secrets or commercially sensitive information; and allowing publication of information relating to emissions offsets undertaken either by the corporation or by other entities on its behalf.

This last provision will allow offsets to be reported separately from greenhouse gas projects. Just to be clear about this point: currently the act only allows offsets to be reported if they arise from a project carried out by the corporation reporting. This would exclude the possibility of reporting offsets created by the activities of a different corporation—for example, where an airline is offsetting its emissions via the planting of trees or other activities undertaken by a third party. Corporations can apply to have information withheld from publication if it reveals trade secrets or commercially sensitive information. This measure will be expanded to cover the new matters which are subject to publication.

The bill will allow the minister to specify conditions for methods of measuring greenhouse gas emissions and energy and to specify a rating system for such methods. Any reports made in future will need to meet any such conditions. The bill will make a number of amendments to the provisions dealing with the registration of corporations. The effect of these amendments will be to allow the making of simpler regulations for applications for registration.

The bill makes a number of other clarifications. These are quite minor and include: ensuring that members of a controlling corporation’s group comply with an external audit, confirming that ‘penalty unit’ has the same meaning as that imposed by the Crimes Act and ensuring that a contractor to a member of a controlling corporation’s group report their emissions directly to the government.

The bill also allows the Greenhouse and Energy Data Officer, a statutory official under the act, to delegate their powers under regulations. The enhanced reporting system in this bill will streamline the existing greenhouse emissions and energy reporting requirements on businesses across Australia. As well as making these requirements more transparent and easier to follow for the businesses concerned, the amendments within the bill will provide greater public access to the methods by which business calculates emissions and energy use. They will also allow greater public access to information about important changes in Australia’s response to climate change.

Most significantly, the amendments will replace a patchwork of existing greenhouse emissions and energy use requirements currently in force across Australia. This will ensure that consistent, reliable and readily comparable data on emissions is available to the users, the regulators and the public at large. In this way, the Rudd Labor government is further ensuring that Australia can move forward in its commitment to reducing greenhouse emissions. Corporations will benefit from a greater public understanding of how their emissions profile is composed rather than from the publication of a single total.

The bill also allows corporations to disclose to the public the methods used to measure their emissions and for the accuracy rating of methods to be disclosed publicly. This will lead to far greater transparency concerning the accuracy and reliability of data published. The bill makes the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System simpler to administer and also more effective. It will provide clarity for industry and greater public access to information. I am very thrilled to be part of this government which is taking action on climate change and on reducing greenhouse emissions.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Amendment Bill 2008. The bill makes minor administrative amendments to the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act, which was introduced of course by the coalition government last year. The aim of the amendments is to simplify the reporting requirements of corporations by reducing red tape, by simplifying the regulatory burden and by increasing flexibility associated with the registration of corporations under the act, confirming that the obligations of a registered corporation to comply with an external audit extend also to the corporation’s group and clarifying the provisions relating to the reporting of greenhouse gas projects and the offsets of emissions.

The bill also gives greater power under the act for the government to make mandatory the separate public disclosure of the record of direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions. It confirms the ability of the minister to specify conditions for the use of alternative methods to calculate greenhouse gas emissions and allows publication of information relating to those methods. The opposition supports these changes to a bill that we introduced while in government as part of the framework required to eventually introduce an emissions trading scheme.

It is worth while pondering the coalition’s record on climate change because, contrary to Labor Party rhetoric and some opinion, the coalition’s record is exceptionally strong. We established the first greenhouse office in the world. Over the past 11 years Australia has reduced its greenhouse gases by over 85 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, allowing Australia to be one of only two countries, out of 178 states, to meet its Kyoto targets. We led and funded a global initiative on forests and climate. We introduced the renewable energy development fund to support emerging technologies. We provided enormous support for individuals and community groups, taking action through programs and initiatives such as the solar rebate, Solar Cities, the solar hot water rebate, community water grants and Green Vouchers for Schools.

We believe that we need to give the planet the benefit of the doubt. We are committed to an ETS, informed by the Copenhagen meetings at the end of 2009, with a start date no earlier than 2012, with a low and slow trajectory that does not leave our industry open to neglect, disempowerment and indeed destruction. The opposition supports a sensible, well-thought-through, timely ETS. However, we as a parliament should learn from the mixed results coming out of the European Union’s experience with an ETS and should acknowledge the consequences of rushing an ETS and not getting it right. The European Union’s emissions trading system is the largest multinational emissions trading scheme in the world. It is a major pillar of EU climate policy. The ETS currently covers more than 10,000 installations in the energy and industrial sectors, which are collectively responsible for close to half of the EU’s emissions of CO2 and for 40 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions, including methane and nitrous oxide.

The British think tank, Open Europe, says the following when reflecting upon the European ETS experience:

The first phase of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which ran from 2005 to 2007 was a failure. Huge over-allocation of permits to pollute led to a collapse in the price of carbon from a start point of €33 to just 20 cents per tonne, meaning that the system did not reduce emissions at all.

Worse still, since some countries, such as the UK, had set tough quotas on emissions and others had set lax targets, the system acted as a wealth transfer mechanism—effectively subsidising polluters in states which were making little effort by taxing states with more stringent allocations. Overall there are about six per cent more permits than pollution. The UK has to buy more than 22 million tonnes worth of permits a year, whilst firms in France and Germany can sell off a surplus of around 28 and 23 million tonnes respectively.

Finally, in phase one, the ETS was not a real market. Instead of auctioning off permits to pollute, member states allocated them to companies free of charge, based on how many the government believed they needed. This created severe distortions. Large companies which lobbied for more permits than they needed were able to sell them at a profit. Other institutions, particularly smaller institutions like hospital trusts, proved less effective at lobbying. They got too few permits, and therefore had to pay into the system. As the cross-party Commons Environmental Audit Committee noted:

There is little or no evidence that phase one is leading to any cutbacks in actual emissions at all, whether in the UK or elsewhere in the EU.

In its first year of operation, from 2005 to 2006, emissions covered by the ETS rose 3.6 per cent in the UK and rose by 0.8 per cent across the EU as a whole. What is the European experience that—heaven forbid—this Labor administration could actually learn from? Emissions have not decreased; they have increased, and permits have begun to be a cash cow. This is one example of an ETS put in too fast without the proper rigour or intellectual exercise made to put it in properly.

We support in principle a national carbon emissions trading system. However, there can be either an effective or, as the European experience shows, an ineffective system, depending on the competency and sensitivity of the implementing government. An ineffective system can perversely damage the clean energy sector while also punishing mums and dads with a petrol tax and a grocery tax. Sadly, both of those flaws are precisely what the Rudd government is proposing, making its system an ineffective one, delivering pain without any gain.

A decision to introduce an ETS should therefore not be taken lightly. It requires proper consultation and consideration by all Australians. We must work collectively to preserve our environment. However, we must guard against those who would act in such rash haste that they would export both Australian emissions and jobs overseas—particularly to countries with lower environmental standards. We want to build the Australian economy; we do not want to build the Chinese one. With the recent release of its green paper on emissions trading, setting a start date of 2010, it has become apparent that the Rudd government is intent on rushing into a scheme that has the potential to seriously damage Australia’s economy.

As this government races towards implementing an ETS in 2010 as another symbol, the clean-driving LPG sector is at substantial risk of being the first and highest taxed fuel because, frankly, the Labor government forgot to consider it. The clean-burning LNG sector is facing doubts about investment and jobs, and therefore its ability to reduce emissions in China and India, because the government has not thought through its new tax as it pertains to LNG. Gas is a vital transitional fuel. It is a very clean fuel—much cleaner than burning coal. Every shipment of LNG that leaves Australian shores for parts of the world like China or Japan reduces greenhouse gas emissions in those countries and, therefore, benefits the wider world community.

The poorly designed, rushed emissions trading scheme being prepared by Mr Rudd is going to put this investment—billions of dollars of investment and thousands of job—at grave risk, on top of the already incompetent moves to try and prepare a new tax on the condensate field without announcing to the Australian people that the government was intending to do so. It is not a good move for our economy and it is not a good move for the environment. If we put a heavy carbon tax on the LNG industry that is not matched by a similar carbon tax in areas such as the Gulf and countries such as Nigeria and Indonesia and other countries with which we compete, then we will see investment move away from Australia in the LNG sector. The consequence will be quite catastrophic for this industry sector, with fewer jobs and less economic activity in Australia—but we will have the same amount of emissions just going up into the sky from another location. So this emissions trading scheme has the potential to do great harm to the Australian economy if it is not designed well. It has to be designed in a way that is both economically responsible and environmentally effective—and, so far, the Rudd government’s plan is showing itself to be neither.

The solar panel sector is a good example of a sector in freefall, and the government has continued to ignore the damage it has caused with a mean-spirited solar rebate means test. Before the election, you could not spot various shadow ministers without a solar panel strapped to their backs—including the member for Kingsford Smith. But the first thing the member did when he came in was to remove any incentive for a solar panel industry to grow and expand within the Australian economy.

Industry, farmers and the community are being forced to make decisions before the government even releases its economic modelling. This begs the question: on what basis are these decisions being made and on what basis are the submissions to be informed? It is patently ridiculous and, as we can see from the LNG sector, it potentially signals disastrous consequences.

The coalition’s policy is that we cannot risk getting the ETS wrong by rushing it simply to meet an arbitrary political timetable set by the Prime Minister ahead of the election. We believed, based on the best advice available to us then, and still now, that a scheme could not responsibly be put in place before 2011—and probably by 2012—though it should not be constrained by time to ensure it is implemented properly. By that time, industry will have had a chance to properly respond to and prepare for the changes that will be required. It goes without saying that it would be incredibly helpful if the Rudd Labor government would release the economic modelling on which Treasury based many of its forecasts. Keeping in mind that an ETS is not a silver bullet, it needs to be implemented in line with a range of other technologies, processes and procedures that include clean coal and a move towards more reliant fuels.

With respect to solar panels, may I urgently say in the House that the Rudd Labor government must remove the means test on the solar rebate. Despite the minister for the environment’s claims of overheating in the scheme, I can relay to the House the experience of a solar panel provider in my electorate of Fadden, Ecotech, headed by Paul McLoughlin. The move to means test the solar rebate has meant business by the firm has dropped by over 50 per cent, with the resultant reduction in staff numbers. Whilst the Deputy Prime Minister could not bring herself to announce what she knew, it has already been announced in the Labor budget that 134,000 jobs will go this financial year because of its economic negligence, and moves which take away the rebate in the solar industry only exacerbate the problem that already exists. The means test makes a mockery of the need for clean energy—an absolute, total, complete mockery. I demand that the government reassess its view. Industry demands it. Small businesses that make a living from this demand that they take away the means test that is stripping the solar industry away from the Gold Coast and hurting companies like Ecotech that have led the way in cleaner, greener energy.

The Rudd Labor government has failed to deliver real benefits to the renewable energy sector, such as solar and geothermal energy, by failing to adequately budget for and support initiatives that encourage Australians to take up clean energy sources. Whilst the government’s small changes within the bill are acceptable and supported, it is important that the House acknowledges that the government’s ill-conceived rush to an ETS, based on a political imperative and motive without proper thought-through policy and economic frameworks, is propelling our nation towards a degree of economic disaster.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am glad the member for Fadden finally realised what bill he was actually talking to and remembered that the government bill before the House is being supported by the opposition. Indeed, we are amending an act that was introduced by the Howard government in its last term of parliament. I suppose the one good thing is that when the ETS legislation is introduced he will already have his speech to give, because he has just given it now.

It has been quite interesting listening to this debate. The opposition members have not talked about the substance of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Amendment Bill 2008 or come to the realisation they are actually in support of the changes to their initial act. As I said, it will save them all a lot of time when they finally get around to the ETS legislation. I am glad they are thinking about it, because for 12 years they did not think about it, and that is why there is a need for urgency. That is why there is a need for a rush—because of the inertia on this issue. This issue is too great for us to play politics with. The thing that the opposition has not realised is that the public out there are saying, ‘Please stop playing politics with this. It is about our environment. It is about our future.’ For most people it is about their kids and their grandkids, and they want to see us all come together and do something rational about it.

Professor Barry Brook is the Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change and the Director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Adelaide. After the Manning Clark House conference, he said:

The Manning Clark House Conference: Imagining the Real Life on a Greenhouse Earth is quite unusual for a climate change conference—perhaps unique.

... a representative cross-section of the views and perspectives of the wider community, who shared a common concern—the severity of the problem of global warming and the absolute urgency of the need to take action to avoid dangerous consequences. That is what makes this joint statement (approved at the conclusion of the meeting by the conference speakers and other participants) so powerful. When confronted with the immediacy of this issue and a realistic vision of possible futures under unmitigated carbon emissions, the consensus for a rapid societal response was overwhelming. There is no time to lose.

The joint statement from the conference reads:

Global warming is accelerating. The Arctic summer sea ice is expected to melt entirely within the next five years,—decades earlier than predicted in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report.

Scientists judge the risks to humanity of dangerous global warming to be high. The Great Barrier Reef faces devastation. Extreme weather events, such as storm surges adding to rising sea levels and threatening coastal cities, will become increasingly frequent.

There is a real danger that we have reached or will soon reach critical tipping points and the future will be taken out of our hands. The melting Arctic sea ice could be the first such tipping point.

Beyond 2ºC of warming, seemingly inevitable unless greenhouse gas reduction targets are tightened, we risk huge human and societal costs and perhaps even the effective end of industrial civilisation. We need to cease our assault on our own life support system, and that of millions of species. Global warming is only one of many symptoms of that assault.

Peak oil, global warming and long term sustainability pressures all require that we reduce energy needs and switch to alternative energy sources. Many credible studies show that Australia can quickly and cost-effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions through dramatic improvements in energy efficiency and by increasing our investment in solar, wind and other renewable sources.

The need for action is extremely urgent and our window of opportunity for avoiding severe impacts is rapidly closing. Yet the obstacles to change are not technical or economic, they are political and social.

We know democratic societies have responded successfully to dire and immediate threats, as was demonstrated in World War II. This is a last call for an effective response to global warming.

[Approved by the delegates of the conference, 12 June 2008]

That is why we need to take urgent action and that is why this bill is before the House today—to make amendments to an act which was, as I said, introduced by the previous government, to make amendments to the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Amendment Act, because we need that reporting and data to start a system. We need to collect the data so people can understand.

The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System will collect robust and comparable data across the Australian economy which will underpin the emissions trading scheme and provide better information to the public. We need to have that data. It is one of those ‘tipping points’, as it keeps being described in the terminology of climate change, so that is why this bill is so important.

The bill amends certain things. It will expand the number of items which can be published relating to a corporation’s greenhouse gas emissions and energy use, including separate public disclosure of direct and indirect emissions. There are some very good schemes already being undertaken by socially responsible companies who are doing great trade-offs, and they should have the ability to have those schemes reported.

The bill will also provide some clarification about what can be publicly disclosed, including allowing publication of data according to a corporation’s business unit confirming that totals may be published as falling between a specified range of values, in cases, to avoid revealing trade secrets or commercially sensitive information allowing publication of information relating to offsets. People want to know this information. People are actually looking for this in the area of investment and also in the area of purchasing power. Corporations can apply to have information withheld from the public if it would reveal trade secrets or commercially sensitive information. This will be expanded to cover the new matters which are subject to publication.

The bill will allow offsets to be reported separately from greenhouse gas projects. Currently the act only allows offsets to be reported if they arise from a project carried out by the corporation. This will include the possibility of reporting offsets created by other activities that we have already seen corporations doing.

Why do we need this information? Why do we need this data? One of the things disclosed in the bill is information that the public needs. But I have discovered that our schoolchildren do not need this information. On this issue they are among the most well-informed people I have come across. I would like to read from one of the letters I have received from a grade 5 student at Our Lady’s Primary School in Wattle Park. All of the grade 5s wrote to me. There were some fantastic letters, but this one is a standout. They were all terrific, but Annabelle’s was quite amazing:

Dear Ms Burke,

This term, my class has been learning about energy and power.

Energy is vital. We use it in everyday living. We have a big problem though. We use power so much and most of our energy comes from burning coal that we are having a really bad impact on our environment. We also need to use our cars less. If we don’t do something now, we may have some trouble in the future. Each household releases 200,000 black balloons per year, each black balloon contains 50 grams of greenhouse gas, so each household produces 10,000,000 (ten million) grams of greenhouse gas each year, but just think about it, that’s only one household!

After thinking about what might happen to our world, I have thought of some ways to conserve energy and to make our future better. I think that at least more than 5 schools in Whitehorse should have some sort of renewable energy source. Any source would be fine but my preferred energy source is biomass because it’s doing a few things at once. It’s reducing the amount of waste and greenhouse gas. Biomass energy is made from landfill. They use things like manure, wood, seaweed, plants, food scraps and rubbish. When we throw rubbish away, at one stage it will be put somewhere and begin to rot. It’s known as landfill. As the rubbish begins to rot, it creates a gas. Normally, this gas would just seep into the ground and out into the atmosphere, causing global warming, but biomass reduces that. It is still being fully developed so we might have to use another energy source.

We could have another earth hour, it will reduce some greenhouse gas. We need to do everything we can to save the environment or the following might happen:

• Antarctica is melting and so are the glaciers, which will make our sea level rise and cause floods.
• We won’t get enough rain and all our crops and animals will die which will be hard for farmers.
• Our climate will change.
• San Francisco will sink.
• Essential things will run out like coal, oil and gas.
• Some animals may die out (extinct).

So please, I hope you can be more environmentally aware and help people realize that we need to be more aware about the environment and conserve energy.

I hope you can do some more about our terrible effect on our environment.

Please do something!

I hope you can write back soon!

Keep up the good work! You’re doing really well!

Yours sincerely,

Annabelle ...

11 years of age, grade 5

Student at Our Lady’s Wattle Park

It is pretty remarkable that an 11-year-old at Wattle Park understands this concept better than most of the members of the opposition do. There is another terrific letter, from Isobel. Her father is involved with a steel company and he came and spoke to the class about environmentally friendly products. There is a letter from Laura. There is a letter from Jonathan. There is a letter from someone who, sadly, did not sign his name. There is a letter from Kate.

I went to visit the grade 5s at Our Lady’s Primary School in Wattle Park and we had one of the most enlightened discussions I have ever had about climate change and environmental issues. They wanted to know more information. One of the sad parts, though, was at the end, when the teacher told me that some of the kids are having nightmares about this issue. They are having scary dreams and thoughts about what their world will be like if we politicians do not address the problem of climate change. Reading this information frightens some of the kids so much that ‘we’re trying to tone it down a bit’. I thought that was just terrible.

The grade 5s at Our Lady’s Primary and many other schools in my electorate are doing some of the best work on sustainability and dealing with the impact on the environment of the way we live our lives. It is a testament to what we can do by providing information and by learning from our children. I had a great day with them and I want to thank them for bringing their concerns to my attention. But I do not want to have 11-year-olds being scared about their future. I want to introduce legislation such as the legislation we have before the House and do something about it. I do not want to be terrified of going into the breach. If we do not go into the breach, what are we leaving our children and grandchildren?

I had the pleasure recently of visiting the Monash Sustainability Institute, which is in my electorate of Chisholm. The Monash Sustainability Institute is a terrific organisation. If anybody gets the chance, I would really recommend they go down and have a look at the institute and the school education unit. The Monash Sustainability Institute delivers solutions to sustainability challenges through research, education and action. For government, business and community organisations, the MSI is a gateway to the extensive and varied expertise in sustainability research and practice across Monash’s faculties and research institutes.

In the early 1970s, Monash University was among the first universities in Australia to begin research on environmental issues. Building on this history, the MSI brings together sustainability researchers and practitioners from across Monash and beyond to work together to promote sustainable practice by individuals, organisations and communities.

The MSI is a multidisciplinary, cross-faculty institute that coordinates, strategically guides and represents the wealth of sustainability expertise in Monash’s faculties and research centres. The three core functions of the MSI are research, education and action. They really want to put those things into place. They want to coordinate cutting-edge, cross-disciplinary research on today’s sustainability challenges. They want to educate individuals and institutions in sustainability best practice. They have a terrific program which students do in addition to their actual course load. They electively undertake this program. This program has been given to students and corporations. I really recommend that people look it up and I encourage people to partake.

The MSI facilitates actions by individuals and organisations to embed sustainability into their future goals and present activities. The global challenges we face pay no heed to the boundaries between academic disciplines or between universities, governments and the community. Meeting the sustainability challenges of the 21st century requires new forms of collaboration and inquiry that encompass environmental, social and economic dimensions and that engage all relevant stakeholders. The MSI is committed to such an approach.

The MSI is directed by Professor David Griggs. Professor Griggs previously led the secretariat for the science working group of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was the joint winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, and was director of the Met Office Hadley Centre, the UK government’s official centre for climate change research.

So we have sitting in our midst one of the leading experts on climate change. He is leading this interdisciplinary group at Monash, which is working collaboratively with the CSIRO and with other universities across Australia on research into this area. The data that will be captured from the bill before the House will be a vital tool in the work they are doing at the sustainability centre, because they want to do more than research it; they want to put it into action.

One of the issues we discussed extensively at the MSI when I was there recently was the economics of this argument. I would have thought that the opposition got the concept of the economics of the argument, but they are not even talking about it. The MSI are concerned that we are not looking at the economics issue. I think we are, but they believe more needs to be done. In a paper they have provided to me they say:

Not only is climate change the pre-eminent environmental threat in the world today, it is also a major economic challenge. The 2006 Stern report on the Economics of Climate Change declares that climate change threatens to be the greatest and widest ranging market failure ever seen. Stern stated that, ‘our actions over the coming few decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century’. Since then the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released its Fourth Assessment Report, with projections that up to 250 million people may be short of water in Africa by 2020 and up to one billion may be short of water in Asia by the 2050s.

The paper goes on to put the case for greater modelling of the economic consequences of inaction on this issue. It notes that it is quite a difficult thing to do but that we need to get onto it. It talks about the Garnaut review and the nature of modelling that it undertook, saying the review acknowledged that:

The nature of the modelling undertaken by the Review does not allow for feedback of impacts from climate change in an internally consistent or integrated way. The domestic economic modelling framework is a traditional market model. It does not explicitly account for feedback from environmental changes to changes in economic factors or activity.

The paper says:

The Garnaut review is not the only modelling team to have struggled with these challenges. In the recent OECD Environmental Outlook for example, while economic and population growth are fed into the environmental models, the economic models themselves are run without feedback from environmental changes.

It then quotes this from the OECD Environmental Outlook:

The OECD Environmental Outlook … shows the impact of the global economy’s development on the physical world; i.e. the environment. It does not, however, reflect the environmental impact back on the economy. Failing to provide this fully integrated picture has two implications. First, the Baseline fails to reflect GDP loss from environmental damage, so GDP projections may be higher than justified. Second, since without that feedback environmental policy will always show a loss of GDP, there is a misleading implication that environmental policy always decreases welfare.

So one of these issues is about the modelling. The bill before the House today will provide the mechanisms to gather the data to look at which companies are putting out emissions and how much they are putting out. With that we can build the economic models to address issues that will have an impact on the businesses in our community. We need to make businesses understand that without these steps to reduce our carbon footprint they might not have an economic argument to run in the future because the business just will not be there. The environment is at risk but so is the economy. These things need to be taken into account and dealt with.

The MSI is looking at numerous projects, particularly brown coal, which in Victoria is a big issue. Coal in Victoria is so plentiful that we do not look at alternative energy sources. We need greater research, particularly into brown coal. There are fewer and fewer researchers who have experience in brown coal technology. We need to look at how we can utilise that energy source into the future without having a detrimental effect on our environment—if it can be done. The researchers at Monash believe they have solutions to the problem in respect of brown coal but that there is not enough attention being focused on it.

The MSI also wants to look at behavioural change to facilitate sustainability. At the end of the day, that is the greatest part of what we are going to be doing. The No. 1 issues my constituents in Chisholm write to me about are climate change and the environment. Currently I am on the end of a lot of emails about extending the train line from Huntingdale station to Monash University. They are being generated by the lovely university students at Monash University, and I strongly support them in this endeavour. Currently the train line ends at Huntingdale and you have to get a bus to Monash University, which is ridiculous. Monash University campus at Clayton is the largest university campus in Australia. Something like 40,000 people descend upon it every day. To get a bus from Huntingdale to Monash is virtually impossible. A bus arrives and gets full, the next bus arrives and gets full, and you cannot go anywhere.

So people are looking at ways and means of transport and the impact on the environment. Most of the students are saying to me, ‘We are trying not to take our cars to Monash.’ I confess, having been a student at Monash, that I drove there most days because getting there by public transport was a pain in the neck. The students are writing about their impact on the environment and are trying to switch their habits—trying to understand what behavioural changes we need to make to ensure that we are facilitating sustainability.

My constituents write that they are putting in water tanks and looking at solar panels. They are looking at things like their Bokashis. I hope everybody is going out and getting their Neco bags of fill so that they can reduce the waste that is going into their bin. I hope they are burying it in the garden—like I attempt to do. They are doing those things because they want to make their own personal change for our environment. People in my electorate are doing amazing things. The number of chook sheds and worm farms that have gone in is amazing. As I said, the schools are doing it too. So behavioural change is there. The community is leading the way and we as parliamentarians need to learn from the people we are representing. We need to pass the legislation before us today and introduce good systems so that we have a future environment and an economy to protect.

Kerry Rea (Bonner, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the House for giving me the opportunity to speak on this very important set of amendments that we have before us in the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Amendment Bill 2008. Before I illustrate some of the reasons why I particularly support these amendments, I say that it is a real privilege to be a member of a government and to stand in a parliament where these amendments are just one part of a very constructive and productive suite of policies that will address some of the very critical environmental issues that we not just as a nation but as a planet are facing today. The reality is that climate change exists. We have many people who are trying to divert the debate about how we actually manage and deal with the impacts of climate change, and there are still the sceptics who are trying to keep us all with our heads buried in the sand, hoping that we will pretend climate change is not there, that it will go away and that, if we do nothing, it will all be okay. But many in the community know that climate change is a reality, that we are facing severe environmental impacts because of the increase in greenhouse gas emissions and that as a community, as a society, we have an obligation to address this.

The reality is that we have to acknowledge not just the fact that climate change exists but our part in that—that human beings as a result of their attempt at progress, particularly over the last couple of hundred years, not only have increased greenhouse gas emissions but also have increased the rate of the greenhouse gas emissions that are occurring. We have accelerated the amount of emissions that are going into the atmosphere. We have to be responsible for dealing with those impacts, but we also have to look at the way that we as a community can reverse that trend. It is possible to slow down the emissions, to reverse the impact and to reverse the rate at which we are producing greenhouse gas emissions.

If we do not, the consequences are dire. Although many say that it is the doomsayers out there who are trying to frighten everybody into doing something, it is not the case. There are some very credible and well-respected organisations and individuals across the planet, and in particular here in Australia, who have looked closely at the science of climate change and come up with some quite alarming but very realistic facts. If we look, for example, at a report into climate change that was done by those very well respected national institutions, CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, neither of which would be considered to be organisations particularly alarmist or extreme in their views, they have come up with some interesting statistics that are important in the context of this legislation and debate. They are saying that the average Australian temperatures have increased by 0.9 degrees Celsius since 1950. The frequency of hot days and nights has increased and the frequency of cold days and nights has declined. Many people would not consider 0.9 degrees to be a significant amount but, when you look at it as an average increase across the planet and consider that when the planet was only five degrees cooler than it is now it was the ice age, it turns that seemingly very small figure into a rather large problem that we have to deal with. The scale of the increase in temperature is very important and one that we should worry about if we do nothing.

Since 1950 most of the eastern and south-western sides of Australia have experienced substantial rainfall decreases. The global sea level rose by around 17 centimetres during the 20th century and by around 10 centimetres from 1920 to 2000 at the Australian coastal sites that were monitored. As the member for Bonner, which is on the shores of Moreton Bay on the coastline of Brisbane in South-East Queensland, I can assure you that there are many people in my electorate and in electorates nearby who have real cause for concern when we talk about sea levels rising to that extent. The new projections for Australia’s climate indicate that, by 2030, temperatures will rise by about one degree over Australia—less in coastal areas and more in inland areas—and rainfall patterns will change. It is projected that there is a 60 to 70 per cent probability that climate change will decrease annual rainfall in southern and central Queensland and a 50 to 60 per cent probability of rainfall decline in northern Queensland.

Droughts are likely to become more frequent. Under the current criteria for drought, most of Australia will experience 20 per cent more time in drought by 2030 and eastern Australia may spend 40 per cent more time in drought by 2070. I am rising to speak on this legislation not just because I fundamentally believe that we need to deal with environmental impacts and improve the way in which we address environmental issues but also because I directly represent an area of the planet—namely, South-East Queensland—which on these figures is facing some real challenges if we do not introduce measures to deal with climate change.

In particular I would like to refer to one of the most iconic sites in Queensland and, indeed, Australia: the Great Barrier Reef. Yesterday we passed legislation to improve our monitoring and environmental protection of that particular site. While I did not have the opportunity to speak, I would like to inform the House a little about the Great Barrier Reef and what would happen if we did not address climate change. Let us put aside the environmental aspects at the moment and look at the industry that is generated by the reef. There is tourism, fishing, research and public enjoyment—it is an area that many people not only from Queensland but also from around the world enjoy as a wonderful experience. Defence training is also carried out in the area. In fact, more than 63,000 people are employed in Great Barrier Reef tourism, fishing, cultural and recreation industries, which generate $6 billion in GDP each year. The greatest threat to the reef is climate change. Sea temperatures have warmed by about 0.4 per cent over the past 100 years and there have been eight mass coral bleaching events since 1979.

We are dealing with very clear impacts that we have an obligation to address. It heartens me that not only do we finally have a government that is prepared to act, but we have a community that is very prepared to support action—in fact, it is demanding action. The community made very clear its support for action on these issues on 24 November last year when it chose a government that would sign the Kyoto protocol and address climate change. Since then a number of opinion polls have demonstrated that the Australian community—individuals and organisations—is far ahead of the opposition in its support for measures such as the pollution reduction scheme. People are saying that they want Australia to act and to act now. They are prepared to support measures that will achieve changes in our attitude to environmental problems.

The Australian community should also be congratulated for the individual behaviour changes that have been made across the board. In my previous job as a Brisbane City councillor I was privileged to be part of an administration that introduced recycling. That has been taken up significantly by Brisbane residents and more than 30 per cent of waste is now recycled in Brisbane. In response to the drought, the council also introduced water restrictions, which were taken up with gusto. Residents have significantly reduced the amount of water that each household uses. People have also clearly stated that convenient and cost-effective public transport is a real alternative to using private cars. The community is prepared to act—people are reducing their energy consumption, they are turning off lights and they are installing water-saving devices. They are changing their household behaviour to reduce their carbon footprint. Many people also participated in Earth Hour. I enjoyed a wonderful candlelit hour with my children. It was a benefit not only to the environment but to the family as well to be able to sit around a table and talk for an hour with no distractions.

People also expect the government and the corporate sector to play their part and to make their contribution. They accept that the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of action, and they want the entire community to contribute to dealing with this very important issue. They expect the government to lead, but they also want measures that will ensure industry plays its part. That is why there is broad community support for the government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. It is clearly a way to encourage businesses to address their pollution reduction and to initiate measures within their companies and their industries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Such a scheme will enable the market to balance itself so that commerce, business and industry continue but also add that very important cost of the impact of pollution. It will ensure that individual businesses change their behaviour and reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions.

Opposition members who have contributed to this debate have indicated that the opposition supports this measure in principle. Unfortunately, I think the ‘in principle’ bit is a little too late. We must act now; we must make difficult policy decisions that will work and achieve a real reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions.

Someone pointed out to me that we are clearly adding yet another element to the way in which we cost our goods and services. It is accepted that any business will factor in its administration costs, its labour costs and its overheads in determining the cost of producing a good or service. It then applies a small mark-up to ensure that it makes a profit. Someone said to me recently that in the past we costed the production of goods and services from the time that we took the resource out of the ground to the time it came out of the factory. However, we did not cost what came out of the chimney. A reduction scheme will do that—that is, it will realistically cost the production of goods and services. It will ensure that industry and the community acknowledge that factory emissions are also a cost of production.

It is important that the opposition not only supports this measure in principle but supports it by voting for the reduction scheme. We have heard a lot of criticism this evening about the European Union trading scheme. As a government we are lucky because we have the benefit of hindsight. We can look at the different trading schemes that have and have not worked and then build on and improve them. We are not starting from scratch. In the United States and Canada, for example, more than 27 states have introduced trading schemes. Of course, the most notable is California—a significant state in the United States. I welcome the fact that both of the US presidential candidates, from the Republican and Democrat parties, have committed to introducing an emissions trading scheme. So we are not alone. We are part of a global solution and I am very pleased that this government is leading the way.

These amendments are so important because they provide for a national framework that will pull together the bits and pieces that are already occurring around the states and territories and establish a reporting scheme that will inform the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, which I hope will come into being over the next couple of years. The reporting scheme will give us the information we need to make the trading scheme work. In order for this major change in the way that we do business to be effective, both economically and environmentally, we need accurate information. Business needs information to be able to understand how it can reduce its greenhouse gases and measure its emissions. Business needs that information so that it can prepare for a future reduction scheme. The community is very keen to understand the impact of industry on the environment and the sorts of emissions and the volume. With these amendments, information will be publicly available for the whole community to appreciate what is happening now. With this information we will be able to tailor a reduction scheme in a way that suits industry. That is what is so important about these amendments. These amendments will give us the data to get the right measurements in place and the right policies in place to produce a reduction scheme that will have a real impact.

The key thing about these particular amendments is not just the fact that we are bringing it together nationally and that we will finally have a single national framework but also that we are looking at providing the information in different ways. For example, we will ask corporations to provide information not only on what they are doing in terms of projects within their own sector, company or business to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also on whether they are actually investing in other ways in terms of offsets to balance out their reduction. We will actually be asking companies to report on both direct emissions and indirect emissions. But we will do that without putting an onerous administrative burden on those companies. We will provide an online automatic calculation for the scope 2 or indirect emissions so that they will not have any administrative burden.

This is all very significant and it will make a real difference when you consider that currently the reporting scheme involves 450 companies, but by 2011 it is expected that it will involve 700 companies. It is important that we acknowledge that a reduction scheme is difficult. It will require a change of attitude and behaviour. It will require both business and the community looking at doing things differently and addressing yet another concern in the production process—that is, their emissions. With these amendments we will get the right information and the right data and we will have the opportunity to work closely with business to enable a reduction scheme that will help.

I would just like to conclude with what I think is a very significant old proverb: ‘The earth was not given to us by our parents; it was loaned to us by our children.’ As a member of this government, I hope that my children will be proud of the earth that I have put on loan for them.

John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to start by congratulating the member for Bonner for her invaluable and lasting contribution to the debate on this very important legislation. Tonight, I too rise to support the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Amendment Bill 2008. I commend the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator the Hon. Penny Wong, for the proposed amendments. The basis of the amendments lies in the need to clarify the requirements and regulations of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007. One particular amendment, the mandatory public disclosure of direct and indirect gas emissions, aims to improve the quality and reliability of data collected to assess the situation of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia. Further, the amendments enhance the transparency of information on the energy use and greenhouse gas emissions by registered corporations.

While members of the opposition have spoken today on the scare campaign of misinformation regarding the true effect of carbon emissions on climate change, I want to take the opportunity here tonight to provide the counterpoint to some of that misinformation. The proposition that climate change is being driven by global warming caused by emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels from agricultural methane emissions, from land clearing and from other smaller sources is now well established beyond any reasonable doubt.

Recent evidence for the apparent acceleration of global warming, such as the rapid melting of the Arctic icecap, now appears to indicate the manipulation of previous reports by sceptics such as the former Howard government and the Bush administration in the United States. There is no question that, to avoid taking action, both governments distorted evidence and suppressed unfavourable data while forcing organisations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to produce sanitised reports that greatly overestimated the time frames and underestimated the effects of global warming. The consequences have been that the more realistic predictions of climate scientists have been ignored, measures that could have reduced greenhouse gas emissions have not been implemented and we now find ourselves exposed to climatic changes that were, according to the Howard government, not supposed to happen for 50 years or more.

Australia is proving to be very vulnerable to the effects of global warming, particularly with rainfall. Records now show that large parts of eastern Australia have become much drier during the past decade, and it is highly probable that these changes have been brought about by global warming. It is the view of the great majority of the world’s scientists that significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions have to be made within 10 years if dangerous consequences are to be avoided. Of great concern are recent figures that show that world emissions have actually grown by 3.3 per cent per annum since 2000 and are 25 per cent above the 1990 levels, while natural sinks for carbon dioxide, such as the oceans, are exhausting their capacity to absorb the growing volumes of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere.

A target level of a 60 per cent reduction in Australia’s emissions by 2050 requires average cuts of the order of eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum starting this year. Reductions of 90 per cent by 2050, which may be necessary, will require average annual cuts of around 12 million tonnes of carbon dioxide starting this year. At the very least, an end to the growth in emissions must be brought about as rapidly as possible. Technologies that can quickly reduce carbon dioxide emissions by improvements in energy efficiency and by large-scale replacement of fossil fuels by renewable energy sources are well developed and in many cases have been available for decades. New technologies will also be important for future reductions in emissions, but the changes that need to be made to our energy infrastructure can be largely accomplished with what exists today. The necessary response to global warming is a matter of rapid mobilisation of existing resources.

The residual climate change sceptics, including the present Leader of the Opposition and his pretenders, in arguing for a policy of inaction falsely claim that there is a large amount of uncertainty in the science. While it is true that there are margins of error in the measurements and the predictions of the effects of global warming, as there are with any measurements, the magnitudes of these errors are relatively small. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that the average global air temperature near the earth’s surface increased by 0.74 of a degree, plus or minus 0.18 of a degree, during the 100 years ending in 2005. These data are regarded as highly reliable because they are the product of a large and statistically significant number of measurements made with highly accurate instruments. Consequently, the margin of error in these figures is far from sufficient to support the level of doubt promoted by the opposition.

The desiccating conditions being experienced by Murray-Darling Basin farmers are strongly correlated with widely accepted climate change models, yet the opposition—in a policy development process best described as disorganised dithering—continues to deny any significant connection with global warming. The professional sceptics have attempted to discredit the evidence for global warming by offering alternative possibilities, including a remarkable claim that the earth is actually entering a cooling phase. While most sceptics are not willing to go that far in denying reality, some ill-informed individuals are attempting to argue, without understanding the evidence, that there are other reasons for global warming apart from human activity. These include: (1) that the sun’s output of heat is increasing, (2) that cosmic rays are responsible for heating the atmosphere and (3) that natural sources emit more carbon dioxide than humans.

I submit that highly reliable evidence based upon measurements, as opposed to supposition, clearly shows that there is no substance to any of these and other claims. Firstly, a fuss has been made of recent measurements based on short-term weather variability over little more than a year that appeared to show that the average global temperature has suddenly started to fall.

Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Roads and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are on the money now; you are getting it right.

John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I note the interjection by the shadow parliamentary secretary for infrastructure, roads and transport, who is at the table, but he should listen to what I am going to say. Although there was a decline in average global atmospheric temperatures between January 2007 and January 2008—and I hope he is listening—the long-term average, taken between 1850 and 2007, shows an inexorable increase punctuated by minor excursions of higher and lower average temperatures. This a fact. Further, the temperature difference between 1998, which was an exceptionally warm year characterised by an intense El Nino, and 2007, a year of cooler than average temperatures affected by a strong La Nina that brought up cold waters from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, is also put forward as evidence for global cooling. Unfortunately for the sceptics, and I presume the shadow parliamentary secretary fits into that category, these kinds of fluctuations are the product of complex weather cycles and have occurred frequently in the past and do not represent anything more than a random departure from the steady escalation in average global temperatures, which is not in dispute.

The flux of energy emitted by the sun that is received by the earth, termed the solar constant, has been monitored for many years and has been found to be stable at 1,360 watts per square metre with a variation of plus or minus 1.3 watts over a regular 11-year cycle. If a reduction in the sun’s radiated output was responsible for the recent 0.6 degrees of cooling, the solar constant would have to have fallen by 13 watts per square metre—a decline of a magnitude that has never been observed. Similarly, if an increase in the flux of solar energy were to be the cause of global warming then the required change in the solar constant would have been very significant and obvious. The solar constant has not changed sufficiently to affect global temperatures since highly accurate satellite based measurements began in the 1970s, yet global temperatures have continued to rise in line with the growing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Cosmic rays—or high energy subatomic particles—that bombard the earth from the distant reaches of space have been suggested as an extraterrestrial agent responsible for global warming. The proposed mechanism by which cosmic rays influence earth’s climate is somewhat tenuous and depends upon the unproven promotion of cloud formation by cosmic rays. The number of cosmic rays striking the earth is reduced by a more intense solar magnetic field, which occurs at times of higher solar activity. Theoretically, the earth could be warmed by this process because a lower number of cosmic rays would mean that there could be fewer clouds to reflect solar radiation. Yet, to date, there is no convincing evidence that this effect has any significant influence upon the earth’s climate.

The last claim that I wish to discredit is the proposition that the carbon dioxide that is accumulating in the atmosphere has arisen from natural sources. Extensive and long-term measurements show that, although the exchanges of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere, the oceans and the biosphere are very large, the emissions from natural sources have, in the past, been in equilibrium with natural sinks. Ancient atmospheric samples trapped in Antarctic and Greenland ice cores show that carbon dioxide levels have fluctuated slowly between 180 and 300 parts per million for the past half-million years and have only seen a rapid climb to the present level exceeding 380 parts per million since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The combination of these and many other strands of evidence demonstrate conclusively that fossil fuels have been the largest single source of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over the past 150 years. Sceptics like those who sit opposite can now resort only to falsehoods or extremely remote or, at best, tenuous speculation to account for a process that is best understood by the simplest explanation: that is, that human activities have reached such a scale that we—yes, humans—have now become the primary agent of change on the earth’s surface and that some of these activities, in particular the annual release of around 30 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, have started to change the climate. That is why the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Amendment Bill 2008 is an important instrument in our fight against climate change. Climate change is real. Action is required and the Rudd government is committed to addressing the problem.

Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That’s right. We are not sceptics.

Member for Shortland interjecting—

John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have the support of the Chief Government Whip and the member for Shortland, and I note the Treasurer is coming in here to listen to the wisdom of what I am saying. The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Amendment Bill 2008 seeks to clarify and confirm the obligation of those emitting greenhouse gases as an emissions trading scheme is being carefully considered and developed. By improving the availability and reliability of information on energy use and greenhouse gas emissions through the proposed amendments, we the government are arming ourselves with the knowledge needed to make effective changes in legislation and in our choices as consumers. This bill highlights the shared obligation of government, corporations and individuals to ensure a sustainable future for our kids. I commend this bill to the House.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was very pleased to hear the member for Lowe’s contribution. It brought home to me that he knows that climate change is real. He is not a climate change sceptic like many on the other side. He is a man of foresight, a man who can appreciate that, unless we address the issue of climate change, it is going to have an enormous impact not only on Australia but on our planet.

The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Amendment Bill 2008 makes a number of enhancements to the administration of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007. The act requires mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and energy data by large corporations. The act was originally passed by the previous government in 2007. This bill expands the amount of corporate information which will be published by the government in other respects. The bill imposes no regulatory burden on industry beyond the original intent of the act. The bill will expand the number of items which can be published relating to corporate greenhouse emissions. That includes separate public disclosure of direct emissions, indirect emissions and methods used to calculate emissions. This bill will also provide some clarification about what can be publicly disclosed, including: allowing publication of data according to a corporation’s business units; confirming that totals may be published as falling between a specified range of values in cases to avoid revealing trade secrets or commercially sensitive information, which is vital; and allowing the publication of information relating to offsets. Corporations can apply to have the information withheld from publication if it reveals trade secrets or commercially sensitive information.

When it comes to climate change, when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, the opposition has let the Australian people down. When the opposition sat on the government benches in this parliament, it failed to sign Kyoto—it failed to recognise that greenhouse gases were causing enormous problems for our planet. It was because we recognise the absolute importance of addressing the issue of greenhouse gases that in April 2007 the Prime Minister authorised the Garnaut review. That was in April, while we were still in opposition. That showed that we had a vision, that we recognised that climate change was a reality and that we recognised that the then government was full of climate change sceptics and people that had a very narrow approach to looking at the environment and evaluating issues that could wreak enormous degradation upon our planet.

The Garnaut review was an independent assessment of the impacts of human induced climate change on the Australian economy. Professor Garnaut released his draft final report on 4 July. This report, along with his final report on 30 September this year, will provide a valuable contribution to the government’s climate change policy. Professor Garnaut’s July report is a timely reminder that the world is warming and this is causing more droughts, water shortages and extreme weather conditions. Last week I was in Darwin with the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties receiving submissions and evidence on the Kyoto protocol. Whilst we were there we learnt a lot about the issues confronting the people of the Northern Territory and Darwin relating to and arising from climate change and the associated greenhouse gases. Professor Garnaut’s report highlighted that in Australia we would be having more drought, water shortages and extreme conditions. In a place like Darwin, extreme conditions means more cyclones, and that would be a real challenge for that community.

One of the recommendations—and one that we on this side of the House embrace—is for an emissions trading scheme. We are committed to reducing our greenhouse gases by 60 per cent by 2050 and introducing an emissions trading scheme. That is at the absolute heart of Australia’s efforts to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions at the lowest possible cost to our economy. The ETS is an economically responsible way of tackling climate change because it will move us from the heavy greenhouse pollution economy of the past to a clean economy of the future, at the lowest possible cost to families and businesses. Emissions trading has been proven to be the most significant economic and structural reform in Australia since the trade liberalisation in the 1980s. The principle that will guide the design of the ETS is a cap-and-trade scheme. The caps—that is, the limits on emissions—will be designed to place Australia on a low-emission path in a way that best manages the economic impacts of the transition while assuring our ongoing economic prosperity.

It is vital to Australia’s future that we reduce our carbon pollution. That is why the green paper was released. It set out some possible directions that could be taken. It set out the basic mechanism of a cap-and-trade carbon pollution scheme and it contained 10 key commitments. These 10 key commitments include investing in households and economic growth. This commitment states:

Every cent raised from the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme will be used to help Australians—households and businesses—adjust to the scheme ...

The government recognises that there will be a real need for adjustment, but it also recognises that it is vitally important to our country and to our planet that we go down this path.

The key commitments also include a cent-for-cent offset in fuel price impacts and increasing payments to pensioners, carers and seniors. So it is looking after those people who are most vulnerable in our community. They also include commitments to helping low-income households and middle-income households and reviewing and improving assistance measures. That will look at the adequacy of payments to people who are receiving benefits and at the overall impact of the scheme.

The key commitments also include ramping up energy efficiency. That is what we talk about a lot on this side of parliament. That is something that seems to be missing from the opposition, with its failure to support the government on these issues.

The key commitments also include supporting heavy vehicle road users. We all know that, for heavy vehicle road users, fuel taxes are going to be cut on a cent-by-cent basis to offset the initial price impact of fuel associated with the impact of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. This will be one of the measures that will be reviewed after year 1. As I started to say, we all know that heavy vehicle users will have to be looked after and have special issues that need to be examined in relation to Australia’s carbon reduction scheme.

We will also be creating the Climate Action Fund, which is a very important part of the government’s approach. That commitment includes capital investment in innovative new low emissions processes, industrial energy efficiency projects with long payback periods and dissemination of best and innovative practices among small to medium sized enterprises. Finally, we will be keeping the energy industry strong.

That is a plan to address a real issue. That is a plan to address the degradation caused by greenhouse gases. It is a recognition that climate change is real. It is a recognition that the opposition has failed to deal with this matter and it is a recognition that this government will act and act decisively to address the issue of climate change.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

in reply—I compliment the member for Shortland on her contribution to this debate. The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Amendment Bill 2008 is a very important instrument in our fight against climate change because it will assist the gathering of accurate data. Accurate data is critical to the development of an emissions trading system and certainly to the development of our Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Having effective mechanisms in place to measure emissions is absolutely vital for public confidence in the operation of emissions trading. And of course we do need emissions trading in this country. Our green paper on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme canvasses the implementation of a market based mechanism that will reduce carbon pollution and will do so according to the laws and principles of the market. Putting a price on carbon is the most cost-efficient and the least distorting way of reducing carbon pollution in our economy.

This bill is an important element of an emissions trading scheme because it gives us access to accurate data. Fortunately, I think that most in the community and in the business community now recognise that climate change is real. They recognise that action is required. And the Rudd government is committed to addressing this problem. That is why the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Amendment Bill 2008 seeks to clarify and confirm the obligation of those emitting greenhouse gases as an emissions trading scheme is being carefully considered and developed. By improving the availability and the reliability of information on energy use and greenhouse gas emissions through the proposed amendments, we are arming ourselves with the knowledge needed to make effective changes in legislation and in our choices as consumers. The bill highlights the shared obligations of government, corporations and individuals to ensure there is a sustainable future.

This bill does establish the framework for the collection of high-quality greenhouse and energy data. This data will be used to inform government policy, meet Australia’s international reporting obligations and allow for the elimination of duplicated greenhouse gas and energy reporting requirements in government programs. The act also provides data which will be used in the development, as I said before, of our Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. This bill will enhance the act by allowing the public and investors to access more information on greenhouse gas emissions and the energy performance of Australian corporations. So this bill will improve the administration of the act, simplify the registration process for Australian corporations and clarify detail relating to the auditing of corporation reports. The act facilitates a reduction in the number of reports that businesses are required to submit under the current patchwork of greenhouse and energy programs across all jurisdictions. This bill confirms the government’s commitment to ensuring the system is implemented efficiently and effectively to reduce the regulatory burden on Australian corporations.

I would like to thank all of the participants in this very important debate. We all now understand in this country—or, certainly, those of us on this side of the House understand—how important it is in tackling dangerous climate change that we deal with this as an economic issue. It is fundamental to our prosperity into the future that we become, as an economy and as a society, cleaner in the use of fuels. This is particularly important. That is why this debate has been mature, with the exception of one or two contributions from those on the other side of the House. We are actually serious about dealing with dangerous climate change, unlike those on the other side of the House, who cannot make up their minds which way they are going. Party meeting after party meeting—and still we cannot find out what they stand for. We cannot find out where they are going or what they are doing.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.