Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. In July 2011 the Prime Minister said that 100 per cent of stationary energy will need to come from clean sources by the middle of the century. Prime Minister, what happened to you?

Mr Husic interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Chifley is warned.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After being verballed by the honourable member, let me address the issue of renewable energy. The objective—the obligation, in fact—that we have is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with the Paris treaty that was entered into last year and which we expect to ratify very shortly. As you know, they are very substantial reductions—26 per cent to 28 per cent by 2030 on a per capita basis, which is really the only reasonable means of comparison. They are the second highest in the OECD, so they are very substantial cuts on emissions.

Renewable energy—clean energy, if that is what the honourable member is referring to—plays a part in that. There are many other measures that play a part in all of that. It is a complex business, reducing emissions, as we know. The object of government policy is to do so at least cost. The Emissions Reduction Fund has been very successful, and we are well on track to meet our 2020 targets—indeed, to beat our 2020 targets. Only as recently as 2012 the Labor government was forecasting that we would miss our 2020 targets. In fact, we will beat them, I believe, by about 78 million tonnes, so the government's progress in this regard is going very well.

The important point honourable members have got to recognise is that if you turn these technologies into matters of ideology, if you turn them into matters of some kind of secular religion—if that is not a contradiction—or if you mythologise them, then you will mislead yourself and have the result of undermining energy security and affordability or, indeed, your path to emission reduction. These are engineering and technology issues. We know what we need to achieve and what his state has lamentably failed to achieve. We need to keep the lights on. We need energy to be affordable—not the most expensive in Australia, as it is in South Australia. And we need to meet our emissions reduction target. We need to achieve those three objectives. That is what the government's policy is all about. We are doing it, but we are doing it in a clear-eyed, hard-headed, rational manner. This is not an ideological issue; it is an engineering one. And we are approaching it pragmatically and effectively.