Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before question time, I was running through some of the amendments in the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2010 and related bills that I particularly welcomed for my electorate. These amendments, which are sensible, responsible and reflect months if not years of consultation with industry and other stakeholders, represent a time that has now seemingly passed in Australian politics, a time when—notwithstanding their numerous differences—you could say that both major parties came to the table in good faith and motivated by the national interest not short-term political gain.

I support these bills as amended because they represent an improvement on the scheme originally developed by the government. If they had any principle at all, the opposition would support them, too. And they do not even have to act according to principle if that is too much of a stretch for them—just some consistency or a bit of logic would be enough and would enable them to appreciate that the emissions trading scheme contained in these bills is the policy that they took to the last election and the scheme that they negotiated for and voted on in their party room to support just a couple of months ago. It seems that ‘principle’ and ‘consistency’ are another two words not associated with an opposition led by a man who seems incapable of coming to a position and sticking to it.

For something the coalition accuses us of not debating, the CPRS has had an absolute going over in this House. This is now the third time that I have spoken in support of the CPRS and I am pleased to say that many of the issues that have been raised by industries and groups in my electorate have been picked up in the amendments now before the House. Before I come to the specifics I would like to reiterate my reasons for supporting the bill yet again. I will rely on my previous speeches, which set out many of the arguments.

If I refer back to the first speech from August last year, I spent time discussing the science and the fact that on balance I believe that the scientific evidence of warming and its cause was something that a responsible government could not and should not ignore. It is a legitimate basis for policy action. I talked also about my confidence in the consultation that was going on with large emitters of carbon dioxide in my electorate and my confidence that the ministers and government were listening and that the concerns of industries would be taken into account in the course of subsequent negotiations over the legislation, and by and large they have.

I also spent time in that speech explaining how I saw the government’s approach to climate change not as some ideological article of faith but as a challenge facing whoever seeks to govern Australia at this time. We have done what governments facing challenges do: assess the nature and scale of the problem, seek advice on possible solutions, make judgments as to the best solution and consult on the way to developing the final policy. And guess what? When the coalition was in government, that was exactly what they did—reluctantly, for sure, but they did finally accept climate change as a reality and a challenge that no government could ignore.

Apparently when it was politically necessary, they could express belief in climate change but, now that they see some political advantage in taking the opposite view, according to the opposition climate change is no longer of any consequence. And what was the opposition’s answer to the challenge of climate change when they were in government? You guessed it: an emissions trading scheme—one based on much of the same evidence and advice that underpins the scheme we have developed. When the opposition were actually running the country, they put Australia on the path to an emissions trading scheme. Now that their only concern is winning the next election rather than finding genuine solutions for the future of Australia, they are in here repudiating their own decisions in government.

I have said repeatedly in these debates that climate change is not an article of faith for the Labor Party. Action on climate change is not a core principle or the rationale for our party. But the debate of the past couple of months has made me rethink that. I believe that action on climate change—real action, not the sound bite action of the opposition—is the kind of policy that does characterise the Labor Party. We are the party that embraces reform to ensure a stronger future and the party that manages reform to ensure that there is fairness and support in place through the reform process. As a small country, we can never stand still. However good things are in Australia we know that there is never room for complacency if we are to secure our future. We need to be continually looking ahead to the next challenge and the next opportunity and preparing our country for those.

Climate change is an environmental challenge but an economic opportunity as Australia positions itself to take advantage of the emerging demand for the goods and services of the new low-carbon economy. We owe it to ourselves and our natural environment to give the world the benefit of the doubt in this case and take out the insurance that the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme represents against the potential for serious damage to the planet’s natural systems caused by continued climate change. We also owe it to our kids and future generations to start carving out a foothold for Australia in a future global economy based on renewable energy and low-carbon emissions. So there are some core principles of our party reflected in our approach to addressing climate change in the way that the CPRS prepares for the future while providing for fairness and security through the transition.

My second speech on this legislation, this time in November, addressed the scare campaign being waged by the opposition and groups like the Australian Coal Association. I pointed out how the predictions of job losses and doom and gloom were at odds with what was actually happening in the coal industry in Central Queensland. The industry continues to go from strength to strength in Central Queensland, with regular announcements of new and expanding mines and increasing investment in rail, road and port infrastructure to support the activity in the Bowen Basin and now the Galilee Basin. Just yesterday we saw the reports of Incitec’s decision to proceed with its major project in Moranbah, another sign that the coal industry and associated industries are gearing up for the next boom in coal demand and profits. The scare campaign was always pretty flimsy in the face of what is actually happening in Central Queensland, and the amendments in this legislation undermine it further.

There is now a total of $1.5 billion in assistance to the coal sector over five years. This takes the form of a $1.23 billion Coal Sector Adjustment Scheme to give transitional assistance to the most emissions intensive coalmines in the form of permits and a $270 million coal sector abatement fund to provide grant funding for coal sector abatement projects with a priority for electricity generation from waste coalmine gas. That is great news for those companies like EDL and Envirogen, who are the frontrunners in this important industry and already have power stations operating in my electorate in partnership with mining companies.

I have mentioned already the other measures that I particularly welcome in this revised CPRS—those relating to the exciting opportunities it offers to farmers and the assistance to meat processors. The Transitional Electricity Cost Assistance Program will reduce the impact of the CPRS on electricity prices paid by medium and large enterprises, which will assist coalmines and operations like QMAG in Rockhampton. I also welcome the reviews foreshadowed with respect to the appropriateness of assistance to emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries.

This week in my electorate there was another good news story coming out of Mackay Sugar—a good news story but one with a warning attached, a warning of what is at stake if the opposition persist with their rejection of the CPRS and continue down their reckless path of making up climate change and economic policy as they go. I have spoken before about the co-generation project that has been developed by Mackay Sugar with the support and cooperation of the canefarmers who are its shareholders. The plan will see the investment by Mackay Sugar in a $120 million power plant at its Racecourse sugar mill. New highly efficient boilers at the mill will convert bagasse—a waste product from sugar milling—into steam to drive a turbine generator capable of generating 36 megawatts, 27 megawatts of which will be exported into the national grid. It will be the equivalent of one-third of Mackay’s electricity needs.

The good news this week was the formal announcement by Mackay Sugar that contracts have been issued for the construction of the plant following the passage of the government’s expanded renewable energy target and the signing of an off-take agreement with an energy retailer to lock in the returns on the project. And where do those returns go? Not just to Mackay Sugar but through them to the canefarmers that are the company’s shareholders and also as an increase in the price paid to farmers for their sugar in recognition of its higher value: sugar as a source of food and now sugar as a source of energy.

Mackay Sugar has been explicit in the role the expanded renewable energy target has played in bringing this successful project to fruition. But has the opposition stopped to ask itself where its failure to support the CPRS leaves projects like this? The renewable energy target scheme goes to 2020 and always assumed that there would be a carbon price beyond that to support this kind of investment in renewable energy projects. I note that the opposition’s phoney nonplan includes something called clean energy hubs, and I see that Central Queensland is listed as a possible region that would be eligible for funding, although with the split between the other regions that are listed it is questionable how much would really find its way to Central Queensland.

My point is that there is already a clean energy hub developing in Central Queensland through the investment in projects like Mackay Sugar’s co-generation plant and the growing waste coalmine gas industry, and also through the work being done by ZeroGen on carbon capture and storage. By creating a carbon price the CPRS supports those projects and supports the growth of clean energy in Central Queensland. The opposition through its rejection of the CPRS and its phoney climate change plan puts these kinds of projects at risk.

The opposition are getting in the way of clean energy opportunities that already exist in Central Queensland just so they can parade around in the lead-up to the next election with a slush fund under the guise of a clean energy hub to make some political mileage. What about the real investment and the real decisions on clean energy that will be stalled in the meantime because of the opposition’s reckless disregard for sensible science and sensible economics? The opposition is locking regions like mine out of opportunities that will help farmers and expand our economic base.

These bills represent a sensible and balanced response to the challenge of reducing carbon emissions. They have been the subject of exhaustive consultation and up until 10 weeks ago represented a bipartisan agreement on the targets for carbon reduction and the mechanism to achieve them. For reasons of pure political opportunism the opposition have now chosen to stick with the agreed target of a five per cent reduction in emissions. But they have abandoned their principles and their economic credibility to come up with a phoney scheme that will cost taxpayers more while allowing emissions to rise. Our legislation will achieve cuts to emissions, provide certainty to business and deliver assistance to households. I support the bills.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on theCarbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2010 and related bills and again at the outset state my opposition to the legislation. A lot has changed, to say the least, since the last time we spoke on this legislation. It is important to note that as of last week Australian families do have a very clear choice—a very clear choice between the Labor government’s massive new tax on everything, which no-one understands, and our plan for direct action with practical environmental measures and no new tax, and it is something that people can actually understand.

I am not sure whether it is a factor of the government being too arrogant or too lazy, but it has failed to explain to the Australian public exactly what it is trying to achieve with its massively complex Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. In my electorate, the minister for climate change has been invited on many occasions to come to the Latrobe Valley. The local newspaper ran quite a campaign encouraging the minister to come to the Latrobe Valley and to explain the CPRS to the power workers and to the families in my electorate and be honest with them about the costs of the scheme being proposed by the government. I know I have personally extended an invitation to the community cabinet. In December of 2008 I wrote to the Prime Minister and offered him the opportunity to come to Gippsland, to visit my region and to run through a range of issues. Most obviously the emissions trading scheme was to the forefront of the minds of most people in the electorate.

I understand that community cabinet has many demands in an election year—they are probably too busy barnstorming the Labor marginals and the Liberal target seats in the suburbs to come out to Gippsland, but if they do need to make up their quota of conservative seats they are very welcome to come to Gippsland at some stage. I will certainly make them feel welcome. I think the minister for agriculture, the minister for industry and resources and the parliamentary secretary for bushfire reconstruction can all attest that I have been quite an amenable host when they have had the opportunity to come to Gippsland. I would be happy to put the kettle on for the community cabinet; if they cannot all make it at once, that is fine. I think that the minister for climate change in particular really needs to take the time to come to Gippsland and the Latrobe Valley and explain to my community what the costs of this massive new tax will be.

I said that the people of Gippsland would obviously treat the cabinet with a great deal of respect. They are a respectful community in Gippsland; they are not going to be lining up to cause any scenes. But I can assure you that the government should be showing the people of Gippsland just as much respect. It is ignoring the very real concerns of families across Gippsland at its peril. If the government has nothing to hide, come to Latrobe Valley and tell the truth about the impact this massive new tax will have on jobs in regional areas like mine.

In the absence of a visit from the minister to explain the emissions trading scheme, we have to rely on other sources of information. On the specific issue of jobs I want to focus tonight on a report by an independent consulting firm called Buchan, which was commissioned on behalf of the Wellington Shire Council to undertake a study. The report is titled The carbon pollution reduction scheme impacts on Wellington shire. It is an interesting report because it highlights the significance of this fundamental restructuring of the Australian economy, and it further highlights the failure of the government to be honest with regional communities like mine. I have said before that the broader Gippsland impacts could be enormous if industries are disadvantaged as a result of the ETS from the obvious increase we are going to see in electricity prices, particularly for our dairy farmers, who will not be compensated, to the costs to food manufacturers in my region, to the oil and gas industry and to small businesses, who, again, will not be compensated for any increased costs under this scheme.

An Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry report found that rural and regional areas will be adversely affected, and it could lead to increased urbanisation across Australia. A New South Wales government report found that regional areas could have a 20 per cent decline in economic activity. Any of the reports that have come out have mentioned regional areas and, inevitably, have mentioned Gippsland/Latrobe Valley as a region that is most exposed to such a scheme.

The Buchan report that I referred to is specifically focused on Gippsland, and I will cut to the chase in terms of the impacts that have been uncovered in that report. Gippsland workers have direct exposure to five of the emissions intensive industries identified by Access Economics as being most exposed to the CPRS legislation. Naturally, brown coal and power generation are at the top of the list, along with natural gas, gas distribution and petroleum and coal products. It is recognised in the Buchan report that the impacts on these sectors under the no international trade scenario are greater because businesses are not able to buy carbon credits from lower emission businesses offshore. I will quote from the report:

Major impacts of the CPRS are experienced in a number of sectors, including electricity supply, oil and gas extraction and gas distribution. There are significant impacts on the electricity supply sector, both output and jobs, because most of Victoria’s generating capacity is brown coal fired in the Latrobe Valley.

The report goes on to produce a table which forecasts the difference in employment and output by 2025 compared to what would occur in the absence of a CPRS program. I quote again in reference to the three municipalities of Wellington Shire, East Gippsland Shire and Latrobe City:

In the case of the no-international-trade scenario, employment across the three areas will be down by almost 3,000 jobs in 2025 compared with a base case of no CPRS, and output would be $325 million lower.

That is alarming news for Gippslanders and it probably explains why none of the government ministers have come to Gippsland and Latrobe Valley to explain the impacts of this massive new tax.

Here we have an independent source predicting the impact on my electorate alone will be 2,893 fewer jobs by 2025. This flies in the face of every reassurance and every guarantee by the government. It probably explains to me and to the people of Gippsland why we are being ignored in this debate—why none of the ministers have bothered to come to our region. They know that there is going to be a major impact on regional communities, and Gippsland is going to be at the pointy end of it. It also flies in the face of every other effort being undertaken right now in our region to try to create jobs, to develop Gippsland and to provide opportunities for our young people as they go through the education system and perhaps take on a trade or go on to university or remain in our communities. We have been trying to promote Gippsland and Latrobe Valley as great places to live and work, and here we have the government with a massive new tax and an independent report finding that by 2025 the impact will be 2,893 fewer jobs in my community. Families in Gippsland have every reason to question the policy being put forward by the government and they have no reason whatsoever to trust the Prime Minister and a Labor government which is hiding information like this from our community.

If the forecast is not accurate—and I am not saying it is—I ask the minister to give me her predictions. If I am wrong I am happy to be corrected on this point. It is not a figure I have made up; it is a report by the Buchan Consulting group commissioned by the Wellington Shire Council. If they are wrong, come to Latrobe Valley and tell us where it is wrong. Come on down, any time at all. We welcome the minister in the Latrobe Valley to explain to us what will happen to the jobs in our region under the proposed CPRS legislation. There is no question that there will be impacts on key industries in my region, and I am concerned that it is going to hurt the job prospects of Gippsland families right now and also in the future.

The other issue that I have spoken about before when we have had the opportunity to debate this legislation is that of energy reliability in this brave new world that the Labor Party likes to talk about. Energy reliability, security of supply and access to cheap baseload energy have been the cornerstone of Victoria’s development. The Latrobe Valley has obviously been the centrepiece of that. The power industry in the Latrobe Valley is something that the community has quite rightly been very proud of for many decades. One of the great disappointments of this whole debate has been the way the brown-coal power generators have been vilified and, by association, the people of Latrobe Valley have been vilified in this debate. I think it is a source of great discomfort to people in my community that they have been portrayed as somehow being evil polluters dirtying the environment for the rest of Australia. It is something that the government has to take some of the blame for, in the sense that we had government propaganda campaigns running on TV in 2009 that were very much directed at the brown-coal power industry. Also, we have members of parliament scoring political points at the expense of people who have worked very hard and are very proud of their achievements on behalf of the broader Victorian economy.

Energy reliability and security of supply are critical to the future economic growth of our nation. The simple fact is that if our power generators in the Latrobe Valley are not financially viable under this government’s ETS we are in for one hell of a shock in terms of reliability of our power supply. It is a simple fact that our community has become dependent on a reliable supply of power. Our industries and our households are dependent on it. Yallourn Power Station management has indicated that it has reduced its maintenance load due to uncertainty about what the government intends to do in terms of its ETS legislation. When you have power stations reducing their maintenance programs it is only a matter of time before reliability of supply is affected. Other generators have expressed their concerns in the strongest possible way about their financial viability in the wake of this government’s massive new tax, if it ever gets through the parliament, which I sincerely hope it will not.

The government is prepared to inflict enormous economic pain on regional areas like Gippsland and the Latrobe Valley for very insignificant environmental gains. This is a Labor political strategy. It was a political strategy going into the last election; it is a political strategy coming into this next election. It is not an environment policy. Everything from the timing of the proposed legislation before the House prior to the Copenhagen summit last year to the comments of the Prime Minister and other ministers has been about trying to achieve some sort of political advantage on the back of community concerns over the forecast impacts of climate change. I believe the government has become so obsessed with its political strategy that it has turned its back on Australia’s national interest.

We had the Minister for Finance and Deregulation last week speaking about ‘frauds’ and ‘phoneys’ and describing our plan as ‘Regional Partnerships on steroids’. But he brushed over his massive tax on everything and the government’s repeated claims that it is going to take action to save the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu. The absurdity of the Prime Minister’s proposition, when he stands here day after day in question time telling us that his action, this CPRS, this massive new tax, is going to save the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu, deserves further examination.

We all accept that Australia emits just 1.4 per cent of total global emissions, and both sides of this chamber are committed to reducing that amount by five per cent. So we have a five per cent reduction target of 1.4 per cent of total global emissions. Now, even the most ardent believer of every climate change forecast, and every piece of climate change science, does not try to commit this con on the Australian public. There is no-one else out there saying that Australia reducing its emissions by five per cent—remembering, again, that we account for 1.4 per cent of the global total—is going to somehow solve the problem, is going to save Kakadu and the Great Barrier Reef. It is an outrageous con. It is part of the phoney campaign that this Prime Minister continually runs. It is a scare campaign with no substance whatsoever. It is about time that those opposite stood up to their Prime Minister and actually pointed out to him that he is the laughing stock of regional Australia when he comes out with these ridiculous claims. Cutting our emissions by five per cent, when our total contribution to global emissions is 1.4 per cent is sweet—

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education and Childcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Dr Stone interjecting

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, we won’t go into the colloquial terms that people would like to use to describe it! But it is remarkably insignificant and ridiculous when put in context with what the Prime Minister claims he is going to achieve with it.

While we are talking about con jobs and being honest with the Australian public, you really need to ask: who were the dills, the peanuts or whatever you want to call them on the front bench who tried to pass off a few hot summer days in Victoria towards the end of last year as evidence of climate change? One after another they stood here at the dispatch box and tried to claim that a single hot weekend in Victoria proved that man-made climate change was real. It was summer. It was hot. But one weekend of hot weather proves absolutely nothing. We are talking about long-term climatic trends, not a single hot weekend. It would be just as stupid for me to stand here in this place today and say that it is raining outside; therefore climate change is over. It is this futile, juvenile, stupid argument that has been put forward in this place which has added to the confusion in the community.

Under the Rudd government’s model we run the risk of jobs being exported from Australia to nations which do not even have a comparable scheme. A fear that is regularly expressed to me in my electorate is that we will be sending our jobs offshore. We will also export our carbon emissions to those nations, and the net result will be a deterioration in the world’s environment because the nations which take the jobs have less stringent environmental protocols than Australia. If we have learnt anything from the Copenhagen fiasco it should be that there is no prospect of a global agreement anytime soon, so any scheme which transfers jobs from Australia in high-emitting industries to foreign nations is likely to result in a poor global environmental outcome. And I fear that this scheme will add to economic uncertainty in Australia and export jobs to foreign nations, resulting in increased global emissions.

I call on the Prime Minister to start being honest with the Australian public, to actually try and explain the emissions trading scheme and admit what the costs will be in terms of job losses and household cost-of-living increases—and admit that the claimed environmental benefits are insignificant without a global agreement. As I indicated the previous time I spoke on this legislation, this government has asked us to vote to give foreign companies a competitive advantage over our own businesses, to vote for more expensive power and transport costs, to vote for more expensive food and to vote for increased costs for small businesses. But at the same time the government failed to make the case and answer basic questions about the impacts of this legislation. We do not know how much it will cost to build a house in Australia. How many jobs in regional areas will be lost? How does Australia cutting its emissions, without global consensus, achieve anything whatsoever? What will be the impact on the household income, for example, for a dairy farmer with a higher electricity bill which will not be compensated? And the minister for aged care did not even touch this subject the other day, when she was asked in question time: how much will aged-care services increase as a result of this legislation? The government has a strategy for spin but has not trusted Australians with a full explanation of the complexity of this massive new tax and how it threatens job security without achieving significant global benefits.

I want to contrast, in the time I have left, the government’s plan with that which has been put forward by the coalition in the past week. Now we have a real choice, which Australian families will welcome, between direct action, which they will understand, practical environmental projects they can work with and appreciate in their own communities, and this great big new tax—which, again, the government has just been too arrogant to try to explain.

One of the great benefits of direct action—and particularly in my community of Gippsland, where there is, I must confess, still quite a bit of division in the community about what the causes of climate change are—is that it does not really matter whether you believe activities by humans are causing the climate to change; these are positive environmental measures in any circumstances. On that point, I think it is foolish of us to believe for a second that the science is completely settled. I, for one, have a view that we live in a very variable climate in Australia; it has been changing for many decades. And the practical custodians of the land, our farming sector and people in it I speak to, are very much aware that they work in a variable climate and they adjust to it all the time. Whether or not it has been affected by emissions from human activities is not particularly relevant to the position being put forward by our plan, where there are real opportunities to invest in the future of productivity—for example, of agricultural land by sequestering carbon in the soil. So these are practical environmental measures. This is direct action which the community can understand and which will still achieve the five per cent target that has been agreed to by the Labor government. One of the other great benefits of the scheme being put forward by the opposition is that it is incentive based. It may allow for production, for example, to increase on some of our less arable land, through sequestering carbon in the soil to improve food security in what is very much an uncertain and variable climate at the moment.

I believe the practical, direct action will be welcomed by our agricultural sector and the farmers I referred to before as the custodians of the land, because they are some of the great beneficiaries under this plan. Our farmers are the real, practical environmentalists in Gippsland. They are the ones who have been adopting technologies as they have come online, who have learned new skills and who have made their land more productive. They are the ones who are actually out there getting their hands dirty and doing that practical work while we have bureaucrats in faraway offices telling them what to do.

You would never hear from the minister for agriculture, for example, what a great job Australian farmers are doing, because, if you ask him, anything to do with the agricultural sector is all about climate change and it is all the National Party’s fault. So our plan supports practical environmental measures, which makes sense regardless of your views on man-made climate change.

But, as I referred to earlier, one of the most disappointing aspects of the debate so far from my perspective is that it has unnecessarily divided Australians for, I believe, the government’s political advantage. The government is being deliberately divisive for those purposes. The advertising campaign I referred to earlier has scared people, particularly children. You hear them coming out with it in the schools. I know we all visit schools on a regular basis. They have been terrified by some of the advertising material that governments have been putting forward.

I would rather see us debate this issue in terms that we can all agree on, particularly the sustainable management of the environment. There is not a single Gippslander that I have met who has not got a passion for the environment of our region, and they will support practical environmental measures every day of the week. The people of Gippsland have embraced the Landcare movement. They have been huge supporters of Landcare. It is somewhat ironic that, when we hear talk about the environment, we have the situation where the government has actually cut the funding for Landcare facilitators.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It’s a disgrace.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a disgrace. And we have the hypocrisy of the minister for agriculture talking about climate change and talking about the environment but, when it comes to that practical environmental work and investing in the future of our communities through Landcare, the government going missing.

I know the minister will come out and say we have 56 facilitators. Well, that is 56 facilitators across all of Australia—56 facilitators to work with 100,000 Landcare volunteers. I would suggest to the minister that he should be engaging more with the Landcare movement and supporting them in their efforts, rather than lecturing us about climate change and cutting back on that practical environmental work which has enormous support in my region and right throughout Australia.

In conclusion, Gippslanders are great environmentalists. They are interested in this debate. They are doing the hard work on the ground—the practical, environmental, hard work on the ground—and they are adapting to what is a variable climate. They accept that, and they are acting on the science that has found better ways to make their land more productive. Gippsland families, however, do not support this big new tax, and they will be voting against the legislation.

Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Western and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2010 and related bills. I found the contribution of the member opposite to be both informative and challenging. In his contribution, he made the observation that a lot has changed in the last few years in the context of the whole carbon pollution debate. And it is true—it has—and I have been surprised by the direction of a number of those changes.

Since the election of the current government in 2007 and the first presentation of the green paper, white paper and draft legislation, there have been many in the community who have said that progression of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme would bring with it consequent destruction of Australian industry. Yet we have seen, at the time of the presentation of all of that argument, substantial new investment taking place in Australian industry across the nation.

The announcement in the third quarter last year of the Gorgon project taking its final investment decision was not just a significant decision for Western Australia but a significant decision in global terms, for two reasons. Firstly, it is a massive new LNG production facility, and the only one in the world to have been started in the year 2009. But, secondly, it is the world’s largest geosequestration project.

The geosequestration project that underpins the Gorgon project is not a requirement of the Australian government. It is not a requirement of the regulator. It is not a requirement of the government of Western Australia. The proposition to geosequester the CO2 from the Gorgon fields was a decision made by the project proponent—a decision made knowing that they would have to pay for the costs of that geosequestration. It was a decision made by the proponents of the project because they wanted to have a project that was environmentally better than the rest—that was capable, for the first time in the history of that industry, of geosequestering its massive CO2 emissions and doing that safely and in a commercially acceptable way.

In recent weeks in Queensland, BG Group in Queensland have announced the expenditure of over $3 billion in the acquisition of long-lead items for the LNG production facility that they wish to build at Gladstone. There were also announcements just yesterday of the first stages in the move to a final investment decision in two years time for the Browse Basin LNG facility—a $50 billion investment. A few months ago, the Shell company announced it was taking further steps with its Prelude LNG facility off the north coast of Western Australia. This is over $100 billion worth of new investment in hydrocarbons intensive industry that has not been scared away by the debate about carbon pollution, by the debate over an emissions trading scheme or by the difficulties that our parliament has had or Australian people have had in coming to terms with the complexities of this issue. I think that speaks volumes for the quality of our companies and for the quality of the public debate on this issue and, importantly, would lead me to conclude that, in fact, the implementation of a carbon pollution reduction scheme, as envisaged by the government, would not be a measure that would damage the Australian economy—in fact, would only enhance it.

Over the years, I have been a critic of the carbon pollution debate. Indeed, in 1990 I described climate change science as ‘pop science’. I regret that I said that. Climate change is real. The greenhouse measures proposed by the government are serious and they have serious implications. Greenhouse gas measures will affect how we create wealth, how we travel and how we work. At all times, our greenhouse gas measures must enhance our capacity to create wealth. It is wealth that allows us to protect our environment. Capping and reducing greenhouse gas emissions is one of the most significant challenges of the present time and we all have a responsibility to do something about reducing these emissions. This is not to say it will be an easy task; it will not be. Compromises will need to be made on the part of industry, households, business, families and government. All will need to adjust. There will be no area of our lives that will remain unchanged. It would be ignorant of us to think otherwise.

The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2010 and related bills will be the most important bills we pass as a parliament. We are responding to concern from individuals, businesses and industry to address greenhouse emissions. I am contacted by constituents in my electorate continually. I will read one email that was recently sent to me. It said:

Climate change is the great moral challenge of our age.

That is the view of my constituent. I offer that view because it is a demonstration that the community do want action. Even industries that were initially sceptical of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme have thrown their support behind the amendments.

Those opposite are playing politics with climate change when they break the longstanding, commonly held view, put firstly by Prime Minister Howard, that Australia could have an emissions trading scheme. The government and the opposition held a common view and a common response. We even had a deal. We had a deal; they reneged on it. Quite frankly, it is they who are not taking this debate seriously. The opposition do not take the need for a common view from all parliamentarians seriously. Opposition leader Tony Abbott is on the record as saying that climate change is ‘absolute crap’. He is on the record, or he has been verballed, as saying that he is ‘a bit of a weathervane’ on the issue. He needs to have courage and he needs to support the longstanding, bipartisan commitment to the introduction of a carbon pollution reduction scheme.

His climate change policy will cost taxpayers three times more than the government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Rather than decreasing emissions, it is said that they will ultimately increase by 13 per cent from 2000 levels and taxpayers will incur a $10 billion tax bill to pay for it. That means fewer roads, fewer schools, fewer hospitals, fewer water schemes and fewer measures that our parliament and our government can take to better look after our community and to prepare our community for such measures as may be necessary in a changing climate. He has a plan to spend $10 billion and, presumably, a plan to cut government spending on essential government services.

The government’s climate change policy will make polluters pay, while providing assistance for increases in electricity prices and ensuring that small businesses have access to grants under the $200 million Climate Change Action Fund. We will help them adjust. It will not be easy; it will be difficult. There is no magic solution and there is no magic pudding to compensate people for the pain that would be caused by these measures.

I have spoken before about industry support for an emissions trading scheme. It is an important point—10 companies in Australia, with a total market capitalisation of around $600 billion, support these measures. They realise the importance. They have factored in the carbon prices. Shareholders and stakeholders expect action. This is still the case. When I spoke before, I quoted an article in the Canberra Times. The article came after Prime Minister Howard announced, in March 2007, a task force to provide advice on developing an emissions trading scheme. It stated that Australia’s most important resource companies, including BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Woodside, AGL and Alcoa, had come out in support of a carbon pollution reduction scheme. It went on to say that, of the 200 submissions that had been posted on the task group’s website, the majority called for an emissions trading scheme.

It is clear that an effective, sustained global response to the threat of climate change is required, but in the near term it is recognised that linked emissions trading schemes—ETSs—are more likely than a single global system. I think that has been demonstrated by recent events in Copenhagen.

Today in this parliament I met Bernie Delaney from BHP Billiton and Mark O’Neill, both lobbyists for large resources companies—Gary for Rio and Bernie for BHP. I have no doubt that, given the strong position taken by the companies, they were in this building to lobby for an ETS. BHP Billiton supports the development of a global, market based mechanism for valuing and trading emissions entitlements and reductions on the basis that it is broadly based, efficient and phased in such a way that industry and the country have sufficient time to adjust. So they support the government’s position. On page 5 of their submission, BHP Billiton further stated:

Australia is vulnerable to climate change, as are many of the nations in this region. Acting alone, Australia can do little to mitigate the growth in global emissions.

Those are not my words; those are BHP Billiton’s words. BHP continue:

Australia can play a leadership role in encouraging an effective, efficient and equitable global scheme taking advantage of its resources and skill endowments and accepting its share of global efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

That is what Australia did in Copenhagen earlier this year.

BHP Billiton have had a climate change policy since 2002, and they further revised it in 2007. Not only are companies such as BHP Billiton supporting moves to establish an ETS, they are actually committing to voluntary reductions of their emissions. In 1995, BHP Billiton took part in the Greenhouse Challenge Plus Programme which encouraged reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Even earlier, in 1993, BHP started measuring greenhouse gas emissions, and they have publicly reported their resulting data since then. I note that it was in about 1993 that I made my ill-advised comments about climate change. At that stage BHP and many other members of the global corporate community were already acting on greenhouse measures and climate change.

BP are a global company with a market capitalisation of $232 billion. That is, it is a quarter of the size of the Australian economy. They have also 100,000 direct employees worldwide, and significant oil and gas production and refining capacity in the global marketplace. They operate significant assets in Australia and are significant joint venturers in the great North West Shelf project off the coast of Western Australia. BP states that ‘It seems more likely that there will be an ETS in the world marketplace, rather than starting from scratch.’

On their website, BP state their support for:

… precautionary action to limit greenhouse gas emissions and works to combat climate change in several ways, even though aspects of the science are still the subject of expert debate.

I am a Western Australian, and a great Western Australian icon is Wesfarmers Ltd. They are also supportive of an ETS. On page 1 of their submission to the previous government, Wesfarmers stated they:

… have no doubt about the desirability of actions aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions because of the likely adverse effects this build-up will have on life on earth.

Those are not my views; they are the views of Wesfarmers as put to the former government.

Wesfarmers are a major public company which began in 1914 as a farmers cooperative. It was listed on the ASX in 1984. Wesfarmers operate the chemical and fertiliser business, CSBP, in Kwinana, which is in my electorate, so I take a keen interest in their policies and activities. On the second page of their submission, Wesfarmers state:

While a trading system is more complex to design and administer than a straight out tax, and while it is subject to demand variations, the cap and trade schemes most often canvassed have a strong appeal in terms of certainty of achieving environmental objectives.

More recently, the chief executive of Woodside Petroleum—and I should declare that I was formerly an employee of Woodside Petroleum—Don Voelte, who had been a vocal critic of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, was quoted on ABC’s Lateline as saying that Woodside:

… could cope with the proposal in its current form.

Voelte added:

… compensation from the government would help with the industry transition required by the CPRS.

On 4 May 2009, in a statement from the Business Council of Australia, the president Greig Gailey expressed his support:

The BCA believes that global warming is a global problem and will only be solved with a global solution. The BCA fully supports the government’s initiatives aimed at forging an effective global compact that would see all of the world’s nations placing a comparable price on carbon emissions.

…            …            …

The BCA continues to advocate a well-designed market-based emissions trading scheme as the least-cost way for Australia to move to a low-pollution future.

In closing, I have risen to support this bill as someone who has worked in the hydrocarbon sector, as someone whose scepticism has been noted and as someone who has observed Australia’s largest publicly listed independent oil and gas exploration and production company change its mind too, to support the idea of an emissions trading scheme.

These decisions are not easy decisions for governments to make, they are not easy decisions for parliaments to take and they are not easy matters to debate. But they are essential, and they do require that we in this place work together rather than work against each other. They do require that we work in the interests of our country and not in the narrow interests of our political parties. I commend these bills to the House.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to follow the member for Brand in this debate on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2010 and related bills. He made some interesting comments, and I notice with some degree of interest that he also chaired a task force looking at Northern Australia and the potential for agriculture. Obviously, some of the activities in the north of Australia, particularly some of the burning regimes et cetera, have a role to play in carbon emissions.

Whilst the member for Brand is in the chamber I will briefly comment that like a lot of people from the south who have spent time in the north of Australia, I just cannot believe that a task force with reputable people on it could come up with a fairly simplistic view of the capacity and capability of Northern Australia. The member for Brand is a member of a government which believes that climate change is occurring. I do too—I do not disbelieve that. I think humans have had some impact. There will be argument about that impact, and all of us in this place will be dead before we know what it was. Personally, I operate on the precautionary principle; if there is an issue out there, and if the climate scientists are right, then we should be doing something about it. Having said that, I will talk about whether I am supporting the legislation or not a little bit later.

In terms of the Northern Australian debate, this is what we are told by the climate scientists—and the government’s view is to believe those scientists. Some members may well remember that I introduced what was called a Climate Protection Bill into the parliament—probably 15 or 18 months ago now—which was ridiculed to a certain degree. But part of that legislative package was recognising what the climate scientists were saying in relation to Northern Australia. They were suggesting that the Murray-Darling system, because of climate change, was going to suffer and that there would be up to 30 per cent less water available in the Murray-Darling system—obviously no-one can be too prescriptive. The government’s CPRS arrangements are based on some of these criteria about the way in which weather will change within Australia, not only in a negative sense, as in the Murray-Darling—that is the system I live within—but also in a positive sense: some areas will actually get more rain.

Northern Australia—or part of Northern Australia—is recognised by the climate scientists as being one of those areas that will actually receive more rain because of the increased levels of greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. So we have a situation where, if we believe in the logic, human induced greenhouse gas will create a distorted rainfall pattern in the north of Australia. I suggested in the Climate Protection Bill that, if we were really concerned about what human beings were doing to some of our catchments, we should have a serious look at the engineering of moving some of the human induced additional rainfall in the north of Australia. I am not suggesting piping water from the Kimberley to Sydney; I am referring to parts of Queensland. We should look at the percentage by which the climate scientists are saying that the rainfall will be unnatural because of human induced carbon effects and redistribute that water into the area—the Murray-Darling system—where climate scientists are saying that, because of human induced carbon effects, there will be a reduction in rainfall.

No-one is suggesting that Queensland or New South Wales is causing this; this is a global problem. But we have seen in Copenhagen that human nature is starting to come into this problem and the politics of fixing the problem. We have seen this dreadful example in our own parliament, where the politics of the short term has overtaken any real objective look at what the possibilities are if a tipping point actually does exist and we do start a process that leads to irreversible climate change. The global politics seems to me to be suggesting that human nature—human beings and their short-term attitude to life—will mean that we possibly will not do anything about the problem. If that is the case, we have to have a serious look at what is happening in Northern Australia.

The task force came up with a recommendation that says that Northern Australia, even though it has a lot of water, is limited in water, and the very same people on that task force—or some of them—are suggesting that because of climate change Northern Australia’s rainfall is going to increase. If the globe does nothing, there are a number of things that we should possibly do to protect our people and our climate. One of them may well be redistributing the carbon induced weather pattern changes by way of transferring water. Another one may well be to look seriously at the productive capacity, particularly if we do have a food security problem in the world—I have some issues with that, but the government and the opposition say we do. If we believe that, we or the globe may well need the productive sector in the north of Australia where there is a lot of water and where there is going to be more if we do not do anything about climate change. If the climate scientists are correct, we should be looking at the productive capacity far more seriously than that task force did.

Anybody that has travelled in parts of North Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia would recognise that the arable parts of some of those areas are enormous. I have not got the acreages or the hectares in front of me at the moment, but for the report to identify that there is marginal capacity to increase crop production! People might have issues with crop production, damming rivers, irrigation and those sorts of things, and they are valid issues, but to come out with a report that really does not look terribly much at the capability!

The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, in answer to a question from the member for Kennedy today, talked about the potential increase in the beef industry, as if people are going to rush into that. If anybody looked at the pricing structures within the beef industry and within food generally in First World economies, there is no money in growing food. There is money in the food business—a lot of money—but there is no money in growing food. Many other members in this parliament would be fully aware that the margins in beef production are nominal. To suggest suddenly, ‘Oh, there’s more capacity out there; it’ll all happen,’ to me really creates a nonsense.

So I suggest to the parliamentary secretary that they revisit some of this report, because it really is quite damaging. If we do increase our population over the years, or the globe does, and we do nothing about climate change—there are pressures in Indonesia and parts of Asia in terms of population—we have not seen anything yet in terms of the boat people issue in relation to people wanting to get to a better land. If those meagre acreages mentioned by that task force are all that can be developed by Australians, who knows? In 100 or 200 years, other countries might be utilising that highly productive capacity that is there.

To get to the substance of the bill, I will not be supporting it. I have not supported it in the past. I am not a climate sceptic; I believe that humans are having an impact and that the globe should do something about it. We have two policies. We have the emissions trading scheme that the Rudd government has put up, which has some technical issues in my view. We now have another one, which is called the ‘direct action policy’, from the coalition. They both have the same objective; they both say they will reduce emissions by five per cent. Both of them have some positives and both of them have some negatives, but the real issue to me is the five per cent, and that is why I will not be supporting this legislation. I think that to rearrange the economy with a target level that is so low that a number of other things could achieve that outcome, particularly given the outcome of Copenhagen, says to me that the government is not really serious about this issue.

Part of the basis for my saying that is the way in which the government treated Malcolm Turnbull during the period of negotiation that went on. I pay credit to the member for Wentworth. I have had some issues with Malcolm in the past over water et cetera, but I pay credit to him and I pay credit to the member for Groom for the way in which they conducted themselves in trying to find a consensus of views in relation to what they believed, rightly or wrongly, to be a real issue for the globe. We can all argue about doing it before Copenhagen or after Copenhagen and about the impacts of Copenhagen, and we can all score our points in regard to those sorts of issues. I went to Copenhagen, and in Paris last year I met with some of the IPCC’s economics people who were working on the climate science arrangements. I was in Copenhagen in August, and 10,000 beds were cancelled then. People knew that the thing was going to be a flop; people knew that it was going to be a failure at having real impact in terms of a global decision.

The reason that I mentioned the member for Wentworth and the member for Groom was partly because I think that one of the things that we all hear as parliamentarians is, ‘Why don’t you all go down there and work on something together and make something happen?’ and that was an example of it. I did not agree with the particular legislation but that was an example of where both sides were actually trying to reach an agreement over a very tricky issue. Whilst these good faith negotiations were going on and we were getting reports of them going on to resolve this issue, the Prime Minister and various ministers of the government kept on poking Malcolm Turnbull in the chest—day in, day out—about this so-called division within his own party—and then they expected that party to not react.

The sole reason that we have Tony Abbott in this parliament now as Leader of the Opposition, the sole reason that this emissions trading scheme is going to fail for the third time and the sole reason that the government are having some degree of problems with the polls is the very bad tactics by Kevin Rudd and other senior members of the government. To expect people to negotiate in good faith, and whilst those negotiations are going on in supposed good faith—and I believe they probably were—to keep beating them up politically, day in and day out, and then expect the status quo to remain is quite nonsensical. As I said, I will not be supporting the legislation because I believe the targets are far too low and I think the activities of the government in terms of the way they treated the member for Wentworth indicated that they were not serious in terms of this issue—that they really are not serious about the importance of this issue. I have heard all of the words time and time again. If they had been serious they would have given the former Leader of the Opposition some room to move, rather than pillorying him almost daily about the short-term politics of the problem that he was having with the right wing of his party.

As I said, I have had issues with Malcolm Turnbull in the past, particularly over water issues, but I think it was to his great credit that he actually stood for something that he believed in. I think the government should have given him a bit more breathing space in order to try and come to something that there could be consensus across the nation about, because that is really what the people want. Now we have this farcical division over five per cent dividing the nation on whether one is cheaper or the other is cheaper when neither of them make any meaningful difference to anything other than perhaps the economy. There are a number of good things in both of them. Some of the soil carbon issues are definitely worth pursuing. There are issues as to whether you can fit those into a marketplace or not, but they are definitely worth pursuing. The biochar issue is something that many of us have raised over a few years now, and it is good to see that those issues are actually in there and are being looked at in a serious sense.

The other issue that I raise which is related to these bills is Australia’s non-participation under the Howard government in the Kyoto agreement. A lot of what we are seeing now is flowing from the Kyoto arrangements, and the current government has endorsed them. The mention of soil carbon, for instance, is difficult in an emissions trading scheme because it is not recognised by the Kyoto arrangements, and some people are arguing that it should be into the future. I think that is something that seriously needs to be looked at. Personally, as a farmer, I see the soil carbon issue as more about soil health and drought policy rather than about being able to trade it in a market. Irrespective of whether it can be traded in the market or not, I think it is something that the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the Prime Minister and others should have a very serious look at, because if we are talking about revamping drought policy, enhancing soil and organic matter is one of the ways in which we can do that.

Related to this issue has been the issue of property rights. Only last week we saw a protest outside the building. I attended that protest. The man who the protest was held around was a man called Peter Spencer, and I have had a bit to do with Peter over the years. He was making an allegation—quite rightly, in my view—that under the Howard government the land clearing laws were stopped by the states and that even though we had not signed the Kyoto agreement in terms of carbon reduction, Australia had achieved an outcome which was positive. The Climate Institute, which is a long way from where Peter Spencer would be and which is an organisation, headed by John Connor, that I have regard for, has also said that the farmers of this country—I am not talking about soil carbon; I am talking about land clearing—have actually paid—

Debate interrupted.