James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction. Will the minister update the House on how Australia's approach to the development and deployment of new energy technologies will help meet the challenges posed by rising global emissions? Is the minister aware of any alternative approaches?

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Sturt for his question and for his passionate focus on the role of energy technologies. It was a pleasure, recently, earlier this year to visit the Australian Hydrogen Centre in Adelaide, where they're feeding hydrogen into the pipelines down in South Australia. What a great project.

Now, like all of us on this side of the House, he knows that the secret—the way to reduce emissions whilst we keep a strong economy, to drive investment and drive jobs as we bring down emissions—is to ensure that we deploy and develop technologies that are going to achieve those outcomes, and that's why we've developed our Technology Investment Roadmap, which is all about focusing on those technologies where Australia has competitive advantage, where we can bring down emissions here in Australia and around the world. And we know, on this side, if it's not to be technology, it is to be taxes. It's a choice. One of the technologies that we focused on is carbon capture and storage. There are 59 carbon capture and storage projects around the world, the biggest of which is here in Australia and almost half of which are in the United States. I note that President-elect Biden has recently said that he will 'double down' on carbon capture and storage. He will double down and continue to invest and provide incentives for carbon capture and storage in the United States. Alongside carbon capture and storage, there is soil carbon, stored energy, low-emissions steel and aluminium, and, of course, hydrogen, as I mentioned earlier. It is about choice. It's about technology versus taxes.

Today the member for Hunter made his choice. He called time. He doubled down. He called time on the Leader of the Opposition. He confirmed what we on this side of the House all feared: that the Labor Party has walked away from those hardworking Australians that they used to support. They've walked away from their blue-collar base. The member for Hunter said today, 'How did it all go so terribly wrong?' Well, four words: the member for Hindmarsh. But it gets worse than this. We hear from the member for Hunter that, after 14 years of trying, the Labor Party has made not one contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gases in this country. Not one contribution. We're meeting and beating our targets. We met and beat Kyoto. It's time for others to join the member for Hunter and stand up for hardworking Australians because that is what we do on this side of the House every day.