Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think about the activists across Macnamara who, for not just this election but for years, have raised their voices in support of climate action, people who have turned up to community forums and who have engaged in community groups. The minister for health is at the table. In his former capacity as shadow minister for climate change, he joined me at the St Kilda RSL a few years ago and spoke to literally hundreds of concerned people about climate change and what can be done. At that time, at that meeting, there was a deep sense of frustration at the coalition's inaction on climate change. But today we have a chance, and as part of the Climate Change Bill 2022 we have an opportunity, to make change and to take a momentous step forward, and of that I am very, very proud. The responsibility that the people of Macnamara have given me in asking me to represent them in this place is something I hear unequivocally, and I take extremely seriously the request that the people of Macnamara have given me: to say that we need to tackle climate change and we must be part of the solution.

I acknowledge organisations like the Port Phillip EcoCentre, who have been tireless in their engagement of our citizens in citizen science and in protecting our local wildlife in a number of our nature reserves, from Westgate Park—underneath the iconic West Gate Bridge—all the way down to our brand new nature reserve, the opening of which is going to happen this week, where we're going to be seeing an incredible dedication of urban land back to the environment. It's going to be a celebration of local indigenous wildlife and plants. The Port Phillip EcoCentre is at the very heart of that, as well as the Elsternwick Park Association.

We have PECAN, which is the peak body of many of our climate activist groups locally, who do an outstanding job. They held a climate debate at the last election, which I was proud to be a participant in. The Australian Conservation Foundation has been constantly engaging with me, and I appreciate all of their engagement. I especially appreciate the Macnamara chapter of the Australian Conservation Foundation, whose activists are tireless in their pursuit of better climate action. I also acknowledge the Australian Youth Climate Coalition and, of course, the Labor activists in LEAN—the Labor Environment Action Network—who have, at every single stage, kept the North Star in the front of their minds and focused on how to get action and how to be a part of a parliament that takes action on climate change. And that's what this bill is.

This bill is the product of a significant amount of work that the minister did in opposition, where we put forward our policies, like having over 80 solar banks around the country and 400 community batteries, including at Southbank in my electorate, where we have a huge number of people living in apartments who can't access solar panels on their roofs but want to access cheap, clean, renewable energy. Our community batteries program is one of the really exciting things that we're going to roll out around the country. Then there are our electric vehicle policies, our policies to support agriculture and, of course, the safeguard mechanisms. That was all then modelled, and as part of that model we have seen that it will cost the amount that will be budgeted in the October budget, as well as all the funding that's required as part of the RepuTex modelling. We are going to achieve at least 43 per cent emission reductions by 2030 as a result of those policies.

It's all there on the website for people to see. I know that the coalition have been sceptical and say that there are no details. That's clearly because they haven't read the document, which is available on the website for any Australian to go and see—the Powering Australia policy. That, thankfully, is now the policy of the Australian government. It is also the policy that's supported by a whole range of stakeholder groups, including the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Industry Group, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Australian Energy Council, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Smart Energy Council and the Clean Energy Council.

Literally across the economy and across the country, Australians are united in tackling climate change, not just because they're bleeding-heart lefties—as I know many on that side of the House like to bandy around—but because it is good for our economy. Climate action is one of the single most important economic stimulus things that we can do for our next generation. Tackling climate change is literally going to create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the Australian economy. It's going to help power businesses via cheaper energy. Our climate action is going to be the thing that powers Australia into the future. We have a desert the size of the Sahara and an offshore wind abundance that is perhaps bigger than that of any other country in the world. Our potential is limitless.

You only have to look at what's going on in the Northern Territory right now, where we have a $20 billion investment being made in the Northern Territory as a part of the Sun Cable project to start exporting solar energy to Singapore, potentially powering up to 15 per cent of Singapore's energy needs. That's just the first time that we're exporting solar energy, the first time that Australia can potentially export renewable energy.

It's exciting, and it's jobs—jobs in our regions. I know that there are people on the other side of the House who are afraid of what change might mean, and there are communities that are protective of their own jobs. Of course, that's fine. Of course we support workers in this country. Of course we support workers in the Hunter Valley. Of course we support workers in Queensland. They have literally powered our country, but if we want to think about what is going to be there for the next generation and what sort of jobs we want to create for future generations, what prosperity we want to ensure future generations of Australians to have, it is going to be in these incredible new industries.

We have got our targets, which are designed by policies and have been modelled by RepuTex, and we are going to legislate them. That is the clearest way to settle on an energy policy, something that those opposite couldn't do, despite 22 cracks at it. We had the NEG, we had Malcolm Turnbull—remember that guy? He lost his job over their energy policies. But we are going to legislate it and it's going to pass both houses of the parliament, something that our economy has been crying out for.

As part of this legislation, we are also going to enshrine that legislation, our pathway towards a net zero, in the essential government agencies like the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, like the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and like the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, so that they take into account government policy, which is to lower emissions to bring our country towards net zero. It is a pretty simple proposition. We will not take the clean energy bit out of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. We're not going to take the renewables out of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. We're going to ensure that those agencies and other government agencies are focused on lowering our emissions and achieving Australia's climate change targets.

The other thing that this bill does is ensure that we reinvest in the Climate Change Authority and that it has all of the resources that it needs to provide frank and fearless advice to the government. The minister will then be required to come into this place and be transparently accountable for Australia's progress in achieving our climate action.

I remember the dark old days of the Morrison government when they completely gutted the Climate Change Authority. There was no accountability. At the dispatch box the minister would pretend that everything was hunky-dory when it clearly wasn't. And the Australian people knew that it wasn't. That's why we're going to create and support the institutions that guarantee Australia does this and does it properly. This is good reform. It is sensible reform. It is reform that the Australian people demanded. It is reform I am really proud of. It is reform that we can all be proud of: that we stood in this place and took a gigantic step forward on climate action. Australians said, 'We want to end the climate wars,' and they're over. Instead of bickering and denial and complete obfuscation, we have a bill—a bill in this place that says Australia is on a pathway towards net zero, and that is the law of this nation. That is something that I am extremely proud to be a part of.

I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge, obviously, the Prime Minister, but also the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, who has negotiated in good faith with all members of this place except those who dealt themselves out of the conversation. I acknowledge that there are members who are a part of the coalition who would like to still be in this place, and members of the coalition party room now, who wanted to support this bill.

I say to anyone in this place—and I congratulate the crossbench and any other members who will be supporting this—that this is the right side of history. When Australians look back at this moment and this place to see who was willing to support Australia taking a step forward on climate action and who was willing to deny it, I know where I'm going to be. I know where people on this side of the House are going to be. We're going to be on the right side of history. We are going to tackle this and we're going to take a momentous step forward in our efforts to tackle climate change.

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What we have seen today is, once again, the Labor Party being all about feelings. That's fine. You can be about feelings. It'll feel good for people to vote this way because they think that is a good outcome for them, but on this side we are more concerned about facts and the impacts that this will have, particularly in regional Australia. We've even seen the Treasurer say that the budget is about feelings. What's next? The number nine will be upset with the number six because it is not closer to zero? If there was a snake oil salesman around—those opposite would be able to sell that too!

But, if we come back to reality, we've seen the Minister for Climate Change and Energy claim multiple times that there will be more than 600,000 jobs in this proposal. Yet he was called out by a former Labor member of this place who said that that was just not factual; it was nonsense. If we want to look at a comparison to see how difficult that is, let's look at what the resources sector delivers for Australia. It puts over $400 billion into the economy and supplies around 270,000 direct jobs. Yet those opposite, including the climate minister, want to claim that they will develop 600,000 jobs in this country from their one policy. Think about the size of the resources sector—how big it is, how many decades it took to develop, how much infrastructure it needed in place to deliver those high-paying jobs in Australia. What it says very clearly is that that is just not the case.

Once again, we are talking about feelings. We warned the Australian people at the last election what a Labor-Greens government would look like. We warned them. Those opposite, including the now Prime Minister, said, 'This will not be the case. We won't impact coal; we won't impact oil; we won't impact gas'—those parts of our economy that drive enormous amounts of jobs into regional Australia in particular. Yet today we have seen the Leader of the Greens at the National Press Club declare that a deal's been done. The minister for climate was asked about this in a question time and refused to make comment or to answer.

Here's the deal. According to the Leader of the Greens, government agencies such as Export Finance Australia, which have in the past funded coal and gas projects, will be forced to take climate targets into account. That would see them curbed from supporting these types of projects—oil, coal and gas. And the new limits will include Infrastructure Australia and the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund. I say to the government: what are you going to do with the projects that are already approved and perhaps not yet started? Will you once again destroy our international reputation as a place for safe investment? Are you going to take that away as well? Those of us who live in regional Australia and every single Australian that is working in an export industry in regional Australia, whether it is resources or agriculture, know that this is where our jobs come from. If I recall the numbers correctly, over 80 per cent of all of our exported goods come from the regions. These are the reasons that the people we represent have employment. It's how they pay their way. It's how they pay for their home and their mortgage. It's how they put their kids through school. Yet we have now seen a deal between Labor and the Greens that will ensure that those industries are strangled out of finance, even with support from the government. Look at how many jobs are being delivered as a part of these organisations, whether it's EFA or the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund. They are real. They are real projects that have started in the regions and that are underway because they had some support.

We've seen Australia's banking sector turn away from Australia's resources sector. What's next? Will it be agriculture? We hear a lot about electricity, but electricity represents only just over 30 per cent of emissions in this country. We don't hear anything from those opposite about what's actually occurred over the last few years—that is, when we were in government and across that period of time since 2005, we reduced emissions by 20 per cent. They've gone down.

All I am saying is that we want to see our response be proportional to our contribution. We cannot continue to destroy the things that deliver jobs into our regions, and that is what is now being proposed. We have seen the climate minister say many times, 'We don't need to do this.' Well then, don't. You are out there saying to regional Australia, 'Your jobs are not warranted; they are not deserved,' and you are going to make sure they don't continue. You have some kind of fantasy that there will be some 600,000 jobs delivered under this one policy. It is really difficult to get that many jobs. It genuinely is.

We continue to hear about feelings, about how wonderful you'll all feel about it, but you have sold out the regions. You committed in the election not to impact them. It doesn't matter whether it's through finance or some other mechanism; those jobs could be gone tomorrow, because it takes finance to run these big businesses. You need to have cash flow. You need to have access to finance. You need to be able to continue to deliver. You only have to look at what has happened on occasions around guarantees.

If we look at the proposal and we take Mr Finkel's suggestion of 20,000 square kilometres of solar—it doesn't sound like that much—it's two million hectares. Now, for those who don't work in agriculture or who might not work in these big broadscale, broadacre areas, to give you some comparison, the entire Australian sugar industry has less than 400,000 hectares to deliver some 30-odd million tonne of sugarcane. Yet the suggestion is that you will put a blanket over two million hectares of our country. It has to be cleared. It has to be levelled. You have to get cultural approvals. What does this do to the environment?

What we are putting forward are facts, and these are the facts: quite simply, everyone opposite knows it will only work in the daylight hours; it will depreciate over time; it will need to be replaced; and where I come from there are these things called cyclones. If you have a category 5 cyclone tear across the coast, this equipment is gone. It is just not there anymore. So, whether you look at reliability or availability, quite simply, for utilisation of solar, once again we're back to facts. It is low-20 per cent. For wind turbines, it is low-30 per cent. You cannot just wonderfully wave a magic wand and have electricity generation appear when something else doesn't work. Under all the international engineering standards, once you have penetration of intermittent generation of more than 10 per cent you require one-to-one backup. You have to have one-to-one backup.

The proposal at the moment around batteries is ridiculously expensive. It is extortionately expensive. Quite simply, you are saying to the Australian people that they have to pay that cost. They can't afford it. Right now, interest rates are up, the cost of food is up and the cost of fuel is up. They simply don't have that disposable cash to pay more. That is just a statement of fact.

If we look at this, when we have two million hectares of solar, what are we going to do when one of those companies goes broke and leaves it there? There should be guarantees on these installations, the same as there have been in many resource projects across the country. What are you going to do with them? If you are going to replace them every 20 years, they'll have to be rehabbed. Someone will have to pay for that. It can't be local government. I'm sure the states won't want to do it. It's pretty straightforward: these are factual issues that need to be dealt with.

There is the idea that you can build transmission lines all over the country. Well, there's this thing called physics. Physics says that it's just not that easy. You're suggesting you have to shift as much energy through a straw as you'd need to shift through six fire hoses.

Quite simply, all we are saying is that we want to see things that work. Of course you can implement intermittent wind and solar. But, once again, once that's above 10 per cent you have to back it up one to one, and that is incredibly expensive. I know I'm coming to the end of my time, and clearly there's something going on, but it is not members of the government who will be impacted by this. It is not members of the government who will have thousands of wind turbines in their backyards—and it is thousands. It is not the members of the government who will have two million hectares of solar.

Now, I look forward to seeing the environmental approvals and cultural approvals to clear two million hectares of land. In Queensland you can't clear land to get productivity for cattle. The idea that you can clear this much is quite simply ludicrous. So you will get to the point where you have to make real decisions to keep the lights on, and right now the option is coal, because those assets are there. So use the technology, use CCS. Keep those things sweated. We need those generators to be in place.

Look across to Queensland. Do you want to know why your power prices are expensive in Queensland? It's because the Premier and the state Labor government put $5 billion on top of their costs. They took a dividend in the last budget of $800 million, which is yet to be paid, and are booking over a billion dollars into their budget from electricity out of the government owned corporations. It is a significant amount of money. It is paid for by all Australians, and they simply cannot afford it. So I implore you once again to make decisions based on facts and physics, not on feelings. It really makes a difference.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I congratulate you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on your election as Deputy Speaker. I say to the previous speaker, who isn't a bad bloke: for goodness sake, speak about facts when it comes to climate change. Yes, we should listen to the facts and we should listen to the science, because the science is very clear: we need to act. And the facts are very clear: by acting, we can actually create economic activity and create jobs.

The fact is that, in our first month in office, we updated our nationally determined contribution under the Paris Agreement to reflect the target that we were elected on—43 per cent by 2030—and to set Australia on the path to net zero by 2050. We sent a message to the world, to our friends, to business and to our trading partners that, for the first time in a decade, Australia has a government that takes climate change seriously. We have a government that understands the opportunity which is there, particularly for the regions, in acting on climate change.

Passing this legislation will send a great message to the people of Australia—that we are taking real action on climate change, that the decade of inaction and denial is over, and that Australia is out of the naughty corner in international forums and is once again engaging with the global community, who understand the importance of acting on climate change and understand that this is not just an environmental issue but the biggest economic transformation that we will see globally in our lifetime—as big and as significant as the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was based upon fossil fuels. It brought great prosperity, but we also know that it is changing our climate. That is why we need to respond to the science. Australians knows that, by responding, we can create that certainty and can drive new jobs, new industries with new technologies and a new era of prosperity for Australian manufacturing.

This legislation is also about our national security. One thing we found when it came to the pandemic was that Australia needs to be more self-reliant. We need to be able to stand up for ourselves and our economy and to be more self-sufficient. One of the things that cleaner, cheaper energy will do is drive advanced manufacturing in this country. We should continue to export our resources that we have, but where possible we should value add because when you value add you create jobs and economic activity there.

The risks of climate change are here right now. This isn't some economic debate in an academic journal. Australians in recent times have experienced first drought then bushfires, flood and more flood. Australians have experienced the catastrophic consequences on human beings, families and communities. They've also experienced the economic costs of climate change, with whole towns destroyed by fire and with devastation by floods. Some parts of Sydney in the member for Macquarie's electorate have been impacted by bushfires and then three floods in a very short period of time. I don't know what it will take for those opposite to wake up and say: 'Yes, we were wrong. The science is clear. The science told us that there would be more extreme weather events and they would be more intense, and that is what is happening.'

I remember when the bushfires were occurring here and government members and ministers were standing up saying: 'How dare you relate that to climate change. That that was being woke.' The people of regional Australia and the people impacted by those bushfires, whether they be in Gippsland, Eden-Monaro, the Blue Mountains or other communities on the North Coast of New South Wales, know the harsh reality of climate change. That's why we've seen a real transformation in the amount of support that is there for action.

I thank those on the crossbenches who have been prepared to engage with us constructively on this legislation. They've been prepared to put forward their ideas within the parameters that we weren't about to change—our essential mandate that we had of 43 per cent by 2030. When you put in place the mechanisms that are there in the Powering Australia plan, you will see the market operating to drive that change through the economy and to drive those jobs through the economy. That will drive that change.

We also understand that we need to bring communities with us, to make sure, where there are changes in the nature of work in communities, that communities aren't left behind. We're determined to do that as well. That's why, when we signed the nationally determined contribution to the UNFCCC, the minister and I stood in front of the Business Council of Australia's secretary and president, the Australian Industry Group representing Australian manufacturers, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the National Farmers Federation, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Clean Energy Council, the Australian Conservation Foundation and others, including Greenpeace and others who've come out in support.

What you have is people not quietly but loudly screaming out for action, saying, 'Enough is enough.' We need to actually get on with the business of transition, of putting in place structures that will encourage that investment to occur. Because when that investment occurs, we know, from the modelling that we did through RepuTex, over 600,000 jobs will be created, and half a million of those will be in regional and rural Australia. We know the incredible opportunity there will be from the change that will happen in our economy.

We see it with innovative Australian businesses. We particularly see it in the regions. Projects like Sun Cable, which will be the world's largest solar farm, will use renewable energy. Those opposite are a bit obsessed by nuclear. Well this is the largest solar power plant. It's power's from up in the sky—and it's free! The Sun Cable project will use solar power to help power up to, and perhaps beyond, 20 per cent of Singapore's power needs. This is what we mean when we talk about being a renewable energy superpower, as Australia can actually export that energy. And, because it's renewable, because it's free, it's not finite. It's infinite what we can achieve in this century, whereby renewables will dominate the century as we go forward. That's why this is such an opportunity.

The market for batteries, for example, is only going to grow. We've already introduced our legislation to make electric vehicles cheaper. We have nickel, we have copper, we have lithium, we have everything that goes into a battery. Why aren't we making things here? There's not a solar panel in the world that doesn't have some intellectual innovation that was created here in Australia at UNSW or ANU just up the road. But we hardly make any of them here. If we actually open our eyes to the opportunities, we can transform this economy. We can create jobs. We can make such an enormous difference going forward.

I think this is as important a piece of legislation as will come before this parliament. It's a matter, as well, of our responsibility, and I say this to the young people out there: when you know that pollution is being created, you have a responsibility to act on it. Just as we don't accept people just putting their rubbish on the ground so someone else will pick it up, we have a responsibility to not say, 'We won't worry about emissions; we'll worry about future generations fixing it.' We have a great responsibility to this beautiful island continent that we live on to make sure we act on climate change. This government will. And then we can tell our children we stepped up, we took responsibility and we met the moment.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate the Prime Minister and the entire Labor caucus coming to hear my words of wisdom—it's very much appreciated! And I appreciate the fact that the Prime Minister does have a mandate to bring this to the parliament. I appreciate that, and I accept that. But I also appreciate the fact that the minister for climate, the minister responsible for this legislation, said that it wasn't necessary to bring it into the parliament.

Back on 1 November 2019 the National Party had a meeting at Nagambie, and Kevin Sheedy, the very much respected Australian football coach and social commentator, had quite a tome that he brought to his speech. It was a book about all of the worst disasters that had struck humankind since mankind first started walking on two legs. He referred to this book and he said: 'I want you to know that not one of these disasters has ever hit Australia. It's a book about all the deaths, all the tragedies and all the calamities that have occurred, and it doesn't mention Australia once.'

I have here Courage in Crisis, a book published in 2011 that talks of the worst disasters in Australia's history. It talks of the 12,000-plus people who lost their lives in the 1918-19 influenza epidemic, which we heard much about during the COVID global pandemic; it talks of the 1,013 people who died in the 1946-55 polio epidemic which hit Australia; it talks of the 727 people who died in 1941 when the HMAS Sydney and Kormoran had their famous battle in the Indian Ocean near Shark Bay; it talks of the 550 people who died nationwide between 1900 and 1910 from the bubonic plague; it talks of the 438 people who died between December 1938 and February 1939 from the heatwave that struck Victoria, and no-one mentioned climate change; it talks of the 437 people who died in the 1895-96 heatwave which struck south-eastern Australia; it talks of the 410 people who died on 4 March 1899 from Cyclone Mahina in Bathurst Bay in Queensland; and it talks of the 406 people who died in 1845 in the Cataraqui shipwreck off King Island in Tasmania. My point is that they are the worst disasters that have struck Australia and not one of them mentions climate change.

Government membe rs interjecting—

You may laugh and mock and knock, but, if you were listening to some of the commentators, you would think that each and every day we are losing people to climate change, when, in fact, what it is doing is causing mental anguish amongst our children. But don't take my word for it; the renowned peer-reviewed journal The LancetPlanetary Health says:

Climate change has important implications for the health and futures of children and young people—

and, yes, I'm not a denier; I accept it—

yet they have little power to limit its harm, making them vulnerable to climate anxiety. This is the first large-scale investigation of climate anxiety in children and young people globally and its relationship with perceived government response.

I was just at a book launch at which I heard General Patton's quote: 'If everyone is thinking alike, then someone isn't thinking.' That is so true. We talk of the climate wars, and again it is probably somewhat of an exaggeration to use the word 'wars' when we're talking about the national discussion about climate. It's not a war; a war is what is happening in Ukraine at the moment with Russia's invasion.

It's good to have a sensible, rational debate about action against climate change and what we're doing about it. I heard the Prime Minister in question time just today talk about the 604,000 jobs that will be created through the government's climate response. Five out of six, he claims, will be in regional Australia.

So many of those opposite are always talking about their people being concerned about what's being done about the climate, their people being concerned about what the future holds and their people being concerned about their children and grandchildren. I respect that—I do. But it is regional Australia that will bear the brunt of this if we get it wrong and if we push too hard too early.

The Prime Minister just mentioned this. Why aren't we manufacturing more? Indeed, I tend to think that the mining industry gets demonised when it comes to action on climate. We know BHP and a lot of the other big miners are taking action and taking it in their stride, but each and every one of us has one of these—a mobile phone—and the elements of mobile phones are rare earths obtained through mining.

It's all well and good to talk about wind farms and solar power. I have farming families at the moment who are desperately worried about converting prime agricultural land in and around Wagga Wagga to massive solar farms, foreign-owned solar farms. I talk to the Goodwins, the Kirkpatricks, the Martins, the Killens, the Roaches and many others besides who are very worried about prime agricultural land being taken up by solar farms.

The solar farms do not have to go through local government approval processes, because they are considered state strategically important. They only have to be ticked off by the state government. Therefore, the local council, in this case Wagga Wagga City Council, doesn't even get a say. Yet these farming families—some of whom have been there for generations—are very concerned, not just about the appearance of these solar farms and what they will do to the landscape, but about taking away the food and fibre production of some of the best farming land you will find, not just in Australia but, indeed, in the world. They want a moratorium placed on it.

We should be very mindful and very careful about where we place our solar farms. But make no mistake, they will all be in regional Australia. I appreciate that the Prime Minister extols the virtue of what he is doing—and good on him for that. He is, after all, the Prime Minister. But there won't be any farms built in Marrickville or Newtown or anywhere in Grayndler. There will not be any solar farms. It will all be occurring in regional Australia. I appreciate too he and others, including the health minister, say that it is going to provide jobs and opportunities for Australians, but I do query the 600,000-plus number.

In December 2021 Labor made a promise to cut power bills. We were approaching election time. We were all wondering when the election might or might not be called. Whilst Labor made this promise—they said that they would cut power bills whilst reducing emissions—these bills only legislate one of those targets. That promise to reduce household power bills by $275 by 2025 is the first broken promise of this government. It is a fallacy. They won't do that.

What will happen is that the Labor Party will be acquiescing to the Greens through this, and on other measures that will come forward as a result of this bill passing the House of Representatives and this bill passing the Senate—as it truly will. The Labor Party, the Albanese-Bandt government, will only legislate the emissions target and not the price target. Who pays? How do we get there? They're questions which people right throughout our nation are asking.

One of this government's first acts in office was to draw up a new nationally determined contribution, or NDC, the formal statement of Australia's commitment to the target under the Paris Agreement.

I know they went around, and so many candidates did, throughout the election campaign and absolutely demonised what we had done about emissions as a government over those nine years. We met and we beat all of our international targets. We absolutely met all of our obligations, but we did it in a responsible and practical way. We did it so that we didn't place the mining industry at risk. We did it in such a way that we didn't place our prime agricultural land at risk. We did it in such a way that power prices were coming down. We did it in such a way that jobs weren't being lost. We did it in such a way that people had a certainty about their futures.

When former Prime Minister Scott Morrison went to Glasgow he had that net zero target by 2050, which was what had always been called for. Then it became net zero by 2035 and then net zero by 2030. Who knows what the future will hold when the member for Melbourne decides that he will tell the Prime Minister, 'We have got some new target now' and that is the rub. That is the big concern for regional Australians who, like me, doubt the 604,000 jobs that are supposedly going to be created. They do worry about wind farms and solar farms taking up prime agricultural land, and I appreciate exactly where they're coming from.

Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm glad to make some remarks in support of this legislation—the Climate Change Bill 2022 and the Climate Change (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2022. It is genuinely momentous legislation. It's a change that this country has been crying out for for a long time. I think all of us in the first half of this year, and particularly through the campaign, would have had a range of different experiences of where our communities were at and where our nation was at in terms of the challenges that we face and the way that the people we represent see those challenges. I'm always mindful, as a representative, of the interests of younger people. We must always remember the tendency for there to be intergenerational unfairness, and climate change is a great example of where, as the Prime Minister said before, there's a huge risk that communities and governments and decision-makers, as we are in this place, don't take our responsibility to do what's necessary and instead leave a completely unacceptable burden on young people and people, essentially, who will be citizens of this country in the future.

For me, the standout moment in the first half of the year was during the campaign, when I went to Fremantle College—which used to be South Fremantle Senior High School when I was growing up—to talk to high school students in years 11 and 12, I think. I spoke to them about Australian democracy and how important it was and how they should feel their right and their entitlement to participate in how decisions are made. While I was explaining various things about how I represent a federal seat and the three levels of government and all of the other bits and pieces, there was a young woman to the left in the front of the crowd who caught my eye because she had her hand up like this. From the moment I was introduced to the stage she had her hand up, and she kept her hand up even though it was clear that I was going to be speaking for 10 minutes or so by way of introduction before we got to questions. I think a teacher at some point came over to her and said, 'Hey, listen: he's going to say a few things and then there'll be time for questions.' She kept a head up. The teacher came over and she put her hand down temporarily, and then the teacher went away and she put her hand up.

It was clear to me that she was in distress, and as soon as I finished speaking, which I tried to do pretty quickly, hers was the first question. Her question was: 'How can it be that—when we know the science, when we've experienced the bushfires, when we know that the last eight years have been the hottest years on the planet on record and when Australia experienced a bushfire event that included the largest bushfire in our history and we saw three billion animals killed and 19 million hectares torched—you as a representative and all the people that you're with and the institution that you're a part of have done nothing? How can that be the case?' She was angry. She was distressed. She was insistent. It was kind of a question and a statement mixed in together. The teachers, I think, were very supportive of her. At some point they kind of encouraged her to wrap it up. She went on for several minutes, and she was so passionate and insistent and disappointed at what was going on.

That really stuck with me because, when you work in this place and you have the privilege of being part of decision-making, you can start to be a bit desensitised to what it's actually like for people who are watching what we do with great expectation for how we should respond to things that are obvious and be prepared to consider things that are necessary. So I say to that young woman and to young people in Australia: you're right to be disappointed and frustrated and distressed. You're right to look with a huge amount of dismay at the way national government has conducted itself in this country, particularly over the last 10 years, because it's been appalling. I say that to young people in my part of the world.

A lot of the focus during the bushfires was, of course, on the terrible inferno on the east coast. We had similar events in Western Australia that were, I guess, not as noteworthy from a media point of view because they didn't involve loss of homes and lives, but they did involve 35 per cent of the Stirling Range National Park being burnt to the ground over 2019-20. We had, in the most recent summer, the hottest summer on record in Western Australia. The average daily temperature was a full degree hotter than it has ever been before. In previous summers, the record for days over 40 degrees was seven. This recent summer we had 13. We had six days of over 40 degrees in a row. We had more days over 35 then we have ever experienced before.

Young people know what's happening. They are clued in to the science in Australia and the science internationally. They have watched what's happened in this place under the previous government with justifiable dismay, distress and rage because what they have essentially seen is their future being utterly ignored and their wellbeing and the wellbeing of biodiversity in Australia, for which we're all responsible, being utterly ignored. This government isn't going to allow that to stand. This government, in passing this legislation, is doing some quite different.

I say to young people: Your feelings of anger, distress, disappointment and disbelief are all utterly justified. But look at what is happening in this country now. Look what those of you who voted in the recent election have been able to bring about in terms of change. Look at what has occurred in the first few months of this government already. Unlike when the previous government went to Glasgow, where the expectation was countries would come with greater ambition and the last government could barely be bothered to take a glossy pamphlet and didn't shift what was already an inadequate nationally determined contribution of 26 to 28 per cent one iota, one of the first acts of the Albanese Labor government was to significantly shift that dial to commit to 43 per cent, which Professor Mark Howden, the director of the Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions at the ANU and a vice-chair of the IPCC, has said is entirely consistent with the obligations set out at Glasgow and entirely consistent with Australia's obligations and intentions to get to net zero by 2050.

We know that 43 per cent is not the end of the story; 43 per cent is the beginning. So are all the other changes that we're making. We're restoring the Climate Change Authority so that we can have proper transparency and accountability, ensuring that there will be an annual statement of ministerial responsibility. I think those who claim that passing this legislation is unnecessary and only symbolic miss a pretty big point. While there is a prerogative of the executive to go and make treaty commitments, it is right that we as parliamentarians, as the representatives of the people, get to have our say. It is entirely up to everyone in this House to vote on these bills, and then it will be the same for those in the other place. That endorsement by the parliament is a powerful thing in terms of certainty and clarity but also democratic integrity. It means that the representatives of the people in Australia are endorsing that commitment and are essentially calling on the government, the responsible ministers, to deliver on those commitments.

The change that we are making with this legislation has been a long time coming and it represents a belated important step on a path that has been neglected for a long time. It is utterly necessary for our broad health and wellbeing—our human health and our environmental health. It is utterly necessary in terms of our leadership as a middle power country, the 13th-largest economy in the world, a nation that has among the highest per capita emissions in the world. It's absolutely our responsibility to reflect those facts with our actions in our own interests and in keeping with the leadership that Australia has traditionally shown, which has been sadly lacking over the last 10 years.

I look forward to these changes because they are necessary, despite the fear mongering that we will unfortunately continue to hear in this debate. This is not a balanced thing between imposts on the one hand and benefits on the other. The benefits run in both directions. There are enormous economic benefits, job benefits and pollution reduction benefits as well as climate benefits. So I support this bill wholeheartedly, and I thank the young people of Australia for their patience.

Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak to the Climate Change Bill 2022 as the representative of my community of Goldstein. I'm aware that some members of the Goldstein community will be disappointed with the legislated target of 43 per cent carbon emissions reduction by 2030. I agree with you. We need to do better than that. The science says we should be hitting higher targets. I went to the election believing, based on scientific modelling and evidence, that 60 per cent is a realistic target within that time frame. My position has not changed. But there is will that is in the majority in this place, and certainly that will far exceeds the stalling of the last decade, which saw our nation go to COP26 with a grossly inadequate target of 26 to 28 per cent. It was a target which did not take responsibility for our environment, our industries and businesses, our regional communities and their deserved just transition, or the future of our children. As parliamentarians and as leaders, we do have a duty of care to our communities on climate.

However, progress needs to be stepped through, and this bill has yielded a collaborative process between government and the crossbench that I believe reflects the kind of approach to politics that Goldstein voted me in here to help provide. I commend the work of the member for Warringah, whose tireless work on climate helped bring about the climate election. Finally our communities have spoken. I appreciate the work and intent of the climate change minister and the willingness from his office to engage with me and other members of the crossbench to improve this important legislation. The Goldstein community made it abundantly clear that they wanted politics done differently. The government, for the moment, appears to have gotten the message. So far, so good.

In the course of conversations with the minister about this bill, I and others on the crossbench have advocated strongly for 43 per cent to be explicitly noted as a floor, not a ceiling, when it comes to carbon emissions. This plain language is necessary, I believe, to prevent ambition from being thwarted—to make sure that there are no unintended consequences of this law that limit our future capacity to be brave and innovative and to lead on climate policy. Science and the best available scientific knowledge must underpin everything that we do from now on. This is the time for consistency.

As a person who grew up in regional Australia—much as I now live in and love Goldstein—first in Tasmania and having since lived and worked in Lismore and along the coast of New South Wales, as well as in Darwin, I pay heed to the apprehension in communities outside the big cities. Their experience when they've seen changes made to policy for environmental reasons has often created negative community impact. We must do better in ensuring that regional communities reap the benefits of the transformation from our dependence on fossil fuels to leading on clean, green technology. It's not about transition; it's about transformation. The backdrop is the physical impact of climate change on communities who are now bearing the brunt of floods, fires and droughts. Risk management and planning must be a priority area as we step through this process.

I would have liked the minister to agree to amend the legislation to insert a new clause to make it crystal-clear that the 2030 target does not constrain even greater emissions reductions. This is a change which would give the final legislation, I think, greater legal force. But I am pleased that he's indicated that he is prepared to make it clear that the legislation doesn't limit Australia's ability to reduce its net greenhouse gas emissions beyond 43 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Half a loaf is better than none. But rest assured I will keep pressing the government for more.

To that end, the government should next commit to establishing in legislation emissions budgets for each emissions budget period beyond 2030—that is, 2031 to 2035, 2036 to 2040, 2041 to 2045 and 2046 to 2050. The government should also commit to inserting a climate trigger into the EPBC Act to ensure that proposed fossil fuel developments cannot undermine the pathway to net zero, efficiently, equitably and rapidly. The State of the environment report released by the environment minister a week or so ago paints a shocking picture of the degradation of our flora and fauna—just shocking. We must make up for lost time if our children, and theirs, are going to enjoy the natural bounty of this nation and if we are to remain a continent of wonder or, as I used to tell my children when we were living overseas, 'the magical land of Oz'. I call on the government to reveal when it intends to publish the planned and staged emissions budget for 2021 to 2030 that it's committed to in this climate bill. How exactly will we hit and exceed that mark? I also call on the government not to again politicise this debate and reignite the climate wars by tying budgets beyond 2030 to election campaigns.

I've spoken previously in this chamber about my direct experience in the aftermath of climate related disasters. In 2011, I spent several months covering what were described as one-in-1,000-year floods in Thailand. Almost 14 million people were affected in 65 of Thailand's 76 provinces, across 20,000 square kilometres. Central Bangkok was under serious threat, and, as the creeping disaster dragged on and the Mekong and Chao Phraya river basins overflowed, the government closed the city's floodgates. When the city closed the floodgates to protect the high-rises, shopping centres and apartment blocks of the CBD from the rising waters, the CBD khlongs, or canals, were empty. But, outside those floodgates, water that couldn't flow away inundated communities for months. People attacked the floodgates, trying to open them, to no avail. Central Bangkok was spared, but the largely poorer residents on the outskirts were not.

One of the communities we had visited on the flooded side of the barriers invited us to a funeral. A small child, a boy, had woken up from his afternoon nap. The toddler stepped out of his home and into the flood. His was one death of several hundred during those one-in-1,000-year floods, which, as we know all too well in Australia and elsewhere, happen a lot more often than every thousand or even every hundred years. We must not allow ourselves to get used to this. We cannot get used to the death, destruction and ongoing trauma that is ever more frequently happening because of climate change. We were warned, and we have been too slow. This little boy was a victim of that, as are the residents of South-East Queensland and northern New South Wales, especially in my old home town of Lismore, and those affected by repeated bushfires across our fragile and beautiful nation.

We now have a minimum number to provide certainty for business and community. Further consistent government policy must follow to ensure that we exceed that number and become the leaders that we can be. Let's get on with it. If not us, who? If not now, when? I commend this bill to the House.

Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I asked the people of Wills to give me the privilege of being re-elected as part of an Albanese Labor government, I made it clear that I was committed to taking real action in government and getting things done. That's what we would do if we won government: real action on the cost of living, real action on secure local jobs and, of course, real action on tackling climate change. I campaigned on the fact that an Albanese Labor government was committed to taking that real action by implementing our policies and legislation to lower our emissions, create thousands of clean energy jobs and decrease household bills with massive investments in renewable technology to make us a renewable energy superpower.

During this first sitting of the 47th Parliament, we are making our commitment to real action clear and manifest with the introduction of the first genuine climate action legislation after more than a decade of inaction. The Minister for Climate Change and Energy nailed it in question time when he said, 'A decade of inaction is over.' There are a lot of platitudes in politics, and the conversation about climate action is not immune to that—that's for sure. Those on the other side like to promote a false, rather damaging dichotomy that it's either the environment or the economy, as if you've got to choose. There are also those from the minor parties and those on the fringes who think we can wave a magic wand to deal with climate change, without a genuine plan for workers and the communities that they support around Australia. The country has been crying out for sensible and real action in this space for a decade. We are delivering it.

I'm very proud of the Climate Change Bill 2022 because it's the first real climate change bill in a decade. We've had nine years—almost 10 years—of wasted opportunities and those opposite dithering and in denial, delivering 22 so-called energy policies, all of which were abandoned when they started fighting each other in their own party room and could never agree on one of them. It was a disaster, and the Australian people had enough of it. They had enough of the dithering, enough of the denial. They just had enough of it. They wanted things to get done.

Australians trust that we will get this right because Labor has a strong track record of environmental policy, and we have the commitments to prove it. Let's not forget that it was the Whitlam government that was able to prevent Joh Bjelke-Petersen from drilling in the Great Barrier Reef. It was the Hawke government that was able to save the Franklin River, Kakadu National Park and the Daintree Rainforest. It was the Keating government that worked to protect our oceans. But we don't need to look at the past anymore, because it will be this Albanese Labor government that will be remembered for taking real action on climate change and protecting our environment for future generations.

Our commitment is backed up by a fully modelled and costed plan, Powering Australia. It's a plan to reduce emissions by at least 43 per cent by 2030, joining our international partners like Japan, South Korea and Canada in that ambition. It's a plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, bringing us into line with countries like France, Denmark and Spain, which have similarly legislated targets. It's a plan that reflects Australia's commitment to the Paris Agreement and the efforts to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees on pre-industrial levels. Rejoining our international partners in this effort is not just important in doing our fair share to reduce emissions; it is critical to our long-term bilateral relationships, our engagement with our partners across the globe.

Already, under the leadership of Prime Minister Albanese, this government has made significant strides in repairing relationships that were damaged by Australia's lack of leadership in the previous government. No longer are we the subject of ire from our international partners, who expect us to do our fair share. This is a principle, the fair share, which is somewhat similar to the fair go. It's a principle that Australians easily understand. Do your bit. Put your fair share in. Make the effort. We're no longer speaking to empty rooms at international conferences; we're actually bidding to host them. We're no longer leaving our Pacific neighbours, our friends and partners in the Pacific, on their own as they experience the devastating impacts of climate change, the existential threat they face. We're with them now.

We will not be limited in our ambition. As the Prime Minister has said, our target is a floor, not a ceiling. We will become a renewable energy superpower with the investment that will be unleashed by our policies and our legislation. We will be accountable, unlike the previous government, when it comes to this action. This will take the form of an annual climate change statement to parliament, ensuring accountability on meeting our targets, including progress made in achieving those, international developments relevant to addressing climate change and the effectiveness of the government's policies in meeting the set targets. This statement will be informed by the independent Climate Change Authority, which will also be tasked with providing ongoing advice on adjusting future targets.

We have a plan to create hundreds of thousands of secure, well-paid jobs. This is important because it's not just about words or a so-called just transition with nothing really to back it up. Our plan is to lower power bills for ordinary Australians, to help more Australians join the solar revolution by installing 400 solar community batteries around the country, and to connect 100,000 Australian householders who may not be able to install solar, like apartment owners and renters, so they can draw from excess electricity stored in batteries. This will allow more Australians to take full advantage of cheap solar energy.

I know the people of Wills, my electorate—and it's interesting that most of my colleagues on this side hear the same thing when they talk to their constituents—tell me they feel a real sense of relief that they finally have a government that is actually doing something in the national interest. It's as if a weight has been lifted off their shoulders. That's a widespread view. It's nationwide. We have a federal government that actually cares about this country's future and future generations and is committed to taking real action here in this place and in our governance. It has brought together all sectors of civil society: the unions, the business sector and environmental groups. All of them joined our minister when he formally signed our new targets in June this year. So I congratulate the minister for Climate Change and Energy for his efforts to develop legislation that recognises the significance of this challenge while bringing the different elements of Australian society together, including here in this parliament. I thank the members of the crossbench, who have sought to negotiate in good faith, and I call on those yet to declare their support to consider the bigger picture.

I also call on members of the opposition, the handful that are here, who are still opposing this legislation to reconsider, because we have a unique opportunity to end a decade of fighting, a decade of denial, a decade of delay. We have a unique opportunity to chart a new path forward. We have a unique opportunity to do something inherently good, something significant, for the people we represent and for future generations.

On election day, Australians voted to end the climate wars; they had had enough. Our Prime Minister spoke eloquently of the possibility of a better future, the potential of a better future, and now this parliament can do the same. We can vote to end the decade of delay and denial. We can vote to mark the end of our climate delinquency. We can vote for our children and our grandchildren to have that better future. We can vote for real action.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me say from the outset, a reduction of 43 per cent of CO2 emissions by 2030 on 2005 levels is an admirable target. It is a good target. It may be ambitious but it is an admirable target. It has already been adopted by the government and they have submitted it to the UN, the Prime Minister said. But legislating the 43 per cent is a different thing and it is a bad idea. The Minister for Climate Change and Energy has said they don't need to, so why would they do it and why is it a bad idea?

Targets have been tremendously successful for Australia. Kyoto 1 and 2 were both reached and exceeded. We will exceed our Paris target, which was 26 to 28 per cent, easily; in fact, probably reaching around 35 per cent under current projections without new policies coming from the government. We have done so much better than many others without smashing our economy and by adapting day by day to the delivery and development of new technologies.

I take umbrage with the members opposite making allegations that the previous government was doing nothing. We reduced emissions by 23 per cent on 2005 levels, one of only a handful of 193 countries around the world that could claim that. I am sure you are familiar with it, Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas. In Grey alone there are over 2,000 megawatts of installed capacity of either solar or wind, and there are more than 1,000 megawatts planned or under construction under the previous government's policy. Australia has the highest penetration of rooftop solar on the planet and it is adding large-scale wind and solar at a per capita at twice the rate of the next fastest country. In Grey, as we have in the rest of South Australia, we have reached almost 40 per cent of premises with rooftop solar.

I think this is a very important point: we need to have some comparisons and an idea of what the rest of the world is doing. China has promised to slash by 2030—I have a figure here somewhere but I just can't seem to dig it up at the moment—65 per cent of CO2 per unit of GDP. Perhaps it will do that. Good luck with that, I might say, because China has already increased its GDP by more than 200 per cent since 2005, and if it keeps growing at the projected rate through to 2030, its GDP will be 450 per cent bigger than it was in 2005. So making a commitment about per capita GDP and reducing that needs to be measured up with the increase of the GDP over the same period. Extrapolating the 65 per cent cut, that still allows for a 60 per cent increase on their real 2005 levels. Well, good luck with that, because in 2005 they emitted five billion tonnes per annum. By 2021 they'd already more than doubled that, to 11.7 billion tonnes. They say they're only going to go up by 60 per cent, but they've already gone up by over 100 per cent and are increasing emissions by more than half a billion tonnes a year. Australia only emits half a billion tonnes a year, and China is increasing by that much each year. In fact, China has already gone three billion tonnes a year past their commitment for their 2030 target. On that note, China had 90 gigawatts of new coal-fired generation capacity under construction last year, which was about the same as the year before. If anyone needs a comparison, Loy Yang is rated at 1.2 gigawatts and the much-noted Liddell Power Station at 1.7 gigawatts. China is building 90 gigawatts a year.

Historians argue over whether it was Churchill, John Maynard Keynes or someone else who first said, 'When the facts change, sir, I change my mind. What do you do?' The question here is: what if the circumstances change over the next five years or so, and we're locked into legislation? What if in five years we find the 22,000-strong entourage that trooped off to COP26 in Glasgow last year spoke with a collective forked tongue, or China and India continue merrily along, or if European nations keep bringing their fossil fuel power stations out of retirement, or even building new ones? And what if in five years time Australia is losing aluminium production, or losing steel production in Whyalla, in your home state, Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas? What if food manufacturing and fertiliser manufacturing are being undercut by those around the world who choose not to reduce their CO2 emissions? What then, when we have a legislated 43 per cent? When we have the legislated target, it will be used by activists to block the progress of new projects in this country.

The scientific facts may not have changed, but the political and economic ones will have. What of a bid to build a world-class fertiliser plant in Australia if an activist chooses to block its progress, in the courts, on the basis of the legislation? We'll have a situation where the High Court will effectively have power to block government projects or the preferences of government via use of the government legislation. And I'm indebted to the shadow minister for climate change and energy for bringing forward that exact example of these circumstances in the UK.

I conclude that legislating this target is no more than a bit of political grandstanding, a bit of politics within the warm inner glow. The minister has said that the government does not need to legislate, so why would we risk stranding Australia, like a shag on a rock, while the world changes around us? By all means let us strive for the 43 per cent—let's go further—but only on the basis that we are not that shag on the rock, that we do not rush ahead of the evolving technologies before they are mature enough to give us low-cost transmission that will protect our jobs, our economy and our place in the world.

There are a number of issues I've brought up in this place before, and one that nags me is the international accounting methods for carbon emissions. These are designed by European nations for European nations. There's no other way to describe it. Nations that import the bulk of their energy actually shift their emissions onto third countries. Take the case of uranium—a lot of it is mined in our home state, Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas. The emissions that are generated in the mining and refining of that uranium, through to yellowcake standard, and its transport—normally diesel but also electricity, and it's all generated in Australia—go on Australia's debit sheet. In fact, we are supplying clean fuel to the rest of the world so that they can claim a net benefit. It's gone on our debit sheet, but we didn't use the energy!

Another example is our gas industry, where we provide a relatively clean fuel to much of the world, to many mature markets. The fact that 30 per cent of the energy of the gas is used in compression within Australia goes on our debit sheet. Another country can put their hand up and say: 'Look how clean we are. We're using gas, and it's hardly got any'—by comparison—'emissions, because the emissions have actually been emitted by Australia on behalf of another country.' That is a corrupt system. It should operate like a GST, where the consumer actually lists where the CO2, right through the chain, is passed on to the consumer. Unless we get a system like that, it is corrupt from top to bottom.

I hear members on the other side telling us that Australia has the highest per capita emissions in the world, but if we took out the products that we supply to the rest of the world that actually lessen their emissions then we would not be in that position. I don't know exactly where on the graph we would sit, but I know we would not be the highest. And so as long as that system is allowed to continue, decisions will be made based on the wrong information. Not the wrong information necessarily for our particular country, but the wrong information for the world. One of the things we do know about CO2 emissions and global warming is that it is a worldwide problem that can only have a worldwide solution.

Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This legislation is a priority for the Albanese Labor government, and that's why we've introduced this legislation as one of our first orders of parliamentary business.

When campaigning in my electorate of Boothby, there was no issue raised with me more frequently or more passionately than climate change—specifically: the previous government's complete failure to provide the certainty and stability that groups across the community, from businesses to the unions to environmental groups, have long called for; their failure to grasp the enormous opportunities that the world's transition to renewable energy presents for our country; and their failure to end the climate wars, politicising one of the major challenges of our time. That's what this legislation is designed to do.

This legislation is only the beginning, the first step for us in implementing the Powering Australia plan that we took to the Australian people at the May election. These bills set in law our emission reduction ambitions and represent a solid, reliable and dependable foundation from which to build further efforts to reduce our carbon emissions.

The Climate Change Bill 2022 legislates the 2030 and 2050 targets, consistent with the nationally determined contribution that the Albanese government signed on 16 June. Importantly, and this concept may be foreign to those opposite, it enhances accountability by making the government of the day accountable to the people through an annual statement to parliament. This statement will include an update on the progress made during the year towards achieving targets, an update on international developments, changes to climate change policy and a review of the effectiveness of the Commonwealth climate change policies in contributing to the achievements of the targets.

The bill boosts transparency by requiring independent advice to be part of the annual statements and future targets, and it is independent advice from those who really know what they're talking about—the Climate Change Authority. It requires this Climate Change Authority advice to be public and, crucially, obliges the minister to take into account the advice and formally respond to that advice, because accountability to the people of Australia is an important principle. This report will not be hidden away like so many we saw—or rather did not see—under the previous government. We will be accountable.

The bill provides for a regular independent review of the act. It also ensures Australia keeps setting future targets that meet the requirements of the Paris Agreement to be a progression on our current commitments. This means our target is effectively a floor, not a ceiling, when it comes to reducing emissions—something I know the people of Boothby are passionate about.

The second bill is the Climate Change (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2022, and this inserts our targets into the objectives and functions of a range of Commonwealth agencies and schemes. This includes amending the objectives of the legislation establishing the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, ARENA, to help focus those agencies on contributing to the targets; requiring the targets to be taken into account by Export Finance Australia and Infrastructure Australia for a number of their functions; recognising CSIRO's contribution to all elements of the Paris Agreement and its legislative functions; updating climate laws to reference both the targets and the Paris Agreement so that policies such as carbon crediting and the safeguard mechanism help deliver on those targets; and updating the Climate Change Authority legislation to reference the purposes of the Paris Agreement in the principles it considers when providing advice.

The 2030 and 2050 targets are reflected in Australia's updated nationally determined contribution, submitted under the Paris Agreement, to the UNFCCC. The 27th conference of that agency is scheduled for November 2022, and passage of these bills before that conference will reinforce Australia's ability to influence global efforts to address climate change. We will no longer be embarrassed internationally, no longer be laggards, as we were under the previous government.

Lack of climate change action by the former government is one of the major reasons I decided to run in Boothby. As the mother of three young adults and watching the former government—those opposite—put ideology over evidence and waste close to a decade pulling Australia backwards on climate, I knew I had to act. I spent almost 10 months talking to voters in every single part of this very diverse electorate, and I heard very clearly from the people in Boothby that they care about taking action on climate change, for just about every reason imaginable. Ignore the message sent by the Australian people at your peril.

For some in Boothby, particularly those in the Adelaide foothills, in Blackwood and Belair, the threat of climate change is obvious—more intense and more frequent heatwaves and bushfires that already threaten their homes. On the flats, at Mitchell Park, Marion and Edwardstown, action on climate change can mean economic opportunities. These once dominant manufacturing areas are ripe for the investment of a green energy revolution to ensure the wealth of our nation and of Boothby is distributed more fairly. In Mitcham I heard about the fears of flooding. A one-in-100-year flooding event seems a lot more real after you've seen it happen four times in a few months in the eastern states. For those on the coast, in Glenelg, Somerton, Brighton and Seacliff, climate change threatens what are some of Australia's very best coastlines and beaches, and their homes, through sea level rise and the impact of stronger storms. Across the electorate, people told me of their fears for themselves and, particularly, for the next generations—the legacy they would be leaving their children and grandchildren. I've listened to them all, and now this government is taking action.

I also want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the important work done by conservation and environmental groups in my electorate. Doctors for the Environment talked to me about the public health emergency that climate change represents: heatwaves causing deaths and infectious diseases. The Australian Conservation Foundation talked to me about the environment in crisis, and we heard more about that from the Minister for the Environment and Water earlier this week, about the impact the changing environment has on biodiversity and the impact that has on us and our lives. Parents for Climate Action and Eco Walk 'n' Roll groups told me about our responsibility to the next generation to leave them an environment they can live in, to mitigate the extremes of temperature and the increasingly extreme weather events. The Uniting Church climate change group talked to me about our responsibility to those less well-off—people who can't afford to keep the air conditioner running all summer and the heater running all winter and can't afford for food prices to go up when crops fail, be it here in Australia or in other countries. And I lost count of the number of individual people who told me they couldn't stand to see the opportunities of a clean, renewable energy economy going elsewhere, when Australia has such an abundance of resources and talent to harness them here.

Businesses talked to me about the opportunities that climate change action can offer to South Australia. They spoke of plans for green aluminium. They spoke of green steel. They spoke of thousands of jobs and major industry in the regions. They spoke of advanced manufacturing in Australia and of export markets for value-added products made in Australia, all predicated on abundant renewable energy and storage—solar, wind and storage, including hydrogen, based in the regions, powering Australia's next economic revolution.

And when I visit Tonsley in my electorate and I speak to the businesses there—we have the largest hydrogen electrolyser in the Southern Hemisphere; we have industries working in the energy sector, servicing electric vehicles and batteries and developing smart technology—I know that industry is ready for this change. They see the opportunities, and we know that if we do not harness these opportunities they will simply go elsewhere. I want these opportunities for the people of Boothby and, more broadly, South Australia and Australia. We simply no longer have any time to waste. We certainly can no longer stick our heads in the sand on this issue; we need action.

As the minister said in introducing these bills, 2030 is only 89 months away—less than 7½ short years. These bills represent the start of a new chapter in our politics where we tackle this long-vexed issue by enshrining in law a sensible, achievable but still ambitious emissions reduction target. These bills make clear that this government is taking climate action seriously. We are taking the challenge of governing seriously. We are taking the Paris climate agreement and our international obligations seriously. We are taking net zero by 2050 and the 2030 target seriously. We are taking accountability and responsibility seriously. This is a government determined to grasp the enormous opportunities of a green energy future for Australia. We have a new government.

Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a historic day for our country. I'm honoured to have an opportunity to speak on this bill, the Climate Change Bill 2022, which resets the tone of our national approach to climate change. I was elected by the community of Kooyong to work for urgent and effective action on climate change. I thank the Minister for Climate Change and Energy for recognising the urgency of this matter and for bringing this legislation to parliament so early in this term. I also thank the minister for the opportunity afforded the crossbench in recent weeks to work constructively and collaboratively on this bill with this government, although I note that the government's haste has necessarily curtailed the ability of non-government members to improve some aspects of this legislation. We on the crossbench have worked hard, and we've secured some improvements to this bill. We will continue to work hard, such that this is just the first of many bills to mitigate global warming and transition to clean energy that will be passed by this parliament.

The former federal government spent close to a decade faffing around, arguing amongst themselves, bringing lumps of coal into this chamber and pretending that the earth wasn't getting hotter. Precious time was wasted. We can no longer beat around the bush here. We are in a climate emergency. I stand here today, one of many people sounding the alarm. Federal legislation is fundamental to establishing clear direction towards net zero by 2050 and better ways of measuring our progress, and to locking in the gains that we make towards that goal. The ideal legislation should also set interim goals to ensure that we act now—goals which should be transparent, responsive and progressive.

This bill is limited in detail on its targets, on how they are to be achieved and on the consequences to this government should those targets not be achieved, because, of course, there will be grave consequences should the targets not be achieved. One does not need to be a political scientist to see that the increasing severity and frequency of fires and extreme weather events is affecting all in this country. We have seen the collapse of entire ecosystems and the risk to our food, our water and our air. These have not been consequential enough for the major parties in recent years but are affecting all of us every day.

Over time, we must act to increase the ambition and scope of the targets in this bill. We must not deny, dissemble, delay, procrastinate or pretend. Every tonne of emissions produced now, pumped into our shared and collective atmosphere, makes the job harder for us and for the next generation. Every tonne of carbon dioxide we produce now will stay with us. Every tonne of methane we produce now will stay with us. We all share the earth's atmosphere and we have to humble ourselves to the fact that all of us need clean air. We must secure a more ambitious emissions reduction target to meet our international obligations, to signal this country's commitment to a global effort to act on climate change. That will enable all of us to hold our heads high on the world stage.

The people of Kooyong made history in May. For the first time since Federation they sent a representative to parliament to fight for climate action on their behalf. Many have contacted me about this bill and its 2030 target of 43 per cent, asking, 'Is it enough?' It's not.

We know the science. We know that in order to keep the rise in atmospheric temperature to just 1.5 degrees we have to reduce our carbon emissions by at least 60 per cent, ideally by more than 75 per cent. We know that that means that Australia cannot open new coalmines or gas projects. We know that a more ambitious target will free our economy from its reliance on 20th century energy sources and from the instability of increasingly volatile international markets and precarious international security. We know that our federal government, even now, is out of step with our international partners in the Group of Seven nations, who have committed to halving emissions by 2030, major corporate bodies, such as the Australian Industry Group and the Business Council of Australia, as well as the various state governments, who have been well ahead of the government in the targets that they have set. Most importantly, we do know how to achieve a more ambitious emissions reduction target. We must transition our energy supply to renewables, build a cleaner, more efficient electricity network, increase availability and decrease the cost of low-emissions vehicles, support domestic manufacturing of heavy vehicles and community transport, invest in new technologies and battery manufacturing, and improve the efficiency of both existing and new Australian homes.

With respect, I disagree with the Prime Minister's contention that opening new gas and coal mines would not add to the world's use of fossil fuels. This is an antiquated theory from the last century, before the historic Paris Agreement, and no longer holds water. Opening new coal and gas mines in Australia will add to the world's use of fossil fuels, and it will kneecap our ability to mitigate climate catastrophe.

It's inevitable that any additional supply of gas and coal will delay the world's transition to renewables. We've seen extraordinary progress in our transition to renewable energy in recent years. We can continue to build on that without taking backward steps, without building assets destined to be stranded as our international trading partners make their own progress towards net zero emissions. Australia's actions count globally.

So is this bill enough? Today I will focus on the urgency of our need to act. Pragmatically I will say: today it's enough; I will support this bill. But tomorrow, without pause, our work will continue. I urge the government to remain open to working with other members of this parliament to build collaboratively on this foundation, to work with us to exceed expectations and to surpass this target. Working together, we can be a parliament that actually listens to the voices of its voters. We can be a parliament that exceeds expectations.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

According to the most credible science available, and that includes our own CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology here in Australia, the earth's climate is changing. The changes are in addition to the normal cycle of climatic changes that have occurred over the decades and the centuries and which are noted in public records. The most notable climate changes are a result of global warming, which in turn causes or leads to more frequent and more severe weather events, destruction of environmental assets, the loss of flora and fauna, threats to human health and changes in weather and rainfall patterns. These consequences are already with us, adding to our daily cost of living and risking a sustainable and stable lifestyle.

I acknowledge that not all people accept all of the facts, conclusions and forecasts associated with climate change. I also acknowledge that some people accept that climate change is real but do not accept the causes, the proposed solutions or Australia's ability to make a meaningful difference to climate change throughout the world. I am also acutely aware that vested interests, including the fossil fuel companies and the renewable energy investors, have entered the climate change debate, and in doing so have added to public confusion and politically disunity—disunity which has resulted in a decade of inaction on what many would agree is a pressing issue facing humanity and the global response has become a race against time.

Changing the way societies function, particularly in advanced countries, which are generally the higher per capita emitters of greenhouse gases, will require lifestyle changes and time to adjust. However, the longer that the changes are delayed the more severe and more disruptive the impact on society will be when the necessary action is taken, and even more profound will be the impact on society if no action is taken. Climate scientists know that, industry leaders know that and most international political leaders know that, and in response they have all committed to substantial policy changes and investments in mitigation strategies. That is what the Australian people want the Australian government to do. They expect a measured but meaningful response from this government. Public polling shows that. The May election confirmed that.

Neither households nor businesses can continue to function in a climate of uncertainty. Personal and business investments will only be made when there is long-term stability and predictability. That is what this legislation seeks to do. It will begin a responsible transition to a lower emissions economy that will generate investments in new technology, in new jobs. It will be less destructive to our natural environment and contribute to global efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The reality is that under the Morrison government not only was Australia being left behind on climate change responses when compared with other advanced countries, but even within Australia the Morrison government was being left behind by the state and territory governments. I have heard other members, particularly opposition members, come into this place and talk about how Australia was achieving the 26 to 28 per cent targets that the Morrison government had set. I say to those members that most of those targets were achieved because of the actions of state governments, not because of the actions of the federal government that was led by Prime Minister Morrison.

For some people a 43 per cent reduction target by 2030 on 2005 levels is too low—and we've heard other speakers talking about that. For others it has, in fact, been claimed that it will be too high and it will cause too much disruption to society; therefore it should be opposed. The fact that we have people on both sides of that argument—one group saying it's too high and the other saying it's too low—tells me that we have probably got it about right.

When I look at the comparison with other countries in terms of what they are doing, and I am referring specifically to other advanced economies, there is a strong similarity between the target that this government is now setting and those being set elsewhere. And whilst there might be some differences, I don't believe the differences are sufficient to warrant any concern about that. And particularly so when we have said very clearly that the 43 per cent is a floor not a ceiling, and, indeed, if a higher reduction can be achieved, and achieved responsibly, I suspect it will be. It is my view that, if this legislation is passed, it will send a very clear signal to the economy and that the transition to a lower-carbon economy will in fact pick up pace when everybody has a very clear direction in which to follow.

In addition to all of that, the government has made it clear that there will be, each year, a report to parliament in respect to the emission reductions that have been achieved. That report to parliament will serve as an accountability mechanism, for the Australian public to judge whether the government is in fact committed to and achieving the targets it has set. It is a requirement of this legislation for that report to come to the parliament.

The legislation also strengthens and articulates the roles of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Climate Change Authority and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, all of which were white-anted by the last coalition government, because they were not committed to climate change action and needed to silence their critics. The Morrison government did all they could to disempower the very structures that Labor had established over a decade ago to provide advice and guide us through the climate change transition.

It has always been Labor that has initiated and ultimately delivered major national reforms. It has been Labor that has always led Australia's climate change response and pursued a carbon pollution reduction policy, sometimes in the face of opposition from both the coalition and even the Greens. Labor will deliver on this legislation, and the 43 per cent target, because the target is what will drive investment, drive changes in community attitudes and drive investment in new technology. All of that opens the way for additional businesses and jobs, as we've heard time and time again with respect to the policy that we are now introducing.

No country acting alone will reverse or contain the climate change trajectory. That requires a global effort, in which all countries must make a contribution—some greater, some lesser—and each country will do what it can given the capacity it has. Australia has the capacity both to contribute towards a lower-emissions society and to contribute to new low-emissions technologies. As a responsible global nation, we should do both. If we don't, we cannot expect other nations to carry us. If the world does not act, the devastation and extreme weather events—including the loss of lives, the financial costs of those events, the health costs from living in a polluted environment and the environmental destruction—will vastly outweigh the costs and disruption of climate change action, which many opposite seem to oppose.

This legislation must be passed by both this House and the Senate if Australia is to look to the future with confidence that a clear climate change direction has been set. The coalition have stated their opposition to this legislation. I believe that, in doing so, they have failed to respect the views of the majority of Australians and, perhaps, have even lost the respect of many within the international community.

In closing, I say this. I came into this place—and the member for Blair sits in front of me—in 2007, with acting on climate change being one of the priorities of the Rudd government at the time. We were obstructed from doing so by the opposition and the Greens. Fifteen years later, it is an Albanese Labor government that puts this matter on the agenda once again and makes it a priority for government, because that is what the Australian people expect us to do.

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The State of the environment report, finally made public last month, confirms what scientists, experts and communities from around the country have been trying to tell this parliament for years: that the climate crisis isn't some esoteric mumbo jumbo or a far-off threat to be confronted in the future—a policy problem to be kicked down the road—but rather an increasingly all-consuming reality that is already tearing the very fabric of our environment, society and economy. Remember, climate change has already been felt brutally by the communities who experienced the terrifying Black Summer bushfires in 2019-2020 or the recent flooding down the east coast of the mainland. Moreover, we see the evidence in the bleached northern corals and in our dying kelp forests well down south. Indeed, extreme events like storms, floods, heatwaves, droughts and wildfires have affected every part of Australia in recent years, hence 19 of Australia's critical ecosystems have collapsed or are in the process of collapsing. We're already the home of the first mammalian extinction due to human induced climate change.

We can't waste any more time, because, quite simply, we don't have any more time. So I do welcome this bill, and I do support the government's move to enshrine our emissions targets in legislation, not least to provide certainty to businesses but also to shore up commitments made on the international stage. Yes, adding climate considerations into the legislation underpinning agencies like the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, as well as reinstating the role of the Climate Change Authority, are good steps. But don't get me wrong: this bill is the bare minimum. It contains no plans for how to reach the new emissions target and no plans for what will happen if we don't. It says nothing about sectoral plans to reduce emissions, to phase out fossil fuels or to support fossil fuel workers to transition into new areas of work. It's silent on measures to help local communities to invest in renewable energy and battery technology or policies to protect the health of Australians from the impacts of climate change. In other words, the bill is a start, but one that illustrates just how far we have to go.

While there are quite a few problems with this bill, there are some areas in particular that I'd like to focus on, and I foreshadow that I'll be moving two substantive amendments in the consideration in detail stage. Let's start with the Climate Change Authority, which will obviously have an important role in advising the minister—and the parliament—under the model proposed by the bill. Because it is important, the government must commit to repair, resource and guarantee the independence of the authority if it is to unwind the damage done by the previous coalition government, which, honourable members would recall, gutted the authority's funding and stacked it with gas industry executives.

Mind you, sadly, we know that the provision of expert advice by the authority and others will be no guarantee that the government will do the right thing. For example, eight years ago the Climate Change Authority recommended Australia adopt an emissions reduction target of between 45 per cent and 65 per cent, yet here we are in 2022 debating a miserable 43 per cent target, which is consistent with two degrees of global warming. But according to Climate Analytics, an increase of two degrees will see the end of the Great Barrier Reef and other tropical reefs around Australia, and it will result in three times more frequent and intense extreme heat events globally. Frankly, this target of 43 per cent is just too little, too late.

Indeed, the science tells us right now that we need emissions targets which reflect the urgency of the situation. To that end, I will introduce amendments to the bill which update the paltry emissions targets currently in the legislation, in line with the science—that is, we need to aim for a 75 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, compared to 2005 levels, and achieve net zero by 2035 at the latest. Failure to do this will be abrogating our responsibility as global citizens, failing future generations and locking in climate damage for decades to come.

Moreover, how we reach these emissions targets is just as important as the targets themselves. For a start, the government cannot rely on the false solutions and dangerous distractions peddled by the fossil fuel industry. For instance, carbon capture and storage continues to be pushed by fossil fuel interests, despite decades of experience showing that it is ineffective and costly and mostly benefits corporations seeking to access deeper deposits of oil. Similarly, carbon offsetting is not an effective way to tackle climate change, being the preferred choice for an industry desperate to keep polluting, and anyone who thinks that gas can be a transition fuel has some serious research to do. Good climate legislation should make clear that the time has passed for shifting baselines and reliance on junk credits. Exploration for new fossil fuels and the expansion of coal, oil and gas infrastructure must cease this year, but this bill does not do this and that is a deeply worrying omission.

This parliament must also remember that, no matter what target the government writes into its legislation, if Australia continues to dig up and export thousands of tons of fossil fuels around the world then we have already blown the carbon budget. To illustrate the point, with 116 gas and coal projects under development currently, if the government continues with its pro fossil fuel agenda, we would see an additional 1.7 billion tons of carbon released into the atmosphere per year. To put it another way, if all the projects in the pipeline are approved it would be the equivalent of adding around five per cent more to global energy emissions. In other words, the Scarborough gas field project and fracking in the Beetaloo Basin alone would push us over the edge. The problem is, as things stand, much of this pollution won't even be counted in our national greenhouse gas databases, which means it is all too easy for politicians to ignore. But of course the atmosphere doesn't care about dodgy accounting rules. What matters to it, the environment, is the overall contribution of greenhouse gases that increases as a result of Australian decisions to dig up coal, oil and gas. So what I will also move is an amendment to include so-called scope 3 emissions, which are our exported emissions, in the annual climate change statement, because the Australian public should not be left in the dark about our huge contribution to global emissions, whatever good work we might be doing to reduce our emissions here at home.

In closing, I want to make the point that this bill is a start. We do need a legislated target, and any moves towards greater transparency and reporting to the parliament on our climate efforts are a good thing. But as the CSIRO told us last week, the uncomfortable truth is that the world has missed its opportunity to limit dangerous climate change within this century and we will have to wait until the beginning of the next century to see the benefit of emissions reductions that we do today. This means that every fraction of a degree avoided today will make a difference for our ecosystems, landscapes and communities, so we need much stronger action right now backed by clear policies and we need to start now.

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on these important bills, the Climate Change Bill 2022 and the Climate Change (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2022. They are important bills. In fact, I think they are two of the most important bills to come before this House and I don't say that lightly, because as members of parliament we have a duty, an absolute duty, to ensure that we deliver an environment that is sustainable for the next generation, not just for Australians but for the world over. We all have a duty as legislators around the world and I, for one, do not want to be in this place not having acted on something that will affect my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren. I don't want them saying in years to come that I was in parliament and did nothing about this very important issue.

We also have a duty to act for the Australian public to ensure that we have an environment that we can continue to farm, continue to have our rivers flowing and ensure that people can live a healthy life. The consequences of no action are that there would be none of those things. There would be no farming, there would be no rivers flowing, and the consequences would be very dire for Australia and for the world. Over the last few years, we've seen inaction by the government. Back in 2007, when there was a proposal put on the table, it was seen as something that could be used for politics. The then Abbott coalition decided to play games with it and politicise it. But, if you look around the world, in most nations it's not a political football. People know the seriousness of it.

I feel like we've let down the Australian public. But, more so, we've let down the youth of this country—the youth that have been crying out for action on climate change. And we've seen protests, over the last 10 years, of students—school children—marching regularly so that some action will be taken. But they're not just marching because they want to protest or because they're activists. They want their voices heard, and they want leadership on this issue. I feel that we have let them down, because there's been no leadership on this very important issue. They've been let down by governments that have been too scared to act on climate change and who fear the consequences of acting on climate change more than the consequences of a changing climate. I don't want to betray young Australians anymore, and none of us should want to betray young Australians any longer. What we decide here in this House will impact their lives, their children's lives and their grandchildren's lives. As I said, it'll impact their future. I take the responsibility very seriously, as all of us should in this place. That's why this is a truly important bill.

The Australian people have spoken. They spoke at the last federal election. I heard them loud and clear in my electorate, and I know from speaking to many of my colleagues that they heard the message loud and clear. The Australian public wants action on climate change. They are sick of excuses. They want an end to the inaction that we've seen over the past decade, and they want an end to the climate wars. There are no climate wars. This is reality. As I said, around the world you'll find that this is not a contentious issue in most parliaments. On this side, we're listening and we're delivering on our election promises. To demonstrate our commitment, this bill is one of the first pieces of legislation to be introduced by the Albanese Labor government in the 47th Parliament.

It's my sincere hope that this bill will finally turn the debate and action on climate change in a more positive direction, because the past decade has not just kept us stagnant; it's made us go backwards. We've seen energy prices rising. One of the reasons for that is that players in the energy market had no confidence that legislation that was in place, or may be in place, would remain. So they wouldn't invest. If you were an investor in renewables or an investor in new technologies to reduce emissions and you saw 22 different pieces of legislation, and none of them were acted on, why on earth would you invest when you don't know what the future holds? Hopefully this bill and this legislation will give some certainty to more investors who want to invest in renewables and new technologies. The more players we have in the field, the better for the prices. It brings in competition and lowers prices. One of the reasons we're seeing high energy prices at the moment is exactly that we haven't acted on climate change and we haven't given the certainty to industry and businesses so they can invest in renewables. Therefore, we have fewer players in the field, which makes competition harder and has made prices rise steadily over the last 10 years.

Addressing climate change must be something that each and every person in this House takes on with utmost seriousness. This bill, as I said, provides precisely such an opportunity for this parliament and for our country. Who can forget the previous Prime Minister, before he became Prime Minister, coming in here with a hunk of coal and stating that this is the future of Australia? I felt embarrassed as a member of the Australian parliament that we had that action take place here on these benches. We were ridiculed around the world for that action, and people still raise it with me.

This is not a political football. This is a serious, serious occurrence that is taking place. Have a look at the wildfires taking place in Europe at the moment—places in Portugal, in Spain and in Greece where these wildfires are becoming regular, common occurrences. This is happening in California. We had wildfires and bushfires here in 2019. We had the flooding. We don't have to travel far. We can see the effects of climate change right here in this country, and we can also see greater effects in the Pacific with rising waters. If you go to places like Kiribati, already people are being evacuated off the island of Kiribati and relocated on Fiji as climate change refugees. I visited Kiribati a couple of years ago, and they showed us photographs of buildings that are now being swallowed up by the sea. So this is happening right now.

This is a serious issue, as I said, and we need to make sure that this bill gets through. I'm really disappointed to hear, again, the games that are being played by the opposition, as they were in 2008 during the Rudd government when we had a proposal on the table. As I said, having a stable, clear and coherent policy sends a vital message to the private sector, and that is really important. It sends a message also to the world that Australia is back as a good global citizen. It sends a message that Australia now has a government and a parliament that wants Australia to be a renewable energy powerhouse.

In my own home state, we were one of the first states to bring in reusable cans and bottles. We've been doing these things for many years. We introduced single-use plastic bag bans, and we maintained a commitment to renewable energy over the past almost two decades. It was never, never a political football in the state of South Australia. Both the South Australian Liberal government and the Labor government supported these bipartisan policies in a bipartisan manner. I would want to see this go through in a bipartisan manner, because, as I said, it's our duty as members of parliament to make sure that we take action. Forty-three per cent may not be the be-all and end-all, and it certainly isn't, but it's a first step in the right direction. We owe it to the future generations of Australians and we owe it to this planet.

One of the things that we're seeing is that there's already technology in batteries, in renewables and in wind power. We have the sun here in Australia that shines for most of the year. We have wind farms and solar plants that we could generate to create energy, and lots of lots of new technologies.

One of the disappointing things that I saw many years ago was in Portugal. At the time it had one of the biggest solar farms in the world, and everyone working there was Australian. The technology—everything—was imported from Australia, and they were saying to me that they'd left Australia because there was no real investment in renewables. These are the sorts of things that we've been missing out on. And that's only part of it. The worst part is that, in those 10 years, temperatures have risen, sea levels have risen. We need to take action.

Bridget Archer (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let's be clear: climate change is real. We must do what we reasonably can to cut emissions while taking advantage of the economic opportunities that exist for our country. As pointed out in my address-in-reply speech last week, caring for our environment is intrinsic to Liberal Party values. In our own statement of beliefs, we say:

We believe … in preserving Australia's natural beauty and the environment for future generations.

This is simply what I seek to do, and I'm joined by Liberal state governments in pursuing more ambitious emissions reduction targets. I'm proud to live in a state that's a leader in renewable energy. The government announced in 2021 that it would legislate a more ambitious emissions reduction target with net zero emissions by 2030, a feat already achieved in the last six of the past seven years. They're joined by our counterparts in Victoria and New South Wales, with targets of 50 per cent reduction by 2030. I'm not working against where we are heading in my home state of Tasmania or where we need to head as a country. It's just common sense, and like it or not it's what our nation voted for in the recent election. I understand that I come to this from the advantageous position of living in a state that has long had one of the greenest energy supplies in Australia. In fact, the city of Launceston in my northern Tasmanian electorate of Bass was the first in the country to be lit by hydropower, when the Duck Reach Power Station opened in 1985. In November 2020, 125 years later, Tasmania became the first Australian state, and one of just a handful of jurisdictions worldwide, to be wholly powered by renewable electricity. Nor do I suggest that policy and legislation as critical as this should not be scrutinised to the nth degree. That's the very reason why we're here. Yet the so-called climate wars and ideology around climate change persist, and I share the frustrations of so many in our community who just want to see the debate and fight end and get on with it.

I know many of my colleagues are representing the views of their communities, which have generational employment in the coal industry. As a Tasmanian, I saw firsthand the devastating impact in our state when the forestry industry was ripped to pieces. It devastated individuals, families, the economy and the community for a long time. It's only in recent years that we've begun to rebuild. However, I do believe that there is an inevitability to where we are heading as a country, but there is time for a just transition if we accept the reality. If not now, when?

In my own backyard of George Town is the Bell Bay Industrial Precinct, which produces 59 per cent of Tasmania's manufacturing exports. The local aluminium smelter has long been the backbone of this precinct. The smelter first opened in 1955, and the town has grown on the back of it, with generations of families employed at the smelter. As the former mayor of the town, and now its federal representative, I certainly have a strong understanding of what it would mean if the smelter were to suddenly close shop, as it provides hundreds of direct jobs and more than a thousand indirectly.

The long-term future of the smelter was secured earlier this year after Rio Tinto signed a memorandum of understanding with the Tasmanian government, which includes Rio Tinto agreeing to prepare a business case for the production of hydrogen onsite, with the aim of replacing existing supplies of fossil gas. It is this forward thinking that is creating a brighter, cleaner and more economically secure future for Bell Bay and the greater northern Tasmanian community.

Accepting what the future may hold and doing all you can to prepare for it ensures that when the time inevitably comes the sky does not fall in. It's this recognition that saw the establishment of the Bell Bay Advanced Manufacturing Zone, an industry based economic development group borne out of a desire by businesses in the region to better collaborate and to grow the region's capabilities by supporting existing businesses, encouraging investment and promoting the benefits of the region as a place to live and work.

Recognising the threats and opportunities that lie ahead has seen the area and local industries embrace the development of a green hydrogen industry. After many years of consultation with local industry, key stakeholders and local, state and federal governments, I announced $70 million for a green hydrogen hub in Bell Bay in late April, a commitment matched by Labor. The traditional skills of workers at the smelter are also being utilised by emerging industries that are setting up in Tasmania, attracted to our renewable power grid. These include companies like Firmus, which has built an ultra-low-emissions and high-performance cloud and is hiring highly skilled workers across several fields, including power systems.

Though, of course, there will never be a whole consensus on the matter in our northern Tasmanian community, I have met with and heard from countless organisations and individuals who are truly passionate about seeing the government of the day take more action on climate change and have specifically asked me to do what I can, in the role that I have, to bring about this much-needed change. The people of Bass put their trust in me to represent their views.

The Launceston Chamber of Commerce is over 170 years old and has consistently adapted and advanced causes in the best interests of the local business community. In 2020, the chamber adopted a climate change policy favouring initiatives that support a reduction in carbon emissions and benefit Tasmanian businesses and the broader community. These include the creation of new enterprises and initiatives that contribute to carbon emissions reduction. Chamber President Andrew Pitt recently expressed to me that the last thing business needs is ongoing uncertainty around legislated carbon future. While the chamber would like to see a more ambitious target than 43 per cent, Andrew went on to say that this is a starting point that should help Australian industries confidently transition to a low-carbon future and will provide our region of Tasmania with a competitive advantage.

Local Beaconsfield farmer Ben Hooper is concerned that parts of the country will become unproductive and unliveable if further action isn't taken to address climate change, but he's also pragmatic when considering the financial impact it may have on Australians. He said:

We really have to decarbonise, but it is going to cost us lifestyle and money. What are we willing to pay for it?

Northern Tasmanian winemaker Stewart Byrne has witnessed the effect a warmer climate is having on many of the established Australian viticultural regions in warmer climates. Mr Byrne said:

They are becoming marginal. The increased growing season temperatures have resulted in lower fruit quality, compressed harvest periods, and a subsequent greater pressure on winery infrastructure.

Here in Tasmania, where the prediction models have us being the least affected of the viticultural regions from a climate change perspective, we are still experiencing challenges.

Fire and the subsequent effect of smoke damage on fruit, has resulted in significant losses in 3 of our past 10 years and dry lightning strikes are a relatively new phenomenon in Tasmania.

Tasmania also has limited resources. The eastern side of Tasmania, where the majority of vineyards are planted, is dry. As the climate continues to change, and as more vineyards and farming operations move to Tasmania, it will put further strain on our resources. We will then need to have discussions on whether vineyards are the best use for this increasingly valuable land. So, the threat of climate change on the wine industry is multi-faceted, both in the short and long term.

For a state with a world-class and established wine industry, this should be startling.

I've witnessed parts of the debate around the issue of climate change be patronised by some as being a young, leftie, elite issue. I absolutely dispute this characterisation. This issue transcends age, gender, political affiliation, religious belief and socioeconomic circumstance. In the northern Tasmanian community I've met with and received emails and letters from local school and uni students, Baptist ministers, doctors, retired teachers, business leaders, grandparents and pensioners from both the Left and the Right. All of them believe that this is not an issue of Left or Right but where the future of our country needs to be—solely at the centre.

Just last week I received an email from a 70-year-old lifelong Liberal supporter who wants to see our party and our country move ahead with greater action on climate change, and he's not alone. To this gentleman and to the thousands of other northern Tasmanians who've reached out to me via email or through my community survey and identified climate change as one of their most significant concerns: I have heard you.

After reviewing Labor's legislation I've spent a lot of time deciding how to proceed. I believe there are issues with the Climate Change (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2022. I will not be supporting this bill, due to my concerns over the impact it may have on important infrastructure projects, for example. However, I will be supporting Labor's Climate Change Bill 2022. At the end of the day, it's important to me that when I'm back in my own community I'm able to sincerely say that I used the opportunity afforded to me with the power of my vote to stand up for what they want and need and to move on from this debate.

I've had incredibly constructive discussions with the Leader of the Opposition about my views and those of the party on this issue. While there is much that we do agree on, I believe he understands why I've made this decision. I have respect for him, and he has my support as our party formulates our own plan to combat climate change while supporting the Australian economy. However, while that happens, it is important that we do move forward, that we act now and that we do not delay until the eve of the next election.

David Smith (Bean, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Climate Change Bill 2022 and the Climate Change (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2022, and I'd like to recognise the fine contribution made by the member for Bass. When it comes to climate change policy in Australia over the last 10 years, it's been a disappointing story of division and years of missed opportunity. As someone who worked for more than a decade for a science and engineering organisation before coming to this place in 2018, these have been particularly frustrating times for me.

However, we now have the opportunity to end the climate wars and start addressing one of the great challenges this nation faces. There is no time to waste. The recent State of the environment report is a stark reminder of this. I have spoken with some of the passionate public servants who put this critical report together. It's a harrowing report that tells a story of crisis and decline in Australia's environment, with the pressures of climate change being a major contributing factor. The report explains that over the last five years at least 19 ecosystems have shown signs of collapse or near collapse.

Marine heatwaves and ocean acidification are destroying our Great Barrier Reef, causing coral bleaching and threatening 150 reef species. Australia has lost more mammal species than any other continent and has one of the highest rates of species decline in the developed world. Many in my electorate of Bean understand this first hand. The 2019-20 bushfires that swept across Namadgi National Park and Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve were one of the largest ecological disasters in the ACT's history. Here at Parliament House, our first occasion to wear masks was because of the air pollution from those fires. For a week we had the worst air quality across the world. As reported by CSIRO, climate change contributed to this catastrophic event. The impact of climate change has led to longer, more intense fire seasons and an increase in the number of elevated fire weather days. The year 2019 was the driest year since records began in 1900 and it was Australia's warmest year.

This government is committed to taking more ambitious action on climate change. It is what we promised to the Australian people in the last election and we haven't wasted any time since. Last month we updated our nationally determined contribution under the Paris agreement. This formalised Australia's international pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, reaffirming Australia's commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050. It also committed the government to providing an annual statement to parliament on progress towards these targets, and restored Australia's Climate Change Authority as a source of independent policy advice.

The government co-hosted the Sydney Energy Forum with the International Energy Agency, supported by the Business Council of Australia. It brought together governments and the private sector to identify practical opportunities to transition to clean energy. This included clean energy technologies such as solar, hydrogen, critical minerals and batteries. Ministers from the US, Japan, India, Indonesia and Pacific Islands among others attended, and Australia's new position on climate change was welcomed. A partnership agreement between the government and the US was signed at the forum, agreeing to accelerate work on a zero-emissions technology and promote economic growth. The forum demonstrated that Australia can transition through a net-zero economy while also providing clean, affordable and secure energy to countries in our region for their own transitions.

At the Pacific Islands Forum, Prime Minister Albanese reassured our Pacific partners of Australia's strengthened commitment to combating climate change. It was also acknowledged as a primary economic and security challenge for our region and an existential threat to the island countries of the Pacific.

The minister for climate change recently signed regulations to strengthen the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, ensuring it remains focused on renewables and electrification. Since the agency's establishment in 2012 under Labor, it has delivered $8 worth of value to the Australian economy.

Now, as one of our first acts in parliament, we are introducing our Climate Change Bill. This seeks to enshrine in law our nationally determined contribution of 43 per cent emissions reduction by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050. This target is a floor, not a ceiling, and it has been backed in by representatives of business and unions, energy users and energy providers, farmers and conservationists. The bill will also explicitly task in law the Climate Change Authority to assess and publish progress against these targets, and advise government of future targets, including the 2035 target. It will legislate a requirement for the minister for climate change to report annually to parliament on its progress. Legislating the target is international best practice. It creates the much-needed certainty for business, investors and the wider community. It also will see Australia rejoin key trading partners in their ambition to 2030. For example, Canada has a target of 40 to 45 per cent; South Korea, 40 per cent; and Japan, 46 per cent. Most importantly, the 43 per cent target is backed by a plan. We know we can reach it because of the modelled impact of a comprehensive set of policies.

Australia has natural advantages when transitioning to renewables. We have an abundance of natural energy, including plenty of sun and wind resources across our magnificent landmass.

We also have the skills and expertise to lead the transformation to renewable energy. This is an opportunity for us to jump ahead of the pack. Our plan has the potential to create more than 600,000 jobs and it will spur $76 billion worth of investment. The fastest way to combat the rising cost of energy is by getting more firm renewable energy into the system.

The current global energy crisis has emphasised the need for collaboration and to position energy security at the centre of the renewable energy transformation. As we saw in Australia, the combination of high fossil fuel prices and ageing coal power stations resulted in energy prices skyrocketing, leaving families struggling to pay their bills. We know the best way to get those prices down is to make it cheaper and more efficient to transmit energy, to get more cleaner and cheaper energy into the system. The AEMO underline this view, recently stating that Australia's energy future lies in firm renewables, which it says is clearly the cheapest reliable power option by a country mile.

Canberra's energy transition is a great example of what can be achieved. At a time when higher energy prices are trending across the country, electricity prices in Canberra are forecast to decrease by 1.25 per cent over the coming year. This is credited to the ACT's long-term renewable energy contracts, which more than offset the increase in wholesale electricity costs. Essentially, we are now a territory powered 100 per cent by renewable energy.

We can close the gap between the federal government and state and territory governments when it comes to investing in renewables that will power Australia. All states and territories, on both sides of politics, have expressed a real desire to work with us to get there and we will be working in collaboration with them to drive down emissions while ensuring secure, affordable energy.

Given the support we are seeing for our climate action plan from states and territories, the business community, unions, energy generators and energy users, we may be more successful and achieve greater emission reductions than forecast. That is why the target should be seen as a floor and not a ceiling. Furthermore, our nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement are built on ratcheting up aggregate and individual ambition over time. Nevertheless, we know with current projections that a 43 per cent emissions reduction by 2030 is what we can achieve with the comprehensive range of policies we took to the Australian public. These policies were endorsed at the last election.

This government is serious about climate change, as has been clearly demonstrated by what we have achieved in only two months in government and what we are set to achieve in our first sitting weeks in parliament. We can end the climate wars, move forward together and get on with the job of tackling one of the greatest challenges this nation has faced. We owe it to the families and communities we represent in this place. Marcus, Eamonn and Stella, this is for you.

Colin Boyce (Flynn, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to begin my contribution by explaining what we are trying to achieve by legislating a 43 per cent reduction in carbon emissions. Carbon dioxide is a trace gas in the atmosphere. It is an odourless, tasteless and invisible gas that is essential to all life on this planet. It is plant food. Without carbon dioxide, plants cannot photosynthesise and they will die. That is a fact. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Our atmosphere is made up of 78 per cent nitrogen, 21 per cent oxygen and 0.9 per cent argon. The other 0.1 per cent is made up of a lot of trace gases, and one of them is carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is 0.04 of the atmosphere. To put that in a mathematical equation, according to the IPCC, man is responsible for three per cent of that 0.04 per cent. That equates to 0.0012 per cent of the atmosphere. Australia is responsible for 1.4 per cent of that. So 1.4 per cent of 0.0012 per cent is 0.0000168 per cent of the atmosphere. What we are proposing to do is reduce that number by 43 per cent. Forty-three per cent of 0.0000168 per cent equates to 0.00000722 per cent of atmospheric carbon dioxide. To put that into rough round figures, that is 7¼ millionths of one per cent. That is what we are trying to achieve mathematically by implementing 43 per cent zero net carbon.

Investments in renewable energy generation, solar and wind, have already put Australia in a very precarious position regarding electrical energy security. Prices are escalating rapidly to the serious detriment of our economy. We once had cheap electricity, and now we have amongst the most expensive electricity in the world. Legislating for an even more aggressive pursuit of a flawed strategy will give rent-seekers and activists the leverage to make the situation worse by compelling the private sector to make wrong decisions. Moreover, we have denied ourselves the rational alternatives, including HELE coal-fired power stations, access to enormous natural gas reserves and nuclear power generation. Australia cannot return to low inflation rates, greater industrial self-reliance and reduced costs of living without reliable, low-cost energy that is achievable by utilising our abundant resources.

During last week, all seven of Queensland's coal-fired stations operated near maximum capacity, exporting 900 to 1,000 megawatts of electricity daily to all southern states, and yet we are told that they must be phased out as soon as possible. The notion that solar panels and wind turbines can reduce emissions is a myth. Due to the construction materials required, they have a negative environmental impact.

This bill claims to implement a range of new policies and programs, including rewiring the nation, an enhanced safeguard mechanism and Australia's first electric vehicle strategy to drive emissions reductions necessary to meet these targets. I would like to draw your attention to the Queensland Transport and Public Works Committee—which I was a part of—inquiry into transport technology that was held in 2020. The inquiry investigated the implementation of electric vehicles in Queensland. The Department of Transport and Main Roads said:

… if EVs are typically charged during peak demand periods, EV charging will be more costly for owners and electricity demand will increase to levels that require our relevant local networks to be upgraded. That cost will ultimately be reflected in increased electricity prices for everyone.

I seek leave to table that document.

Leave granted.

I'll turn now to the safeguard mechanism outlined in the bill. Under the safeguard mechanism, businesses that have emissions over the baseline must buy carbon credits for the emissions above the baseline. Of the 215 largest industrial facilities, 28 are operating in the Capricornia electorate and 18 in the Flynn electorate in Central Queensland. Labor's modelling shows that this will force these businesses to purchase 40 million tonnes or $166 billion worth of offsets by 2030 based on current Australian carbon credit unit prices. That's $1.66 billion in costs that will make these businesses less competitive, forcing jobs and industries offshore. Modelling of the government's plan found that forcing net zero by 2050 through a mandated approach would require a carbon tax of between $80 and $400 a tonne and the conversion of up to 10 per cent of productive agricultural land into vegetation to store carbon. Ultimately this carbon tax on regional Queensland and Australia will force job losses.

I would like to turn to a Financial Review article that clearly highlights a total backflip by the honourable member for McMahon with respect to our safeguard mechanism. This newspaper article says:

Not a single Australian coal mine will be impacted by our safeguards mechanism …

That was on 21 April 2022, yet three months later, on 24 July 2022, the same newspaper stated:

Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen has argued any new gas or coal project will automatically come under the remit of the mechanism …

This is a total backflip on a Labor election promise.

I also refer to what happened this afternoon in respect of an agreement made by the Leader of the Greens and the Labor Party. This is all to do with the Australian domestic gas security mechanism. At the National Press Club today the Leader of the Greens confirmed that, to secure Greens support, the Albanese government would include in its climate change legislation restrictions on the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, Export Finance Australia and Infrastructure Australia. These changes will make it harder, if not impossible, for these agencies to recommend or provide finance and insurance to projects in the energy, resources and agricultural sectors. What will become of the Perdaman urea project in Western Australia, which will provide urea fertiliser for the agricultural industry? Are these projects going to be terminated?

As I said, Australia produces one-quarter of the world's emissions of carbon dioxide. The proposed legislation would reduce this by a small fraction of the extra emissions coming from recent increases in coal usage in Europe and the planned increases in India, China, Korea and Africa. So this is pious and aspirational virtue signalling which can have no effect on emissions worldwide. In just 16 days China produces the equivalent of Australia's entire yearly emissions.

I would like to close with some more science. I know that the speed of light is faster than the speed of sound. That is why those opposite appear bright until they begin to speak.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I just say in response to that insult from the member for Flynn that a true reflection of a fool is that he doesn't recognise his own idiocy. I really think that the pseudoscience created by the member for Flynn was just another reflection of the horrible last 10 years in the climate debate.

Climate change has been talked about since the 19th century. The effects on our climate are reflected in our health outcomes. That has been well recognised throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. In Australia we're finally taking definitive action to have a climate change policy that reflects the true science. Rising emissions are leading to increased atmospheric CO2. It's quite correct that the carbon dioxide content of our atmosphere is small, but very small increases in atmospheric CO2 have a very potent effect on the warming of the earth and on our inability to reflect that heat back into the galaxy. It's well and truly time to develop a climate policy, an energy policy, that works for all Australians.

Climate change affects the whole social and environmental determinants of health. Climate change is estimated to cause at least a quarter of a million unnecessary deaths around the world every year. It costs around US$4 billion every year in adverse effects. It's the biggest health threat that's facing humanity. It is really time that we recognise that. I am really glad that we now have a government with policies in place that will do what we should be doing for climate and energy policy and should have been doing many, many years ago. We have had 10 years of inaction, 10 years of worsening emissions, and 10 years of a lack of surety and clarity for investors.

I am very concerned about the health effects of climate change, and certainly my electorate has been one of the areas around Sydney that has been more severely affected than many. We have had terrible floods. We have had heatwaves. We have had increased hospital admissions with respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease and neurological disease. We have had annual days in Macarthur with temperatures over 45 degrees, more than we have ever had before. We have had record temperatures in our schools and a lack of ability to manage this in any effective way. We have had children admitted to hospital with sunstroke. We have had children who have died from severe sun injury and heat stroke, and we have had elderly people die in their homes from heat stroke. These are just some of the effects of climate change that we have seen in the last few years in my electorate of Macarthur. We have seen increases in infectious diseases and, as the average global temperature increases, they are likely to get worse. We have had mosquito-borne infectious disease, food-borne infectious diseases such as Salmonella, waterborne infectious disease, and we will continue to see this worsening unless we can control our climate.

Yes, Australia has a relatively small effect on global emissions but it is an effect that can be reduced and we should, like a good world neighbour, do the right thing and introduce adequate climate policy, which this government is doing by introducing the Climate Change Bill 2022 and the Climate Change (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2022. We have had increases in mortality in my own electorate from respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, neurological disease. We have had deaths from flooding. We have had deaths, as I mentioned, from sunstroke. We have had increases in mental health difficulties because of huge temperatures. We have had pregnancy loss because of heat exhaustion. There are nutritional effects of climate change, and we have had an increase in skin diseases and allergies that are a reflection of very high summer temperatures. There are occupational health injuries from manual labour for people who work in industry, and we have a large industrial group in Macarthur. We have had direct effects, like I have said, of heat injury. We have had extreme weather events causing loss of life and injury. You may remember the most recent Hawkesbury-Nepean floods had a severe effect on many of the smaller suburbs and towns around my electorate of Macarthur.

There is evidence that these rising temperatures have increased the risk of cataracts and corneal damage. We have decreases in quality of life like impaired sleep and impaired ability to be active, leading to increases in obesity and diabetes. There are increases in asthma and respiratory admissions with chronic airway disease to our local hospitals, and I have certainly seen that in children in my electorate. These links are well known yet we have had 10 years of inaction. We have had nothing from the conservative forces on the other side but vituperation, insults, anxiety, conflicts. Who could forget the member for Cook's really terrible act of bringing a lump of coal into parliament? Yet we have on this side—

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a horrible thing to do!

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I beg your pardon? It is just a reflection of the really oppositional way the whole debate has been carried by the national country party. The speech by the last member was just an indication of that.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No wonder our children have got mental health problems; goodness me!

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Our children and our grandchildren will suffer the effects of climate change for generations unless we act. We're already seeing the effects of climate change, with unstable weather patterns, increased flooding and increased heatwaves and droughts, yet we've had no action from the other side. It's terrible. Our environment is deteriorating in front of our eyes. The minister for the environment released the report that the Liberal-National coalition should have released months and months ago but didn't, which showed the terrible deterioration in our environment and the extinction rates of not just our birds, insects and reptiles but our mammals, which are faster than those in any country in the world. These are all the direct effects of climate change, yet the Liberal-National coalition have done nothing.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Come to my electorate and have a look.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd love to come to your electorate. I've been to your electorate of Parkes. How have you—

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll show you what's going on—the solar and the wind.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, and this—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Please direct your comments through the chair.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I apologise for that, Chair. Around the country, there have been severe effects of climate change. Yes, there is action, and thank God that there is, but we need to reduce our emissions dramatically, and we will do that with a plan outlined by the minister. I am very grateful to him for doing that.

I am sick of the terrible conflict and the terrible way that this whole issue has been approached by the Liberal-National coalition. They haven't learnt their lesson; they should have. They have had a wave of the Australian population vote against them because of their lack of action on climate. Until they recognise that, nothing will change on their side. Luckily, we have a Labor government that will now act on climate change, in cooperation with a whole range of other parties and other people—not before time—and thank God for that.

Come to my electorate in the middle of summer, where temperatures are 47 degrees. I have been to your electorate. I've seen what it's like in a drought, and I know that we have to act on climate change.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Have you seen the solar and the wind?

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, of course I have. I've been right through outback New South Wales and Queensland and seen it. To approach it in such an oppositional way is really just damaging yourselves now. You're not learning your lesson.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Through the chair, Member for Macarthur.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I really think that some of the speeches from that side reflect that you really haven't learnt, and it's a shame. It is something that the Australian population understands now and wants us to act on. We will do that, and it will create jobs and will create prosperity. We will be an energy powerhouse; there's no question. But we must move away from this oppositional approach.

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As much as I like the member for Macarthur, there is much in his contribution that I will take the opportunity to disagree with in my opening remarks. I note the member for Moreton, my good friend, is in the chamber, and I will include him in my opening remarks as well.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What about the member for Flynn's contribution?

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have to say that I do commiserate with the member for Macarthur and the member for Moreton as I reflect on the floods that have occurred in all of our electorates over the past six months and also back in 2017. I know that, for the member for Macarthur, they have occurred a couple of times this year as well.

I enjoy studying history because history can be very, very instructive. I would pull up the member for Macarthur on the term 'climate change' because I would call it something different. I would call it a 'change in climate' because, as the member for Moreton well knows and given the floods that we've had in my electorate of Forde, we have had worse floods historically. As the member for Parkes would know, they've had worse droughts historically in the member for Parkes's electorate. So it's not to do with the term 'climate change'; it's actually to do with a change in climate. And one of the reasons we have the impacts in our electorates that we do—as the members for Macarthur and Moreton well know and as I have said on the public record a number of times—is that our state governments and our councils have allowed housing projects and industrial developments to be built on flood plains that have historically flooded on a regular basis. The consequence of that is dire because, over time, as our population has grown, as our industrial developments have grown and as the value of our assets have grown, the impact of those events, financially, has been greater to our communities.

We are obviously having a very important discussion about the financial impacts of a changing climate. That is perfectly valid. But we are not having a discussion about the practical measures that could be taken to mitigate the effects of a changing climate, because we have failed to properly plan for future development in our communities.

I will put on the record that I am proud of the fact that the previous coalition government—and I believe the current government is continuing this in Queensland at least—had a $750 million fund to allow property owners to relocate, build back better or modify their properties. I think that is a fantastic initiative. That is the sort of stuff we should be pursuing as practical measures. I saw the other day a discussion about the floodplains around Western Sydney and the future of development there and maybe relocating some towns. As the member for Moreton would know, after the events in Grantham in 2011 the town was actually substantially relocated. That is the practical stuff that we should be doing to mitigate the impacts of a changing climate in the future.

We are going to get floods in the future. We are going to have fires in the future. We are going to have cyclones in the future. All of those things are guaranteed to happen. The reason I say that is that they have happened in the past. But if we think that just focusing on reducing our CO2 emissions is going to be the silver bullet that solves this problem we are seriously kidding ourselves. Those things happened when the CO2 levels in our atmosphere were far, far lower than they are today. So let's learn from history. That's not to say the climate isn't changing. I'm not saying that we don't have a responsibility to look after our environment and make it a better place for the current generation and also ensure that we leave an environment that is in better condition for future generations. I absolutely have no problem with that argument whatsoever.

There is much we can do in that space. I remember having a discussion with a former environment minister, the former member for Flinders, Greg Hunt, about riparian corridors on waterways. One of the great advantages of riparian corridors on waterways is they slow down floodwaters. You reduce, then, the transfer of silt that would impact on waterways further down the course or, in the case of North Queensland, you reduce the level of silt that would go out into the Great Barrier Reef. It is these practical measures, in my view, that we should be looking at. We know as well that riparian corridors become a source of CO2 sequestration. There are arguments from some scientists for this. There is a scientist in Queensland by the name of Bill Burrows who wrote a submission to a parliamentary inquiry suggesting that, with our forests and rain plains, we continue to develop and grow those out. Those measures will greatly assist with getting to or even ensure that we are net zero rather than other measures we are currently discussing.

I hear those opposite say regularly that the 43 per cent reduction is a plan. The 43 per cent isn't a plan; it's a target. It's a target, by the way, that doesn't have to be legislated, because the government has already signed up to it. The government has already signed up, so there's no need for this legislation. The worst part about this legislation is that there is no plan attached—zero. There is nothing in this legislation that creates a plan to achieve that 43 per cent reduction. As I look at what—

I will take the member for Moreton's interjection, because he's a good friend. The government proposes to rewire the nation, in their words, at an investment of—I believe climate change minister said this today in question time—$131 billion in total. Given that that is a regulated asset and requires a return—the regulator return is somewhere around five to 5½ per cent. That's a return of somewhere in the order of $6½ billion to $7 billion, in round numbers, per annum. Ultimately, who's going to pay for that? It's a regulated asset. The consumers of electricity are going to pay for that.

Those opposite have said that they are going to reduce electricity bills by $275 through to 2025. At a cost of $7½ billion across 25 million people it's going to cost the Australian consumer $300 a year, because of that investment in a regulated asset. How are those opposite going to reduce electricity bills by $275 a year when their exact plan is to increase electricity prices by $300 a year? It just doesn't make sense. It doesn't add up.

I am very pleased—in the last 40 seconds of this contribution—that the opposition has put nuclear energy on the agenda this week, because if those opposite and those on the crossbench are serious about achieving a net zero target by 2050 nuclear energy is the only solution—in addition to a range of other things that are already being done.

I am proud of the record of the coalition government in getting us to where we are today. We met all of our international targets and obligations in our time in government. I stand by our track record.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was elected in November 2007 on a policy of responding to dangerous climate change. Way back then in the Dark Ages it was actually a joint ticket with my Liberal opponent, a former minister. Then after that a wrecking ball called Tony Abbott weaponised sensible policy. For short-term political expediency he weaponised any response to the loud scientific warnings. Since that day of infamy when Tony Abbott became leader of the Liberal Party in December 2009, when the then member for Warringah weaponised saving this planet, I have despaired about this building actually responding to dangerous climate change.

For the last nine years I have stood up in parliament and talked about the need for urgent action while the dilettantes and grifters opposite tried 22 different versions of sweet, sweet nothing. While they fiddled our homes burned. While they fiddled our homes have flooded. We've have been hammered by the elements in all the ways that the climate scientists warned us about. There is more frequent flooding. There are higher and erosive tides, and more harsh and destructive bushfires to come. That is what the CSIRO tells us. I am not a scientist. I listen to the CSIRO.

Sensible Australians have contacted their federal members and senators right across the country urging the parliament to act on addressing dangerous climate change.

I was here when the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme—the CPRS—was passed in the House of Representatives. I remember Malcolm Turnbull actually sitting with the Labor party for that vote. Then I went over to that other chamber to watch the coalition and the Greens combine to vote down the CPRS. I also witnessed—right up in that part of the chamber—a little coven of government members, including the now Leader of the Opposition, hugging and cheering when the coalition withdrew Labor's carbon-pricing scheme.

Australians have been on a very long journey to get us to where this chamber is today. These bills will enshrine the nation's commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and to get us to net zero by 2050. Labor's commitment will become law.

What rot we've heard from some of those opposite. The previous speaker, the member for Forde, couldn't even say the name of the bill in front of him. Then we had the member for Flynn—oh my goodness! His approach to science was antediluvian—unbelievable. I'm not sure what niche clientele he's trying to address, but it's unbelievable. If he is the hope of the Liberal National Party, then heaven help the Liberal National Party in Queensland. Oh my goodness! I couldn't believe that he would be so backward looking and so unscientific.

I see the member for New England about to speak. I'm sure he'll make a sterling contribution! If the choice is listening to the voice of Boyce or Joyce, there's no choice at all, as far as I'm concerned. Labor knows that legislating targets provides the strongest possible signal to industry and investors. We know that because we saw what happened when those scoundrels were dancing and celebrating taking back Labor's scheme. Private investment in renewable energy fell off a cliff. We'd been one of the world leaders of private capital flocking to invest in infrastructure—like wind farms up around Armidale, around Glen Innes, great pieces of infrastructure that I know are powering my sister's home in the member for New England's electorate right now. We know that legislating targets will give a great signal to private investment and private capital. It will also help to restore our nation's international reputation, giving us the opportunity to capitalise on the opportunities arising from global climate action.

And we are the Labor Party, so what do we care about? Labour, jobs. We know that this will mean jobs. Labor took a 43 per cent target to the election as a minimum commitment. We built consensus across industry, environmental groups, farmers, business et cetera, to give certainty to all of them. A 2030 target of 43 per cent has received the support of the Australian Industry Group—well-known communist clientele, obviously; the Business Council of Australia—obviously a mob of lefties; the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry—sounds like an offshoot of the Socialist Party; the Clean Energy Council; the Australian Conservation Foundation; the Australian Council of Trade Unions; and the National Farmers Federation. Our commitment to reduce emissions to 43 per cent below 2005 by 2030 is part of a credible pathway to net zero.

Labor's Climate Change Bill has four elements. It enshrines in law the nationally determined contribution of 43 per cent emissions reduction by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050. It gives the Climate Change Authority the job of assessing and publishing progress against these targets, as well as advising government on future targets, including the 2035 target. It provides accountability, by making it a requirement for the minister for climate change to report annually to parliament on the progress in meeting our targets. And it inserts the nation's targets in the objectives and functions of a range of government agencies, including the mighty ARENA, CEFC, Infrastructure Australia and the NAIF.

It's important that there is transparency in our actions. Much as with the Closing the gap report, the annual address to parliament by the climate change minister is about updating the parliament and the nation on the progress we're making to meet our climate goals. We're here at this very important moment in time when we can get Australia back on track, get real action underway and provide certainty on Australia's low-carbon future.

After the election I received hundreds of emails of congratulations, and the consistent theme was that people were relieved that finally Australia had a government that understands climate change is real, a government determined to reduce our emissions by boosting renewable energy. Just recently, in a survey of young people in my electorate, over 90 per cent of respondents said that voting for a party with a climate change policy was the major factor in determining how they voted in 2022. But, more than that, addressing climate and moving to renewables were the defining issues shared across so many different groups in my electorate.

Labor's Powering Australia plan that we took to the election is a plan to secure our nation's future, to maximise the benefits of new technology—cheap energy, new job opportunities and cheaper, low-emissions vehicles. Our Powering Australia plan also includes a number of other policies that will boost the renewable energy sector and accelerate and support regions at the front of the energy industry. There will be a lot of jobs for the bush. It's good to see that the Labor Party is continuing its fine tradition of looking after the bush. We delivered all those great policies for the bush, like education, Medicare and NBN. They are great things for the bush. Labor delivers for the bush; the National Party have given up on the bush. They've given up on the bush—

Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's not true.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry, Pat. The $20 billion Rewiring the Nation investment will modernise the grid and provide the country with more renewables, more transmission and more storage. Any facility that emits over 100,000 tonnes of emissions will be included in the safeguard mechanism, which is a little like that trade-exposed industries mechanism in the old CPRS. The safeguard mechanism reforms will work with big emitters on a trajectory to net zero by 2050. We've got to be sensible and get the trajectory right. Large listed companies and financial institutions have been calling for mandatory climate disclosure standards and will need to disclose their emissions under new standards, ensuring investors have all the information they need to make sustainable investment decisions. This government aims to tackle climate change from all sides, reducing greenhouse gas emissions overall, creating new jobs in the renewable energy sector and ensuring fair support and protections for workers transitioning out of fossil fuel industries.

My electorate has been subject to devastating floods—back in 2011 and again in February this year. These floods hit my community hard. I know that the people of Moreton are resilient. I know they're rebuilding their homes and their lives, but it's tough. It's challenging. And people are very, very tired. They're tired of inaction when it comes to responding to climate change, so I hear their anguish. We know that we're going to face more frequent and more severe disasters because of climate change. That is what the CSIRO tells us. This is the reality, and individuals can only do so much, but that is not a reason to do nothing, which seems to be the argument proselytised by those opposite, particularly the member for Flynn. I know that those opposite have indicated they will not support our climate change legislation, although it was great to hear one of them say that they would be backing it tonight. That was someone who actually got an increased margin in the recent election. I can't understand, when your party loses the election, why you would do that.

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I've always wondered why perfectly sane, well-educated individuals fall for this form of absolutism. I believe that the attraction is primarily aesthetic and that the experience is fun, because the world of a sort of quasi-conspiracy theory is very like the world of a game. The rage and fear and conviction that conspiracy theorists display are aestheticised versions of the real things. This perennial focus on the weather is a peculiar tension between philosophical monism and an alternative view. Tonight we've even heard of that quasi-religion—and it is a quasi-religion. They extol the virtue of believers. They talk about deniers. They have an absolute belief, without any version of thermodynamics or atmospheric science. It is a form and extension of a paranoia. We've heard tonight about disease, temperature, floods, fires—a great catastrophe, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—which are somehow to be avoided by the passage of a piece of legislation through this House. It is a fact that there is nothing of this legislation that will affect the climate—nothing at all. It is a form of virtue signalling. It is a form of—at its best—being a part of a global movement, but a global movement that the vast majority of the globe is not part of. What it will do is massive damage to our economy at a time when our nation should become as strong as possible, as quickly as possible. It will cost you money. Whether it's on a domestic front or on a global front, it is costing you money now. Your price of power is higher because of climate policy, whether you think of it as virtuous or not. You are poorer because of climate policy. You pay more for fuel because of climate policy. Prior to the war in Ukraine, there was a so-called wind drought in England, and the price of power went through the roof, multiple times above where it was. Hundreds of thousands of people were dropped off their power provider, because they said, 'We just can't do it anymore.' This was the outcome of a wind drought, and then came the war in Ukraine.

If you believe that fuel is too cheap, support this. If you believe the price of power is too cheap, support this. If you believe the price of food is too cheap, support this. If you want to take more money out of your wallet and send it to somebody else, support this. But remember: another person on the other side of the transaction is getting your money, make no mistake about that. People and companies are becoming exceptionally wealthy by reason of this process, make no mistake about that.

Make no mistake that every wind tower is basically fully imported. Make no mistake that every photovoltaic cell is not made in Australia; it's made overseas. Make no mistake that the overwhelming majority of the companies participating in this are foreign owned. Make no mistake about that. Make no mistake about the hundreds of thousands of acres of footprints that renewables take. Make no mistake about the divisive nature this now has in regional areas, where people, who are even family members, are pitted one against the other as they argue about the transmission lines that go across their country, that their places have been turned into an industrial landscape.

This will not happen in Warringah, so they can support it. It's not going to happen in Wentworth. It's not going to happen in urban areas; it happens in our seats. I tell you right now, if you want to create a coalition between the Greens, Labor, the Liberals and the Nationals, the way to do it is to propose a wind farm in their area, and you will do it.

They talk about renewables as the cheapest form of power. That is complete and utter garbage. Power is sold in five-minute blocks. If we were to come into this chamber and say, 'I'm only prepared for the power to stay on for five minutes', that would be an absurdity. For five minutes the wind's blowing, the power's on and it's very cheap. But after that it goes out and the lights go out. In five-minute blocks, I can make anything cheap. I can make a car that goes down a hill the cheapest car in Australia. I can say: it uses no fuel; it's green. Of course—it's running downhill. It's when it has to go up the other side that it creates a problem.

We should be selling power in 24-hour blocks. You provide the reliability to provide power for 24 hours and then you would see the real cost of renewables. They wouldn't be able to compete, not without substantial back-up, substantial pump hydro and substantial batteries. If every battery now in Europe was turned on to take the place of coal-fired power stations and nuclear, the power in Europe would stay on for less than two minutes. That is the absurdity and the quasi-religious nature of this argument, this absolute belief without question. The fact that you are derided and pilloried if you dare question, it is a very dangerous thing. Some very dangerous things have happened in history because of unquestioning belief.

Now, you may say, 'Well, how do we go into this process when it's unreasonable?' The only way we can sort of find a meeting ground is to get nuclear power. If you want zero emissions, you've got to get nuclear power. They say it's incredibly expensive. That is not the truth. In the recent reports, small modular reactors are vastly safer and exceptionally cheaper. They are made in factories. NewScale has recently received its approval through one of the hardest submission processes that you would ever get. They are made in factories. They are 20 metres long. They are three metre wide. They come in on the back of a truck. Yet we say we can't do it. We're repeating the mistake of sending our coal overseas and our iron ore overseas, but we resile from the fact that we're going to make motorcars in Australia and do the manufacturing in Australia.

Once more, we've resigned ourselves to being the dumb country. We're going to be the dumbos. We're going to export the rock because we don't believe in ourselves and we don't have the confidence in ourselves to produce the technologies. Why is it that every OECD country produces nuclear power except us? Are we the wise ones and they're all stupid?—you know: 'There goes my son. He's the only one in step.' Is this how it is? Why don't we grasp the issue and say: 'If this is what we're going to do—if we're going to export uranium—let's export the technology. Let's be the clever ones. Let's make it safe. Let's make it cheap. Let's have confidence in ourselves.' But we don't, and we should.

I believe the perspective of the community has changed. I've never been to a meeting yet where a majority of the people were not for nuclear power. They can't work out why we're not for nuclear power. If you say: 'Well, where are we going to put it?' that's a divisive issue. We could have an assessment of where people want it. Put it to them. Say to people: 'If you can see the power plant, you get your power for free. If you can see it, your power's free,' and then see what the response is.

Remember, we have one nuclear facility in Australia smack-bang in the geographical centre of our biggest city, and no-one has really got a concern about it. In recent years, they've sold spare blocks for a million dollars a pop. So I am going to be a bookend, I am going to be the sceptic, because I don't like this quasi-religion that has evolved about this. Politically, I even find it very dangerous. At other times in history, this quasi-religion, this absolute belief, this unquestioning adherence has done some very dangerous things. You need people to stand up and say: 'I'm going to question this,' because it's got to happen.

I say that this legislation is going to change nothing. It will make you poorer. You are going to pay for this. Every time you buy your fuel, you will pay for climate policy. Every time you buy your groceries, you will pay for climate policy. Every time you get your power bill, you most definitely will be paying for climate policy. And this legislation is going to make it worse. You are going to become poorer still. And because of this, the temperature of the globe will stay exactly where it is at the moment.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's always a matter of interest to follow the member for New England in this chamber. I don't think that he will be surprised when I suggest that no-one in Australia is going to be shocked by the news that the member for New England is sceptical about Labor's climate change policy, because he was part of the problem. He actually was the Deputy Prime Minister and part of the problem. There were nine years of utter wasted time and wasted opportunity in this nation.

It is with pleasure that I get to stand in this chamber of the Australian parliament this evening to speak on Labor's Climate Change Bill 2022, because this is the first real climate action bill in years that this parliament has seen. It's a bill that we're actually going to get to vote on. It is a first step in implementing the Albanese government's mandate and the policy, Powering Australia, that we took to the election. Australia has been crying out for action on climate change, and on 21 May the Australian people voted for change. They rejected the Morrison-Joyce government's refusal to take action on climate change, the blatant disregard for science and the brutal climate wars that prevented any real action on climate change for more than a decade.

My electorate of Newcastle knows probably better than most the importance not only of reaching net zero by 2050 but of diversifying and strengthening our economic base with renewable energy. The member for New England suggested that only members like his good self might, perhaps, understand the real impacts of these changes. Well, I've got to tell you that the people of Newcastle, the world's largest exporting port for coal, have a lot of skin in this game. But, unlike the member for New England, we're not putting our head in the sand and pretending there's no issue here. We're not rejecting the science. We are not rejecting the very clear fact that renewables are now the cheapest form of energy in this nation.

The Labor government's Powering Australia plan will deliver on our commitment to ensure that not only are there 600,000 new jobs in this new energy space but also that five out of every six of those new jobs are going to be in regions like mine that are currently carbon-intensive economies. It's regions like mine that have always been at the heart of energy generation and distribution in this nation, and we want to be at the heart of energy generation and distribution for generations to come.

It's an Albanese Labor government that is going to ensure that we have the opportunity to transform Newcastle into a renewable energy superpower. That is our future. We want to create safe, secure jobs. We want to cut power prices for our constituents, for families and for people who are currently paying through the nose for their energy in this country, and we want to reduce emissions in the process. That's why Labor's plan is to boost the percentage of renewables going into the grid by 82 per cent by 2030. We've already this week introduced into this parliament legislation to make electric vehicles cheaper, honouring another promise we made to the Australian people. We're set to install 400 community batteries and roll out 85 solar banks across Australia. That's because we don't want only the good homeowners of Australia to have access to cheap, affordable renewable energies; we actually want to benefit every Australian, including those who are in rentals who currently can't afford to get a foothold in the housing market. Why should they not benefit from cheaper, affordable renewable energy?

Our government is mindful that we want all Australians to be able to take part in these renewable energy innovations and in the distribution of renewable energy across Australia. The people of Newcastle are absolutely ecstatic that there is finally a line being drawn in the sand to put an end to these bitter, destructive climate wars that have stopped action for the last decade. They know that it's time that we start the really serious work and, indeed, the heavy lifting of transforming our economies. The worst thing in the world to do to communities like mine is to pretend that there is nothing going on here: 'You can all just keep going. It's tickety-boo. Just keep doing what you're doing.' Then one day a decision is made in a boardroom far across the other side of the world which has profound impacts for communities like mine, which then means that we don't have a plan B in place, and we leave thousands of workers and their families hanging out to dry. That is not the Labor way; that is not what a Labor government will be doing.

Novocastrians, just like the business community and just like industry groups, know there is some hard, serious work to be done, and we want to take advantage of the opportunities that are going to come to regions like ours. We've got the highly skilled workforce. We've been generating power for more than a century. The workers in my electorate know more about power than anybody in this room, I can assure you. There's a highly skilled workforce, important key infrastructure in place and access to an electricity grid that is going to be vital in the transitioning of this nation.

Offshore wind, utilising the new technology of floating turbines, is fast becoming a reality in Australia. I congratulate members opposite for putting up legislation during the last parliament, which we wholeheartedly supported, to ensure that we can actually have offshore wind in Australia. We are now going to make that a reality. It is regions like mine that stand to benefit enormously from those new opportunities. We are poised to be a prime location not just for the production of wind energy but also for the important manufacturing and fabrication of those wind turbines and for lots of wind projects across the country. That's the vision I have for Newcastle.

Newcastle and the Hunter is also rapidly becoming the centre of green hydrogen. There a lot of projects on the horizon. The Albanese Labor government is partnering with the University of Newcastle to invest $16 million in building a new facility that will invent and test solutions to a whole range of global challenges when it comes to the use of hydrogen and the many new energy technologies that are coming online. The skills, techniques and technologies developed by this project at the university will enable local industry—including hydrogen investments at the Port of Newcastle, for example—to reach their full potential. There has been a lot of thinking as to what will be required and what industry is going to need in terms of a skilled workforce but also the places to test out, accredit and ensure safety in the use of these new energy technologies.

We are not blind to the challenges ahead; we are preparing for them. There are two green hydrogen projects set for Newcastle that the federal Labor government are going to be funding—$41 million each. One is with Origin and one is with the Port of Newcastle. I cannot wait to see them come online. It makes sense for our port to play a substantial role in Australia's bid to become a significant exporter of renewable energies.

In this limited time, I think it's important to remind the House that the Australian people had the opportunity to vote to end the climate wars, and that's what they did on 21 May for the first time in a decade. Now it's up to the Australian parliament to do the same.

Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is good to hear a reasonable voice from the Labor side. I will offer a slightly different view from Groom. We have always described ourselves as energy agnostic in our area. We have a wonderful thermal coalmine that we hope is about to start up again. We have gas. We have solar power. We have wind just on the verge. We have a hydro plant on the way. And we have had long discussions about hydrogen coming into the Toowoomba region. We do what works. That is our approach and it has worked very well for us.

Going to the legislation—the Climate Change Bill 2022 and related bill—this is absolutely a triumph of politics over policy. The Prime Minister and minister have made very, very clear in repeated statements that this legislation is not necessary. It is entirely the government's right to set their targets, and they have done that. That work has been done. Targets have been set. Nothing that we debate here will change that or impact on that.

What is this legislation about? For people in a regional community like mine, this legislation is about enabling projects to be killed by stealth. That is what this legislation enables. We have seen this in the UK. I'll refer to my time as a project manager delivering major projects very similar to these in the UK. We saw a high-speed tube under the cover of legislation very similar to this attacked by green lawfare trying to stop that project. It's amazing to think that the Greens would try to stop the biggest public transport project—in fact, the biggest project—going on in Europe at the moment. A massive public transport project is trying to be stopped. This legislation would enable that. We have seen them try to stop highway maintenance projects under cover of this sort of legislation. We have seen how important Heathrow's third runway is to the UK. Their entire economy relies upon their connection to Europe and the rest of the world yet we saw green lawfare trying to stop the runway under the cover of the sort of legislation.

So what does this mean for people in Groom? Let's think about the big projects coming our way. We have been fighting for years to get passenger rail from Brisbane to Toowoomba. That connection that we rely upon will make a huge difference to our economy, to our community. Under the cover of this legislation, green lawfare will try to stop that, I absolutely guarantee. Road maintenance—let's talk about the Gore Highway, the Warrego, the New England, all of which require significant ongoing maintenance. In the UK these things were \ challenged and tried to be stopped because they increased traffic movements. That is exactly what we would like to do, increase traffic movements on that because that is us getting our product to market. That is how a regional economy exists. Heaven forbid, the second road to Highfields, which is an incredibly important road project so vital for the growth of our region in Groom, is a project very similar to what was challenged in the UK. Again, if we want to expand the Wellcamp Airport, it would be able to be challenged by green lawfare under the cover of this legislation.

I point out Green lawfare is not hypothetical to us in Groom. We have sat and watched for 15 years the New Acland coalmine be attacked by activists through the courts with the sole intent of stopping this coalmine. This is not hypothetical. We have watched this happen. We have watched the town of Oakey be stripped of investment, be stripped of jobs. We are watching our people leave and take jobs elsewhere. The local economy is suffering because of this approach, what I call it the Palaszczuk approach, where the Premier never has to say no herself but she just allows these projects to die a death of a thousand lawsuits at arm's length from her government.

This legislation that moves the targets from the executive powers to the legislative gives licence for the Prime Minister to do exactly the same. The Prime Minister will run the country the way that the Premier is running Queensland. For those in my patch, that's not a particularly good thing. When we look at what this approach is about, enabling this sort of lawfare, enabling things to be stopped by activists, removing executive power and executive judgement on these projects, it is about stopping things. It's about taking options off the table. It is about reducing emissions by reducing economic activity. So what we end up with is fewer things happening. In regional communities like ours that rely upon this significant infrastructure to keep us connected, to enable our industries, to enable our economy, what this means is we will see less of that.

I very much welcome the debate that others have raised here on nuclear energy. It enables a credible conversation about building our energy capacity, about facing our future energy needs. I very much welcome that conversation. It is something new, something challenging, and I acknowledge that. This debate has been frozen in time since the 1980s. It was over a generation ago that decisions were made about nuclear, back when Midnight Oil was still producing good albums, and those decisions may have been right at the time. I don't know, maybe they were right at the time. Maybe when there was no question about how much coal we should be using, these decisions were right. Maybe the cheapness of coal meant nuclear wasn't the right answer. But that situation is not the one we are facing today. When we are speaking about nuclear now we are speaking about today's technologies, new and emerging technologies, not Soviet-era reactors. We aren't back in the past with Ivan Drago; we're talking about what is happening now.

I noticed again today that the minister laughed at, scoffed and mocked the very idea of nuclear. Now, it was very clear that he made efforts to do that. It was a little bit of Kabuki theatre, I think, showing off just how much he thought this was a silly idea. Well, if the economics don't stack up, why are countries like France, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, the US and the UK adopting this technology? Why are they doubling down on it? If this is so laughable, why are these major countries that have similar commitments and that are reducing their emissions choosing this technology? There are two answers: either the minister knows something that they don't know, or they know something that the minister doesn't know. I'm going to go with the market on this one. I'm going to go with the market. That's just what my side tends to do. Market led decision-making tends to be the best in the long run.

There is a decision being made by modern economies to embrace this conversation. If there's anything that we can add to it, it's that if we want to have a credible position going forward then we need to have this conversation—and I acknowledge that it's challenging. But instead we tend to find ourselves here debating legislation that the Prime Minister himself has described as unnecessary. I strongly believe that we should be opening ourselves to a conversation on a credible energy policy that builds on this side of the House's legacy of a technology led approach and that safeguards those regional jobs with regional projects and regional people.

It's extraordinary that, within this short time into a new government, we're seeing a real divergence on energy policy. We're seeing the approach of stopping things, of taking options off the table, of staying with decisions on technologies from a generation ago—reducing emissions by reducing economic activity versus the approach on this side of the House, which is to open ourselves to a conversation about the latest technology, to open ourselves to what other major economies are doing around the world to address the challenges we face. I think that that decision will be very, very clear. We're willing to engage in it. We acknowledge the challenges that talking about nuclear brings. We acknowledge that technology is advancing every day that we delay this conversation. Technology continues to advance. But we are open to it.

If this legislation has highlighted anything, it's that having targets as your focus is one thing but that not being willing to engage in a conversation about the how of today is of no value to the Australian people.

Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know something about emergencies. I've been in a few in my time during my career as a frontline doctor. Rather than tell you what I do, let me tell you what I don't do. I don't stand around, hands in pocket, pontificating about, denying or delaying what is in front of me. I act, and I act with a team, with urgency and purpose. I also don't just do one thing. As a team, we do everything. Multiple interventions are deployed, because that is exactly what an emergency demands.

We are in a climate emergency. This is a position that the Labor Party has held since 2015. Our continent has warmed to 1.4 degrees, and we are living, as Churchill said, through the era of consequences that is indeed upon us. We are facing the prospect that parts of our country are becoming unliveable. This is a sobering and traumatising scenario for those communities. Imagine how they feel when they hear persistent rain on their roofs? I'm sure many of them cannot sleep at night. But it's not just the impacts on our land and our environment. There are individual impacts at a very personal level. As a doctor, I have seen climate anxiety manifest in young people, in older people and, indeed, in our elders—across the full spectrum of our population, particularly in Higgins. But something more is happening. I have seen this morph into something far more sinister: what can only be described as a lethal hopelessness. We talk a lot about imperatives. There is, indeed, an environmental imperative, there is an economic imperative, but there is also now a time imperative, and we have simply run out of time as a country.

At a local level, Higgins has been crying out for climate action. I heard that loud and clear when I was campaigning, and for too long those cries have fallen on deaf ears. The Australian Conservation Foundation in March performed a survey, and it revealed that over 70 per cent of people in Higgins believed that climate action would deliver both health and economic benefits—and do you know what? They're absolutely right. I want to acknowledge the work of the Higgins Climate Action Network and note their tireless activism over many, many years. They are the obsessive minority that helped drive change and tip the balance at this election. On 21 May, the Australian people transitioned away from the Liberal-National party towards a renewable energy future that will be delivered now by this progressive parliament.

Today is a joyous day because today we end, finally, the climate wars. We end a decade of dithering inaction and incompetence and of 22 energy policies with the failure to land even one. I have with me this document, the Powering Australia plan. This plan was an inert document yesterday, but, thanks to the efforts of this parliament, we have breathed life into this plan—into this inert document—and now this plan will deliver a completely different future for Australians, young and old. It is a day to rejoice.

The bill itself delivers on the government's election commitment to restore national leadership on climate change by legislating our targets to reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent on 2005 figures by 2030 and to net zero by 2050. It is an important opportunity also for this Australian parliament to affirm the long-held wish of our people that we indeed commit to net zero. The Climate Change Bill 2022 legislates the 2030 and 2050 targets consistent with the nationally determined contributions that we submitted to the United Nations on 16 June. We set a cracking pace from the very beginning. It enhances our accountability and transparency, and this is important because climate integrity is so important. We're about to spend billions and billions of taxpayer dollars, as well as private investment, and we need to wrap probity and integrity around everything we do. So there will be an annual statement to parliament on our climate progress, delivered by the minister. In addition to this, we have empowered our agencies to do what they need to do and what has been denied to them. The Climate Change Authority will provide impartial, independent advice to the parliament and to our government. We have also baked in a regular independent review of the act to ensure that it is fit for purpose as we go forward. We have empowered our agencies to focus on turbocharging clean energy. These include the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, known as ARENA, the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility and Export Finance Australia. And, finally, we will be returning a voice to our peak scientific body, the CSIRO.

What is outside the remit of this bill, but is relevant to its progress and its activation in our country, is that we, as a government, are also addressing the bottlenecks—and these are really important to understand. And there are three: (1) is skills; (2) is industrial capability; and (3) is workforce participation. If we do not address these skills, we will not get to our destination.

With respect to skills, we have a plan. We are going to introduce 45,000free TAFE places, 10,000 of which are focused on energy apprenticeships, and I hope that our young people, men and women, sign up to these in droves. Industrial capability: once upon a time, Australia was ranked by the Harvard Economic Complexity Index—an objective marker of industrial capability and know-how. In 2000, we were ranked No. 60 out 133 countries. We are currently No. 91. We have gone backwards in 22 years, so we have a lot of work to do to bring back onshore manufacturing. We're going to do that through our National Reconstruction Fund, a $15 billion enterprise designed to bring high-tech manufacturing back to Australia so that we actually make those batteries. And I hope that one day we make electric vehicles here again. We currently sell our lithium, for example, for A$60,000 per tonne, and we buy it back as an $80,000 to $100,000 electric vehicle. There is nothing stopping us, except our own imagination, from making these products here, the kinds of products that Australians are desperate for.

So, today we turn the flywheel, and this flywheel will spin faster and faster over the next eight years. But as it turns, market forces will take over and it will mean that we not only reach that interim target, but I am confident that we will indeed exceed it. Australia is a prodigal child that has returned back to the fold. Today is one of the happiest days of my life, because I can say with confidence to the people of Higgins that the Albanese Labor government and this parliament, and I thank the crossbench, is acting with purpose and urgency on climate.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House acknowledges that for the Government to reach their target of Net Zero by 2050, not one new coal, oil or gas project can commence".

We are in a climate emergency. We need action, and the election showed that the Australian people want action. The Greens and crossbenchers who pushed for no new coal and gas saw their votes go up. Liberal and Labor, who want more coal and gas, saw their votes go backwards. The climate crisis is caused by the mining and burning of coal, oil and gas. You do not end the climate wars by opening more coal and gas mines.

At some point in our history we have to say that it's time for no more coal and gas. The United Nations believes it's time. The International Energy Agency believes it's time. The Pacific islands leaders believe it's time. Thousands of young climate strikers believe it's time. Even the Pope believes it's time! But this Labor government seems to believe something different. Labor seems to believe that we can keep approving more coal and gas, and that the market will make the call when it's time to stop. Labor wouldn't leave the minimum wage or aged-care nurse ratios to the market to decide, so it shouldn't do it with the future of humanity either. It's the government's job to keep people safe, not to defend the profits of Santos and Woodside. Worse, channelling the former Prime Minister, the current Prime Minister says that our coal is somehow better for the climate. It is not. You can't put the fire out while pouring more petrol on it. You can only end the climate wars by keeping coal and gas in the ground.

Right now there are 114 new coal and gas projects in the pipeline. If they go ahead, more homes and businesses will become uninsurable. If we hit two or more degrees of warming and fail to meet the Paris Agreement goals, which is where this government's weak targets take us, we will see more floods, fires and droughts. They will increase the cost of living and destroy infrastructure. Ecosystems will collapse, more species will simply become extinct and more of us will die. That is why, when negotiating on this Climate Change Bill, we've put such an emphasis not just on the government's weak targets, but on the need for a moratorium on new coal and gas. We also said that there needed to be compromise and real action and that our preference was to improve and pass the bill.

In this parliament where less than a third of the country voted for Labor—yes, Labor has some mandate and the Greens have some mandate, but more important is our mandate from the planet and the laws of physics. If the government continues to open up new coal and gas the planet will burn and that is the mandate we need to listen to. That is why we're bitterly disappointed that Labor has made it clear publicly over the last few weeks that they want to continue to open new coal and gas projects.

While the government has been unwilling to adopt science-based targets and place a moratorium on new coal and gas, we have been able to secure improvements to the bill—ensuring that the target can be ratcheted up over time and that it's now 'Dutton-proofed' with a genuine floor, which means the target cannot go backwards. Changes have also been made to put in place greater transparency and accountability and strengthen requirements on the Climate Change Authority. Government agencies, such as Export Finance Australia, that in the past have funded coal and gas projects will, for the first time, be forced to take climate targets into account, which would see them curbed from supporting fossil fuels. They join a range of other agencies with new limits, including Infrastructure Australia and the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility. That is why we will vote for this bill tomorrow and we will vote for it in the Senate.

To be crystal clear, the Greens have improved a weak climate bill and we will pass it. But the fight to stop Labor's new coal and gas mines continues. In this parliament the only obstacle to stronger climate action is Labor.

People need to be clear-eyed about the importance of this bill and that this government is bringing a bucket of water to a house fire. Worse—even this smallest of steps along the road to tackling the climate emergency could be wiped out by just one of the 114 new coal and gas projects in the government's investment pipeline.

The Senate inquiry will be critical, as we expect the Senate inquiry will show that the government cannot meet the targets in this legislation if it opens new coal and gas projects and that a change to the government's approach will be required.

The Beetaloo gas project alone could lift Australia's pollution by up to 13 per cent. And if all of the coal, oil and gas projects on the books go ahead Australia's pollution could rise by as much as a third from where we are now. None of this is included in Labor's modelling around the weak 43 per cent. Here we Greens have the science, the public and the international community on our side.

Labor might be holding out now but their position is ultimately untenable. They can't go to upcoming climate summits vowing to open new coal and gas projects and expect to be taken seriously. Soon the government will start to say how it will cut pollution, putting some meat on the bones of its centrepiece safeguard mechanism which may reduce pollution by as little as one per cent a year and ignite new climate wars if it allows new coal and gas projects to proceed.

The Greens, in balance of power in the Senate, will be crucial, as the safeguard mechanism can be disallowed. I can also inform the House that, because the safeguard mechanism will deal with the question of new coal and gas projects the government will have further discussion with the Greens as it designs the mechanism. Further, the government will also consider Greens' proposals to support coal and gas workers and communities, including the establishment of a transition authority. This was a crucial part of our election campaign. This has to be the parliament that provides job and wage security to coal and gas workers as we do our part to tackle the climate challenge.

Over the next six to 12 months the battle will be fought on a number of fronts. We will comb the entire budget for any public money, any subsidies, handouts or concessions going to fossil fuel corporations, and we'll amend the budget to remove them. We will push to ensure the safeguard mechanism safeguards our future by stopping new coal and gas projects. We'll push for a climate trigger in our environment laws, and we will continue to fight individual projects around the country, like in Beetaloo, Scarborough and Barossa. I call on all Australians to join this battle to save our country, our communities and, indeed, our whole civilisation from the climate and environment crisis.

In respect of the consequential bill, there are many important agencies and acts of parliament not currently included in the consequential bill. The Greens believe that all of government should be working towards the legislated climate target. I understand from the minister that a review will be conducted in the coming months of other agencies and acts to be added to the list in the consequential bill. In summing up on this bill, I ask the minister to confirm that this review will take place and what the timing of this review will be. I would also like the minister to confirm that NOPSEMA, the agency tasked with regulating and approving offshore oil and gas projects, and its governing legislation will also be included in this review.

On a related matter, while the consequential bill includes the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 and inserts the targets into that act, it does not directly address the problem of native forest burning being counted as renewable energy. This problem was created by the Abbott government. It needs to be addressed. I ask the minister to confirm that we're going to have further discussions on this very important matter.

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Fiona Phillips (Gilmore, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a momentous day. I could not be more proud to stand here tonight in support of the Climate Change Bill 2022. After a decade of inaction, we might finally see our country start to seize on all the opportunities our transition to a renewable energy future has to offer. We will finally take meaningful action to address climate change.

I know this will be welcome in my electorate of Gilmore on the New South Wales South Coast, because climate change isn't something that will maybe, perhaps, happen in the future; it is something that is happening right now. It is something that has happened that we are experiencing. My electorate has been directly impacted by the last decade of inaction on climate change. What does a change in climate mean? It means more extreme weather. And, boy, have we had some extreme weather. Just in my time as member for Gilmore in the last three years, my electorate has been severely hurt by drought. We have been severely hurt by record-breaking bushfires. We have been severely hurt by a seemingly never-ending sequence of disaster declared floods, one after another. Our communities are seeing climate change firsthand. They are feeling the hurt and the impacts on our health right now. They are seeing environmental degradation from these disasters to an ecosystem that can barely cope and will have trouble renewing after such devastating loss and damage. The State of the environment report that the minister released only recently shows that the 2019-20 bushfires have had a lasting impact on our environment and our biodiversity, and it is struggling to bounce back. Local people in my electorate don't need to be told that. They see it every single day, and they want something done.

Our communities want us to take action now to help them better prepare for these events. They want to be made more resilient, with an energy system that can withstand challenges—things like community batteries like the one I promised at Maloneys Beach. During the bushfires, so much of the South Coast lost power altogether. It's one of the biggest anxieties I hear from people about our disaster preparedness. What happens when the power goes out? It's not just about keeping the lights on; when the power goes out, all too often communications aren't far behind. We lose landlines and sometimes we lose mobile phone reception. Even if we don't lose reception, if the power stays out, eventually the mobile phones will go out too. We need batteries to help provide that resilience and that security. So I'm excited to deliver that battery for Maloneys Beach, and I hope to work on even more batteries across the South Coast.

But the point is that the people of my electorate have had enough of the wasted opportunities. What do they want to see? They want to see us power Australia. They want to see the New South Wales South Coast become a renewable energy powerhouse, and so do I. That is why I am so excited today.

There is something the Liberals always seem to forget when they try to paint Labor's climate policies as some kind of boogieman, some kind of pie-in-the-sky fantasy, and the 'oh so scary' green agenda. What they forget is that this is about energy. This is about the absolute abundance of renewable energy opportunity that we have here in Australia that we are wasting—that we have wasted for a decade. The Albanese Labor government wants to stop that waste, and our Powering Australia plan will do that.

The bill enshrines our 43 per cent target to reduce emissions on 2005 levels by 2030, and achieve net zero by 2050. We hope—and I'm sure from the work I have seen in my electorate already—that the commitments of our industries, of our communities, will have us see even greater reductions than this. But the modelling that we have done shows this is what our policies will achieve. It's a mighty goal, and I am proud of it. Under this bill, by 2030, more than 82 per cent of the electricity we consume will be generated by renewable energy. And we will see the jobs that come with that in our renewable energy economy. That is my focus: the jobs. That's what my electorate needs and wants.

How do we take advantage of those job opportunities? We start by training the workforce. I was a TAFE teacher, so I know how crucial education is. Our plan will spend $100 million to train 10,000 new energy apprentices in the jobs of the future. Our $10 million New Energy Skills Program will help to provide additional training pathways. And our investments in education and TAFE will also make a huge impact here. Young people in my community need support. They need to know they can live, learn and work without having to move to the cities. That's what I am working towards.

I want to talk a bit about the opportunities I am most excited about for my electorate of Gilmore on the New South Wales South Coast. I want the South Coast to become a renewable energy powerhouse. And I am going to work every single day with the ministers, with the community, with industry, with businesses, to get this done. Interestingly, I recently received an email from Kenneth in Culburra Beach. He said:

As a Culburra Beach property owner, I have been advocating for the installation of an EV charging station in this popular seaside town. As it is only 180 kilometres from Sydney and 211 kilometres from Canberra it is well within the range of an electric vehicle but not near enough to return on one charge. A charging station would be an excellent investment for the town encouraging sustainably minded tourists to visit in the knowledge they could recharge for travelling around the area and return. I do hope you can support the proposal.

Well, Kenneth, under the Albanese government, we will finally have Australia's first national electric vehicle strategy. We will double the existing investment in electric vehicle charging and establish hydrogen refuelling infrastructure, up to $500 million.

The Shoalhaven actually is home to an electric charging station already at the Silos Estate in Berry. Owner Raj told me it's actually the biggest charging station in Australia—one mean feat. They have 16 charging units, with 12 that are superchargers. These can recharge an electric car in 20 minutes. What is one of the best things that comes from the chargers? Tourists. Being a winery, this is a win-win for Raj, but it is also a boon for our economy. After years of natural disasters and COVID-19 that have kept tourists away, it is amazing to think that these renewable energy ideas could also help drive our tourism industry. Batemans Bay, in the south of my electorate, also has an electric vehicle charging station. With our investment, we can see these charging stations in even more locations, creating the electric vehicle superhighway we need to move people up and down the coast and around Australia.

My electorate on the New South Wales South Coast also has a fabulous manufacturing industry. But that industry has been crying out for more investment, crying out for help to transition to a cleaner energy future. I'm excited to see the opportunities our $3 billion investment in the new National Reconstruction Fund will create for our community. This fund will support renewables, manufacturing and low-emissions technology. The South Coast has proven we want to, and will, innovate. I have spoken many times in this place about the biogas plant that local dairy farmers are helping establish. It's an exciting project, and I want to see more of them. Now there will be energy policy certainty to support those ideas. There are many fantastic ideas out there in our community on the South Coast, just itching for investment, just waiting for a government that will take them seriously and give this country some energy policy certainty.

Before the election, I held a climate change forum. The Southcoast Health and Sustainability Alliance, affectionately known as SHASA, is one of the groups that were at that forum. They have been doing simply amazing work in this space for years, taking great advantage of the bits-and-bobs grants that have been available. Their focus has been on making the Eurobodalla more resilient, and they have helped to retrofit six community facilities into heatwave and bushfire havens.

Our plan will see $300 million for community batteries and solar banks across Australia. We can support organisations like SHASA and Repower Shoalhaven, and we can supercharge it. SHASA have been busy indeed because, as I said, they have also partnered with Repower Shoalhaven to propose a pilot program of renewables and electrification of the Shoalhaven and Eurobodalla. These groups want to create jobs, they want to invest in renewables, and they want to provide power savings for local households. There are many groups that support our Powering Australia plan. We have to get on with it. I commend this bill to the House.

Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I see part of my role as the member for Brisbane as being to raise the voices of those who often feel unheard. For a bill on climate change, it seemed appropriate to give a voice to young people. I'd like to bring attention to the words of Mirah Larkin and Grace Vegesana, two young members of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, who today delivered letters from young activists to Parliament House. Eighteen-year-old Mirah said:

Young people across Australia are already experiencing the impacts of climate change. The letters we have brought to Parliament today for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese are filled with the stories of young people facing bushfires, flooding, and heat waves. But young people are resilient, we are hopeful and we're not going to stop demanding bold, ambitious climate action from our political representatives.

Twenty-three-year-old Grace said:

Millions of people voted for action on climate change this election, and now the Albanese Government needs to tackle the number one cause of the climate crisis by ending coal and gas expansion. We do not need any new coal mines or gas wells to transition to 100% renewable energy.

She continued:

The Albanese Government should listen to Traditional Owners standing against gas expansion on their Country from Kimberly in Western Australia, to Narrabri in North West NSW and the Beetaloo in the Northern Territory.

It's young people who will feel the greatest impacts from the decisions that we make on this important bill, the Climate Change Bill 2022. We're seeing a growing trend of the increasing politicisation of the youth of Australia, which is great to see. Increasing engagement of new youth leaders in our political system is not just beneficial; it's essential. However, I can't help but reflect on what has led to the trend. The mobilisation of so many youth voices is a direct consequence of decades of inaction on climate change, failing social justice policies and a cost-of-living crisis. It's people like Mirah and Grace whose views we should be foregrounding when we consider the lifelong effects of the decisions we make in this place and how they will impact current and future generations.

As we all should know, the effects of climate change will be felt worldwide and in our local communities. At the local level, my electorate of Brisbane recently suffered a cataclysmic climate event. Maiwar, the Brisbane River, has long been a symbol of our city's beauty. But, as the planet warms, it becomes more and more of a danger to us. In the most recent flooding, parts of our city that had never flooded before were completely underwater. Not just the Brisbane River but the inner brooks and creeks, which define many parts of my electorate, flooded and caused devastating damage to local communities. We've been told that these are once-in-a-lifetime events, despite this being the third such event within the lives of many of the residents of Brisbane. These once-in-a-lifetime events will only increase in severity and frequency, and the people of Brisbane know this.

During the course of our election campaign, climate change was far and away the most commonly raised issue by people that we spoke to in our community. And that was before the floods of February and March of this year. I recently met with constituents who live in the Brisbane suburb of Stafford, who were, and continue to be, impacted by these floods. They told me about entire metres of land on their properties being washed away into the Kedron Brook, a creek which usually resembles a walking track with a small stream parting both sides. As sediment built up along the stream, the water rose higher and higher, forcing people to flee their homes without knowing what would happen to them. A floating restaurant, destroyed in the 2011 floods and never properly repaired, washed onto the riverbank and destroyed a whole section of the riverside bikeway. Entire swathes of the suburb of Milton were completely submerged. The Toombul shopping centre—while outside my electorate—is used by thousands of residents of Brisbane, and it was damaged so badly that it was not able to reopen.

We were told by volunteers at the Northey Street City Farm that the office building they had built—specifically above the 1974 flood line—was, in this flood, almost completely inundated with floodwater. But our communities are resilient. People across the electorate opened their homes and their hearts, and did everything they could to help rebuild their communities in the wake of catastrophe. The kindness and generosity of these people continues to give me hope for the future. But we should not have been in this situation. We should not have had to experience a disaster fuelled by climate inaction. We should not have to rely on the resilience of the community to rebuild every single time one of these climate-induced disasters occurs. It is our responsibility in this place to ensure that we take the climate action that is needed to prevent this crisis becoming even worse. We are running out of time.

Something that we need to remember when we discuss this issue is that the measures we're taking are not reversing climate change. The time to stop exacerbating global warming is long gone. After almost a decade of government inaction—in our country, which is one of the worst polluters in the world—we missed our chance to stop climate change in its tracks. This is the frankly depressing reality that we now find ourselves in. Cataclysmic weather events are occurring with increasing frequency and severity, and they're going to continue. All we can hope to do now is prevent climate change from getting any worse. If we want to have any hope of preserving natural wonders like the Great Barrier Reef, to have the chance to build infrastructure which can withstand worsening climate events, and give current and future generations the best chance of survival, we need to start right now.

Supporting this bill is a first step towards that. I'm glad to see some action on the most pressing issue of our time, but what we really need to do is stop new coal and gas. As long as we keep opening new coalmines and new gas fields, we are making the climate crisis worse. The Greens will keep pushing the government to take this step, which is crucial for the survival of all of us and our planet—and we cannot lose hope. What gives me hope is that people from across this country, and especially young people, are motivated and are ready to fight. They know that this is not the end of the road for addressing climate change; it is just the beginning. We have many battles ahead of us, and much of the hill still to climb. We need a moratorium on new coal and gas projects. We need to put people before the profits of BHP and Santos. We need to end the billions in taxpayer handouts that the fossil fuel industry receives. The real fight starts now. Climate activists are ready. Young people are ready. The community is ready, and we are ready.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

VAKINOU () (): I rise to welcome and support the Climate Change Bill. The Climate Change Bill 2022 is a tangible demonstration by this Labor government that it has been, and is, serious about meeting its election commitments on climate change. While we have plenty to do, we're not prepared to waste any more time, and we have begun this process as of today. There's been a tendency, amongst some commentators who like to oversimplify the hopes and aspirations of the Australian people, to present the climate change debate as one which divides Australians on class lines. There is a view that the demand for climate change action is somehow the preserve of the affluent and the privileged, that only those who have the time and money beyond their day-to-day survival care about so-called bigger picture issues like climate change. I can confirm that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, in my electorate of Calwell, where the struggle to find secure work, affordable housing and enough money to pay the bills is real, people are also acutely aware of and deeply concerned about the future of our planet. In reality, it is not a case of jobs versus climate, or coal versus renewables, or economic growth versus a healthy planet. My constituents understand that a good government can and should tackle all these issues in a balanced and compassionate way.

I have an incredible number of very diverse linguistic and cultural communities in my electorate, and for many of them action on climate change is a very high priority. It's as much a high priority as it is in other parts of the country. In particular, I speak of the Fijian and the other South Pacific island communities, who have stressed to me, time and time again, the very real and immediate threat that unmitigated climate change poses to their birthplaces, where many of their extended families still reside. Rising sea level, floods and fires are very real and present dangers to these communities as well.

The importance of providing secure and stable settings for investment in renewable energy is not lost on my electorate in terms of jobs and new industry. This bill will provide a coherent policy to accelerate investment in renewable energy, transmission and storage. As the minister has noted, it is vital that we send a message to the private sector, who have wanted to invest in renewable energy but have held back because of a lack of clear signals from the previous government. The government's target, as outlined by the minister, is to reach 82 per cent renewable energy in our electricity system by 2030. Firmed renewables are the cheapest form of energy, and getting more renewables into the system will put downward pressure on power prices, while also reducing Australia's emissions.

The current cost of living is a huge concern to my constituents. Two of the most expensive but essential items on the family budget are, of course, power and petrol. The previous government's inaction on climate change did absolutely nothing to protect our environment, but it also did nothing to arrest the escalating cost of essential resources. The only way to ensure equitable and affordable access to power in the future is through policy settings that will help develop the whole-scale transition to renewable energy sources. I acknowledge, as many of us do, that this will take time, but that just makes it all the more urgent to put these policy settings into place right now.

Petrol is another issue entirely, and one I won't go into now, but the National Electric Vehicle Strategy, which is part of our suite of climate change policies, will hopefully help in the long run to reduce our reliance on this contentious and polluting commodity. Once the home of automotive manufacturing, Calwell is keen to embrace new car technology when it is a realistic and affordable option. I hope that that day comes very soon.

I strongly welcome this bill. I welcome the Labor government's genuine commitment to taking urgent yet considered action on reducing emissions and steering this capable and innovative nation to a strong economy based on renewable energy. I also urge us to remain true to our equally strong commitment to social justice. Transition is necessary but must always be managed in a way that doesn't leave disadvantaged communities behind. I believe the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, whose electorate is not unlike my own, has a thorough understanding of the issues of equity. Justice, equity and climate change are the three most urgent and pressing issues of our time, and I support the bill as the first step amongst many that this government will pursue to tackle these issues.

Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One degree of warming—that is where we're at now, although, frankly, from the support that both the two major parties of this country give to the coal and gas industry, you wouldn't think it. You'd be led to believe we have all the time in the world. We don't. I said in my first speech last week that the arrival of my grandchildren spurred me into more direct political action. I want to speak up for their future, and everyone's. My beautiful grandkids are seven and nine years old. Without real, deep and rapid cuts to emissions, without a halt on new coal and gas projects, and a phasing-out of existing coal and gas, what world will they inherit? One degree of warming—at one degree of warming we already have unprecedented heatwaves and wildfires across large parts of Europe and the US. London reached 40 degrees. In mid-May, India hit 49 degrees, the highest India has recorded in 122 years. At one degree of warming, we're already seeing climate disasters affecting crop production and fuelling inflation. And, of course, at one degree of warming we have major flooding events at ever-increased frequency across Australia's east coast.

In the floods earlier this year, parts of my electorate of Ryan were inundated and in Indooroopilly, tragically, one person drowned. We saw damage to homes, businesses and public facilities in many parts of the electorate, disrupting lives and livelihoods. Even areas far from the Brisbane River were affected, such as Mitchelton's million-dollar all-weather football field and homes in Ashgrove and at Enoggera Creek. Between breakfast time and midnight on 25 February, Moggill Creek in Kenmore rose by nearly four metres, inundating Kenmore high school's oval, sweeping away years of creekside revegetation works, submerging tennis courts and lapping at the school's buildings much higher up the hillside.

But in Ryan it was not only those with direct damage from floodwater who were affected. The suburbs of Moggill, Bellbowrie, Pullenvale, parts of Pinjarra Hills and neighbouring areas were effectively isolated for days because of their dependence on a single arterial road, Moggill Road, which flooded at four points. The closure of the Moggill Ferry service because of the river conditions compounded the lack of access. Because their only route into the rest of the city was impossible, normal life was disrupted for thousands of residents and the delivery of food, medicines and other essentials was interrupted. Health and aged-care workers could not reach their places of work, exacerbating already problematic staff shortages and COVID absences. About 1,000 secondary school students were unable to reach their schools. The supermarket in Moggill began to run out of fresh food. But for the efforts of a GP sleeping on his surgery floor in Bellbowrie, even urgent primary healthcare would not have been available to many. Pregnant women had to be rowed across floodwater to reach the hospital and some schoolchildren stranded on the wrong side of the inundated area were separated from their parents.

Ryan was not the only electorate affected in our city, as the members for Brisbane and Griffith will attest. That flood came only a decade after the last so-called unprecedented flood in Brisbane. That's one degree of warming. That's the world my grandchildren already live in. They haven't known anything else. So what happens at 1.5 degrees of warming? We'll see an exponential increase in the frequency and severity of bushfires, floods, heatwaves and droughts, leading to loss of life and livelihood and mass forced migration from countries going underwater or whose economies are collapsing under the strain of crop failures. Do we really think that, once we are seeing rolling extreme weather events, the inflation due to supply-side shocks that we're seeing now will ever go away? How often will the people of Ryan experience major flooding events at 1.5 degrees of warming? How much more severe will they be? That could be as soon as the end of this decade. My two grandchildren will be 15 and 17. How much longer then till we reach two degrees of warming. That's likely by mid-century. My grandchildren will be in their 40s and 50s. What will that world look like?

If we want to find out what that future looks like, all we need to do is wait, because currently there are enough new coal and gas projects in the pipeline in Australia to blow well through our carbon budget and take us to that two- or even three-degree warming world. Forty-three per cent emissions reduction by 2030 is not enough, but, with the ratchet mechanism negotiated by the Greens, we may, over the next few years, be able to get it to 75 per cent by 2030 and, ultimately, to 100 per cent by 2035, which is in line with what is actually needed. The Greens will fight every step of the way to get there.

But it's also easy to be distracted by targets, and I fear a lot of this debate has been distracting us from the bigger issue, and that issue is new coal and gas. We cannot overstate the problem here: if all of the coal and gas projects currently in the pipeline go ahead, they will produce 30 times—that's right, 30 times—the emissions that the 43 per cent target will cut. Even if we exclude the emissions produced by burning this coal and gas overseas—and why should we?—these new coal and gas projects will still produce triple the emissions that the 43 per cent target will cut. Thanks to Ketan Joshi and the Australia Institute for those figures. New coal and gas projects will not only wipe out the emissions reductions of this bill but lead to Australia's emissions increasing.

What's really clear here, and it shouldn't need to be said, is that you cannot say you're trying to solve the problem while actively making it worse. This is common sense and this is understood by the people in my electorate and by people across Australia, but this basic common sense seems to be lacking among many members of this chamber.

Who benefits when we're distracted from the issue of new coal and gas? Glencore, BHP, Santos, Adani, Woodside—these vampire-like corporations are all salivating at the prospect of the billions in profits that can be made by opening up new coal and gas projects in this country, robbing the nation of its wealth while driving the climate crisis. To get a sense of how much power these corporations have, during the past seven years, five of the gas industry's biggest corporations have earned about $138 billion in revenue in Australia without paying a cent in corporate income tax. Just let that sink in. Who benefits from us being distracted from coal and gas? It's these huge multinationals, many of whom are donors to the Labor and Liberal parties. But who suffers from this distraction? My grandchildren, your children and grandchildren, everyday people whose homes get submerged in severe floods, everyday people whose whole lives get upturned by bushfires ripping through their communities, and everyday people whose cost of living goes through the roof because of repeated crop failures and supply chain disruptions from severe weather events.

The solutions are there: stop new coal and gas, disaster-proof our cities and phase out existing coal and gas while building new industries in publicly owned renewables, green steel and manufacturing. The prosperity that can come from this is absolutely enormous, but we have to break the stranglehold that fossil fuel corporations hold over our political system. I invite members of the Labor Party to have the courage to help us in the Greens break that stranglehold.

This bill, with the ratchet mechanism negotiated by the Greens, might—and I stress 'might'—represent the beginning of a genuine approach towards the deep and urgent emissions reductions that Australia needs. But that all depends on the government's steps over the next three years. Will Labor continue to back new coal and gas and wipe out even the lowball emissions reductions of 43 per cent? Will they continue to listen to their fossil fuel corporate donors handing them billions in public money? Or will they back everyday people? Will they back our grandkids and their grandkids? The current rhetoric from the government does not give one a lot of hope. But what does give one hope is that everyday Australians do want change. This election showed it. Whether politicians in this building like it or not, they must make that change, or the Australian people will replace them with people who are willing to do so.

Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Climate Change Bill 2022. Bringing people together is what the Albanese government is all about. We're about bringing together those millions of Australians who want sensible, lasting action on climate change. We're about bringing together the states, the territories, investors, business, unions, the community and, with this legislation, parliamentarians. We're about together delivering the strongest and most ambitious climate policy to ever become law of this land. This is what we achieve when we do work together. This is the message we send to our communities across Australia—that we can work together and we can, after a wasted decade, get moving once again.

Look at the message we send about Australia across the globe. We send the message that Australia will be a renewable energy superpower. We deliver this legislation by working together, consulting widely and, in one of many changes from the previous government, we are not only consulting a committee of one, the member for New England; we have consulted across the parliament.

I'm pleased to support this legislation and the sensible amendments which enable us to deliver on Labor's election platform—including the amendment from the member for Curtin, which sensibly states that we will ensure that we are 'drawing on the best available scientific knowledge'. It's very sensible, and I commend the member for Curtin for that amendment. And I'm pleased that the Albanese Labor government is delivering on our commitment to the Australian people.

I must say, I respect the opposition for honouring their commitments: their commitment to denial, their commitment to making it a full decade of inaction, their commitment to those nine wasted years and all of the policy chaos that they choose to continue and their commitment to an obsession with nuclear power. Their commitment goes all the way back to when they elected a leader of the Liberal Party who believed that climate change was 'absolute crap'. Their commitment means they now have a leader who—I'll quote from the Guardian, 'Peter Dutton jokes with Tony Abbott about rising sea levels in Pacific nations'. Their commitment means they had a deputy prime minister who said that the Pacific islands will survive the climate crisis because they 'pick our fruit'—that's real commitment there. Their commitment means that they have chosen a leader now, in the Leader of the Opposition, who was described by former Prime Minister Turnbull as leading an 'insurgency' against him and leading an extraordinary 'madness'. And, if you think that's all in the past, I'm sorry to say that I see an article in the Oz from today, 3 August, that says, 'There is a new climate war looming around the Liberal Party.' So I give them full marks for consistency in their climate denialism.

But despite the opposition, today it has become clear that the climate change bill will pass both chambers of parliament, creating jobs, reducing emissions and delivering on the promise that was made to the people of Australia at the election on 21 May. I think it's really worth noting—and I will conclude with these points, because I want to see this bill become the law of the land; that means that some of us might have to cut our speeches a little short—that there is one very simple reason why we can put this legislation through the parliament: communities across Australia chose to change who they sent to this place, including communities across Western Australia, where the member for Burt and I campaigned incredibly strongly to make sure that Western Australia sent people who wanted action on climate change and wanted legislation passed through this parliament.

I've sat in this place and listened to incredibly inspiring speeches from new members. I won't quote them all, but I will quote the member for Swan; it is great to have the member for Swan now serving her community in this place. In a beautiful speech around climate change, she put it so simply when she said:

Climate action is good for people, the community, the environment and the economy … We've had the climate election. The climate war is over. Climate ambition is back!

That was a brilliant speech.

We had the member for Hasluck ask what Australia will look like in 20 years time on the basis on the decisions we made in this, the 47th Parliament. She said: 'an Australia that can look back over 20 years of sure action on climate change and be proud, and more than a little relieved'.

We had the member for Pearce give a brilliant speech, in which she talked about her strong community values and the sense that she is here as the community of Pearce, in all its colour and vibrancy, representing them so brilliantly in this place. She said:

I am proud that our government has a strategy and target of achieving net zero by 2050. It is an investment in our local and global futures.

It's so true, and I commend the member for Pearce for that speech.

As for our other fabulous new West Australian colleague, the member for Tangney, we'll have to wait until September for his first speech, but I'm looking forward to it.

I'll conclude with this. This bill is what the people of Perth have been calling for. This bill is what the people of Perth have sent me to vote for. This bill, and the policies within it, I've consulted on with the now minister in forums in my electorate, and I'm proud to support this legislation becoming the law of Australia.

Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

MATHER () (): In my first speech I said it was clear that big corporations and billionaires run parliament. Well, it became clear over the course of these months negotiating with the government that Labor is so committed to a weak target, so committed to the profit margins of coal and gas corporations, they are willing to let their entire climate legislative agenda fail just to protect their profits. I've been thinking a lot about why that makes me so angry, apart from the obvious, and I think it has become clear over the course of today, watching the speeches, that the real disgrace is that the government and the opposition know. They know the consequences of their actions. They know the human environmental devastation wrought by climate change. They know that people have died and will continue to die in floods, heatwaves, droughts, terrible natural disasters and storms. They know the massive crop failures, the displacement of billions of people, the death of the Great Barrier Reef. They know the consequences of their actions. But, given the choice between ordinary everyday people and billionaires like Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer, they chose the profit margins of billionaires.

What is really deeply distressing is we know who will pay as a result of this. When the floods hit in Brisbane earlier this year, and we spent the week going from house to house to house with ordinary everyday people, volunteers, cleaning out people's flood-ravaged homes, time and again it was poor, working-class renters—people who had almost nothing—whose possessions we dragged from under their house. Time and again, we knew that the reason we were dragging their stuff from under their house, the reason they didn't have enough money to replace their basic possessions, the reason they knew they'd be sleeping on a friend's couch for the next three weeks because they didn't have another home to move into was that, time and again, the profit margins of fossil fuel corporations are being chosen over the lives of ordinary people. We know there are gas corporations in this country right now who are making billions of dollars in profit and not paying a single cent in tax—not a single cent! There are workers who work for those corporations who pay more tax than the CEOs and the owners of those corporations.

We know that the only reason this bill has anything of substance in it is the nearly two million people who voted for the Greens at this election—the thousands of people who knocked on doors, delivered leaflets in letterboxes, helped clean up after the floods, staffed polling booths and built this Greens movement. My message to you is, while this is still not enough, clearly, your power is not yet fully realised. We know we've got a long way to go. We know that we'll manage to ensure that this bill is Dutton-proofed. We know now that 43 per cent is just a minimum target. We know there is the potential to ratchet it up over time. We know now that we've made it harder for coal and gas projects to be approved, now that we've included some government agencies in the target. We know there'll be greater transparency. And we know that, finally, the government's at least willing to talk to us about supporting coal and gas communities. That our negotiations had to include that we need to talk about supporting coal and gas communities with a transition authority is all you need to know about the contents of those negotiations.

We've improved a weak bill, but, of course, when you're fighting the coal and gas industry and their political representatives, you don't win overnight. Australia remains the third-largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world, and, with 114 new coal and gas projects in the pipeline, it's only going to get worse. Indeed, just one of these new coal and gas projects could wipe out the very small reductions achieved by this bill. As the member for Melbourne said, the government's position is completely untenable, even within the realms and terms of their own debate. Let's be very clear: one of the biggest lies in Australian politics, as I've said again and again, is that the major parties support new coal and gas because they care about workers. If that was the case, if they really cared about workers, they wouldn't be also passing the stage 3 tax cuts that will cost $224 billion. If they cared about workers, they wouldn't be allowing gas corporations to walk off with our wealth and take it overseas to the shareholders in Switzerland and France and wherever else these billionaires and shareholders live. If they really cared, a coal and gas worker wouldn't be paying more tax than the multinationals that they work for. If that were the case, the government wouldn't be arriving to a budget in one of the worst cost-of-living crises in our history, where people are being evicted onto the street because there's no home to move into because the government hasn't built enough homes either at a state or federal level for decades now—and they wouldn't be about to spend billions of dollars on the subsidies for the coal and gas corporations who happen to also be destroying our lives. I am sick—already!—after two weeks of being in this place and being told again and again that we have to be reasonable. 'Come on, tone it down a little bit'—as if I have to be calm and reasonable when I think about the millions of lives that will be destroyed as a result of decisions that are too often in this place. God, I'm already so sick of it.

What we know is that there is an alternative: massive investment in publicly owned renewable energy; massive investment in new industries; and taxing those coal and gas operations as they phase out over the next 10 years and using that to invest in public schools and hospitals and infrastructure like public pools, new public parks and beautifully designed public housing. The wealth in this country exists to make sure that we can not only phase out coal and gas but ensure that everyone has a chance to be alive in the sunshine.

I'd like to finish on this. If there was one thing this election demonstrated it is that when ordinary people work together, knock on people's doors, organise in their communities and offer that alternative vision of making sure that everyday people are put first, we win. The results in Griffith, Brisbane and Ryan and the member for Melbourne's seat of Melbourne demonstrate that, when we get organised on that platform, we win. That is a line in the sand. That is a message sent to every member in this House: if you continue on this path, we will run campaigns in your seats like we did in those seats, and we will win. Even if it takes those few extra years, we're going to keep organising and we're going to keep fighting. Because, as I've said again and again, we don't fight for self-interest and we don't fight for corporate donors; we fight for each other. Time and again in history, the power of collective action, the power of ordinary people working together, has won. I truly believe that over the next few years it can win again.

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When my home and 200 others burnt down in a bushfire in the Blue Mountains in 2013, it took a European camera crew to ask the question, 'Do you think this is the result of climate change?' That's nearly a decade ago, and I responded by saying that the conditions we'd seen were exactly what scientists had been warning of for several decades. Climate change didn't start the fire, but it sure fed the flames and turned it into a disaster for the entire community. More frequent and intense droughts, storms, and heatwaves—more dangerous weather events—have wreaked havoc on people's livelihoods and communities. These are all the things that had been predicted. Now, in my community, we are living them.

The electorate of Macquarie, with the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury, are among the most disaster-prone places in Australia. The most recent flood, the fourth natural disaster in a little over two years, has left people feeling exhausted and hopeless about their ability to recover. Don't even ask about the cost or availability of insurance. My community is already paying the price in many ways. We're living the consequences of the serious failure of governments to take long-term action to limit climate change. It's been heartbreaking to sit on the other side of this chamber for six years and see the failure of the previous government who, for nine years and with such bloody-mindedness, refused to act on this issue.

So I am very proud to be standing here in only our second week of parliament debating one of the most important pieces of legislation that this parliament will deal with. We are taking swift action to legislate on the commitment that we made to the Australian people—and the commitment that I made to the people of Macquarie.

There are four key elements in this climate change legislation. The first is that we're enshrining in law the 43 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030 and setting the net zero target for 2050. We are one of the highest greenhouse gas emitters in the world per capita. It is a great achievement for us to say, 'This is our target.' It is wonderful to have the minister here in the chamber who has done so much work in being pragmatic but ambitious with this target.

The 43 per cent target isn't the result of us sitting down and saying, 'Hey, let's pick a number; let's just randomly pick a number that people might like the sound of.' This is the result of saying: 'What are the things we know we could do? What are the things the previous government could have done but didn't, and where would that get us?' The modelling shows that we can get to 43 per cent. But, of course, it isn't a ceiling on our ambition; it's a floor. I look forward to us achieving that 43 per cent and then saying, 'What next?'

I think people are surprised when we say we're going to have 82 per cent of our power generated by renewables by 2030. That is a big number. Increasing the uptake of electric vehicles by making them cheaper for people is the purpose of another piece of legislation that's before this parliament. These are the practical things that we are doing. Quite frankly, they could have been done in previous years. We are very proud on this side that we're the ones who did this and that Labor has come with this bill.

The second element in this legislation is about the Climate Change Authority and once again allowing them to be the independent expert adviser on Australia's progress against our targets and having open and transparent publishing about it. What a revelation that's going to be!

The third step is that our Minister for Climate Change and Energy will report annually to the parliament on the progress and how we're going meeting the targets—again, a measure of accountability, something we are not afraid of on this side of the House.

Fourthly, the bill inserts the emission reduction targets in the objectives and functions of the organisations that are government agencies so that people like Infrastructure Australia have to think about our targets. As for ARENA, the bill will make sure ARENA does what it was created to do, and that is to foster renewable energy.

It's been heartening in many speeches during the debate today to hear the goodwill of much of the crossbench and what they're bringing to the chamber on this legislation. I think it's great to see the support for our Labor bill. This legislation can end the climate wars. It is ending the climate wars at one level, and it can continue to do that provided there is goodwill from the crossbench.

What is really key about this, though, is that it brings so many opportunities. We can continue to rebuild our relationship with our Pacific neighbours, for whom climate change is the biggest threat to their homes. We can hold our heads high again internationally rather than being a climate pariah. We have jobs opportunities. We have investment coming in, and we're looking at five out of six of those hundreds of thousands of jobs in renewables being created in the regions. These are the exciting things that transform our economy.

At a local level, I'm delighted that we're going to have community batteries in both the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury. These are the things that change the country. They change the world for future generations. They give them hope, and I've got to tell you: the electorate of Macquarie needs to have a sense of hope as we get smashed by disaster after disaster. The climate bills are among the very first things that we have brought to this parliament and debated in this parliament. We take climate change seriously, and this shows we're prepared to act.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today is my son's birthday. He is 31. I'm standing tonight to speak on Labor's Climate Change Bill 2022. When my youngest son was 15, I had enormous hope that we were going to do something about climate change. My three sons had enormous hope that, as a country, we were locked into a future that would see us take the lead internationally. It's been a long road—an enormously long road—and we're here tonight because it's the right thing to do. It's the responsible thing to do. We're back with the good global citizens who take responsibility. We become part of the solution. It has been a long journey.

For those in the chamber who still try and guess my age, I am old enough to remember being an assistant principal in a local school in my electorate of Lalor when local activist Harry van Moorst approached me. I organised a screening of An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's moving, action-making, provocative documentary, and students in my school and their parents attended to watch it. It was the same year I first heard the term 'triple bottom line'. I heard it from corporations that were presenting locally about the bright future that we were going to have because corporate Australia was on board with action on climate change. Big business was with us. I am old enough to remember the 2009 Senate vote that torpedoed the CPRS. I am old enough to remember what ultimately gave the laggards and the deniers opposite the power to derail the disruption that we desperately needed.

I want to say something to the generations of students I taught to create a cogent argument. I taught them to stand up for what they held dear. I taught them to influence an outcome. To the local people and young people of Lalor I have taught, who have expressed their frustration and often their despair at the decade of inaction that was thrust upon us, I want to say again: hope, hard work, creativity and the power of expression bring change. Tonight we say it has brought change.

I want to thank the minister, who is in the chamber with me now, the member for McMahon, Chris Bowen, who has crafted a new way forward with my Labor colleagues. He's taken those things—hope, hard work, creativity—and he's creating change. We are creating change with him, and everyone in the chamber is doing the same. Today is a day of extraordinary celebration, a day we finally moved from inertia to action. We are going to set a target; we are going to set two. We are going to set a 43 per cent target for 2030 and a zero per cent target for 2050. Those students I taught across the years about how to get ongoing improvement will understand and they will tune in now when I start talking about setting targets. We are going to set a target, we are going to measure what matters and we are going to be accountable for the progress against those targets. We are going to measure that progress and, more importantly, as all students I've ever taught know, beyond that target to the next level. What's next, I asked those students all the time about their progress in my classroom. It's an incredibly proud day. It's a day when we all acknowledge that to go after what is possible is much more important than to go after what is perfect. Because if you get stuck on what's perfect, you obstruct what is possible. These have been hard lessons. I hope that everybody across the country understands those lessons.

This week we move forward with certainty. The businesses that talked to me about the triple bottom line so many years ago will have certainty beyond this legislation being passed; they'll have certainty that they can deliver, that they can actually act in their best interests. We are going to be moving forward together as a country after tonight. The laggards will be behind us and the rest of us will keep moving forward. I represent a community that has some of the highest rates of rooftop solar in the country. They are really proud tonight. I am really proud to say that we have joined with the state government, which has already made commitments to community batteries, and we will be one of the first electorates to have a new community battery delivered by the federal government. Our commitment is to the grassroots because it is the grassroots of this country that have driven this change.

They were blocked for 10 years. But it's activists, it's community members, it's people who care about the future—the future of their children. When I think about those generations of kids, when I think about my classroom, when I think of that viewing of An Inconvenient Truth and when I think about where those young people are now, changing the world in all their many and varied ways, I know that they're with me tonight thinking, 'We're there.' It's been slow. There have been blockers. But we're finally there. We're finally ready to confront the challenge and embrace the renewal opportunity that's before our country.

We're going to take our place internationally. We're going to be leaders. And, as you've heard from so many speakers tonight, the planning of this bill and what is put into this program and this policy includes consideration for the change and how change might impact particularly our regions. Those things have been built in. This is a fabulous piece of work. I am really proud to be a member of the Labor Party tonight. I'm really proud to be a member of a Labor government that's actually going to finally deliver on the promise to the moral dilemma of our age.

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In accordance with the resolution agreed to earlier this sitting, I require that the time of the remaining speeches be reduced to five minutes.

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the lead-up to the 2019 election, workers in the electorate of Canning were worried, because they knew their jobs were on the line because of increased costs in energy-intensive industries. They were worried about what Labor would do to their electricity bills and their livelihoods if they were elected. Their fears were realised as the election campaign unfolded, which is why Australians turned their backs on Labor in 2019. When a crowd of our coal workers came to my electorate office in 2018 I stood on the back of a flatbed truck and I told them this: 'We've rushed through renewables. We've made power expensive, not just for industry but for working families and seniors, and you guys have paid the price, with people trying to negotiate down your pay and conditions.'

These men and women were fighting for their livelihoods, and their employers were struggling to keep the lights on. I told those workers we should be putting Australian workers and Australians families and seniors first. They shouldn't come second, but that's what Labor's doing today by rushing this legislation through. We know that ordinary Australians will bear the brunt of these measures. Instead of using cheap and reliable baseload power from coal and gas, households will be under pressure as energy costs explode on the back of imported renewables. Australian jobs will once again be on the line.

Fundamentally this country cannot have a conversation about a climate change bill without confronting the obvious effect it will have on jobs and the cost of living. But Labor is so focused on the politics that they have not considered the consequences. Through this legislation they have removed all ministerial accountability for the impact of their policies on jobs, wages, investment and regional communities.

Before the election the Prime Minister said he wouldn't be forced into deals with fringe groups. But this government, with the support of the Greens, has once again realised fears and become more extreme. This was confirmed today by the Greens leader, the member for Melbourne. The member for Melbourne confirmed that the Albanese government included restrictions on the Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility, Export Finance Australia and Infrastructure Australia in its climate change legislation, solely to secure the support of the Greens. These restrictions will make it harder, if not impossible, for these agencies to recommend or provide finance and insurance for projects in the energy, resources and agricultural sectors. It will see important regional infrastructure projects—projects that support more than 3,000 workers and their families in Canning—overlooked because of their connection to vital production industries.

This is Labor adopting a Greens policy from 2019. The Prime Minister has made many promises about his commitment to coal and gas projects, but by denying them finance he is stopping them in their tracks. This is a ban by stealth, but it's now time to blow its cover. It will affect workers and families across Australia. We cannot trust this government when they promise that not one Australian job will be lost as a result of their climate change policies. And we cannot trust them when, just two months in—

five days into parliament, Member for Fairfax—Anthony Albanese has already done a deal with the Greens that will see investments, jobs and prosperity disappear from regional Australia.

And jobs will go in Canning. We are home to two bauxite mines and two refineries, Wagerup and Pinjarra. That is 3,000 jobs, direct and indirect, in Canning, not to mention the many FIFO workers I represent. Before the jobs go, the hard-working families will be worried their fears will be realised. It's all well and good for Labor and the Greens to virtue-signal about climate change and push the costs and the consequences on to ordinary Australians and their families.

What you do first shows what's important to you, and in one of their first pieces of legislation before this House they are fixing a target that cannot be met except by sacrificing the prospects and prosperity of ordinary working Australians. What Labor has done first shows who's important to them, and it's not working ordinary Australians. It's certainly not the working Australians in Canning, who keep our alumina industry going. My message here is the same as it was in 2018 to the AWU. I'm keen to chat over the next two years, because it's going to get tough under this government.

Zaneta Mascarenhas (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's probably appropriate that the person speaking after the member for Canning is an engineer who started her career in steel capped boots and has worked in climate change action. The mining industry has been at the forefront of climate change action, and the truth is that we know that climate change action is good for people, it's good for the community and it's good for jobs. I am really proud of what the mining industry is doing and the leadership that we've seen in the west. I can't wait to see what happens with this policy.

My community of Swan is asking for action on climate change. My team and I knocked on a lot of doors—45,000 doors out of a total of about 70,000 doors. The issues varied, but at their heart was a concern about the future. There is one particular day I remember when I was knocking on some doors in Shepperton Road in Victoria Park, which is just down the road from where I live. I remember conversation after conversation where people in their own words explained how they wanted a more sustainable future and they wanted action on climate change. On the third door in a row I squealed with delight and shed a tear of happiness. It was the same message over and over again. I knew indeed that this was the climate change election. I asked that neighbour: 'Did you know that all of your neighbours want exactly the same thing that you want?' The thing, though, is that the Liberals—the opposition today—didn't get the memo that the people of Australia want action on climate change.

For the past 12 years I've been working with some of Australia's largest companies to help reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The work of corporate Australia has become more sophisticated with time. Twelve years ago, when I started working in this space, I was helping companies with counting their greenhouse gas emissions. This, of course, was because of great policy that Prime Minister John Howard introduced, the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act. He knew that in the future we would need to manage our greenhouse gas emissions and that we needed action on climate change. He introduced this act because he knew that we needed a framework to work out how we were going to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Thank you for the work that you did there, John. Following on from that, we've seen that companies want to decarbonise, they want to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and they've become more sophisticated. But the truth is that we need all aspects of the economy to do their fair amount of work, and that's what this bill does.

I always knew that climate change was important, but for me it became personal when I got a phone call from my sister-in-law, who was in the Adelaide Hills. She gave me a call and said, 'Look, Zaneta, we're evacuating. It's bushfire season. We've got the stay-or-go call. I've got asthma. I am taking baby Willo. We're leaving.' My father-in-law, who's a Uniting Church minister, stayed in the community because he wanted to provide pastoral care to that community. I remember hanging up the phone call, and when I relayed the conversation to my husband I said to him, in tears, 'Your family are evacuating their town.' In those particular fires, people lost property and cattle. Luckily, no lives were lost, but that's not always what happens. The truth is that the thing that we know about climate change is that the intensity will increase and so will the frequency.

What is a SMART target? A target that is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. That's exactly what this target does. They send a signal. To paraphrase my colleague the member for Wentworth, the coalition had 23 per cent women in the lower house in 1996, and after the last election it became 19 per cent. The Labor Party brought about affirmative-action targets in our rules in 1994. At the time, women represented 14 per cent of the federal caucus. The first target was set at 35 per cent, and it was raised to 40 per cent by 2002. At the 2015 ALP National Conference, it was lifted to 45 per cent by 2020 and 50 per cent by 2025. Today 49 per cent of my colleagues, both here and in the other place, are women. SMART targets are leadership. They send a signal to others. In the Labor Party, our target— (Time expired)

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Climate Change Bill 2022 is a very important bill. As the honourable member has just outlined, a lot of the Australian public have the wish that more be done. But all through the last parliament and the parliament before that and the parliament before that—all the time I've been here—we have been committed to addressing the imperative of reducing our carbon emissions. In fact, anyone would think we hadn't done anything, judging by the relentless barrage of saying we're not doing enough.

To put things in perspective, less than three per cent of the world's energy is delivered by renewable energy across the whole globe. But at times in Australia we have reached 26 per cent, long before the Albanese government came into the government benches. We have achieved more on the climate targets and delivered more reductions than Canada, New Zealand and most of the EU, who set totally unrealistic targets. We have a track record. We've met the targets that were set at Kyoto, and we should not be feeling embarrassed or ashamed, because we've actually done a lot, and we seem to get no credit for it.

But, to give them credit, they said they would have a target of 43 per cent, so they're legislating it. They've already written off to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and that is our target. So this legislation is a bit of symbolism, but I find it's pretty sinister in that, yet again, this legislation means that this room and our elected representatives will have no control over investments in things that keep our nation running. It'll be decided by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, by ARENA and by CSIRO. You've only got to see what the Leader of the Greens, Adam Bandt, announced today in the National Press Club: that Export Finance Australia—which has funded coal and gas projects, which, incidentally, delivered the energy that has built this country and which we still depend on for 65 to 70 per cent of our energy—will not be able to fund any of the things our nation is crying out for. We have a dependency on liquid fuel from overseas. We have, as you've seen only recently, electricity shortages. There's not enough generation.

This sort of legislation will lead to the things that have happened in the UK. Activists and other antidevelopment entities will use these legislated targets to mount legal arguments, like stopping high-speed rail—as they did in the UK because of similar legislation—and stopping the government from continuing highway maintenance and building new roads, because cement is a bad thing. In the UK, this is real. This is not theoretically what could happen. This will happen if you put legislation in that gives standing to obscure climate based arguments and restrictive trends. We have the LNG plant in Darwin that needs to go ahead. We're keeping the rest of Asia and lots of our customers supplied with energy. We also want to have energy in our country, but the changes in this legislation will have rather big consequences.

I did hear the good member's comments about why she thought climate change and climate action was such an emergency. It was because her family members were caught in those horrible fires in the Adelaide Hills. But I do remember, as a young doctor, Ash Wednesday. We've had Black Saturday fires, but 513,979 acres were destroyed in South Australia and 9,904 square kilometres, or 2.46 million acres, were burnt in Victoria on one day. My whole family migrated from the Snowy region into— (Time expired)

Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Climate Change (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2022. I do not support this bill. But please do not assume, because I am standing here today to speak against this bill, that I do not agree with taking serious action on climate change and reducing Australia's contribution to global emissions. I do.

We failed to form government in May 2022. My greatest disappointment is that we have consistently failed to demonstrate to Australians that we have taken real action on climate change. The coalition government's record over the past nine years demonstrates clearly that we, on this side of the House, were not only effective in reducing emissions; we were capable of doing it in a safe and responsible manner—that is, without raising electricity prices and taxes, without shutting down coal and gas production or exports, without job losses, without impacting household businesses or the broader economy.

The coalition's emissions reduction story has been one of consistent achievement. We met and exceeded our Kyoto targets for 2020. Our emissions are more than 20 per cent below levels measured in 2005. Before the election, Australia was on track to reduce emissions by up to 35 per cent by 2030—well above our target of 26 per cent to 28 per cent. Before the election, we announced our commitment to net zero by 2050. Under the coalition, Australia's emissions outpaced the record of the United States, New Zealand, Japan and every other major commodity-exporting nation. We should be proud of our record. We set the global standard on the world stage for all to see.

It was a great honour to have contributed to our success, serving as the former Commonwealth environment minister. In 2018, I proudly represented our nation at Katowice, in Poland, at the climate change conference called COP24. Far from being ridiculed or criticised for the Morrison government's climate inaction, Australia was praised for the actions it was taking to reduce emissions, like the Emissions Reduction Fund and our investments from CEFC and ARENA, and also the world-leading, accurate and transparent way in which our nation captures emissions data.

Whilst I was chairing the COP24 subcommittee, which included representatives from the US, Canada and New Zealand, it was clear to me that Australia had a very positive reputation for its professionalism and its action on climate. In fact, I had many side meetings at that COP24 meeting with a variety of countries who were very keen to understand the actions we were taking, because there were very few countries who were actually taking action. There was a lot of desire, but we were taking action, and that was recognised. That was back in 2018. This was at a time when many nations simply had emissions targets but no plan to achieve them. For many countries today, that is still the case. Australia, at that 2018 event, was hailed for its actions. But you would not have read about any of this success in the media back at home, because clearly this did not support that cement hardened narrative that a Liberal-led government was taking no action on climate. Sadly, nothing has changed since then. I really look forward to the media holding the Albanese government to account on their 43 per cent emissions target with the same dogged determination that they've been able to apply to the ex-coalition government since 2013.

Labor say they want an end to the climate wars. Well, Labor's behaviour has been a PR war. We may have lost that last battle, but Labor's base has been lost now to the Greens. Once this legislation inevitably passes, we will need to urgently turn our attention to how we meet the 43 per cent target. Ambition is simply not enough, and we know that wind and sun will not be enough either. While we all agree that renewables play a vital role in Australia's domestic energy supply, they need to be balanced responsibly by other solutions. If we're serious—and we should be serious about lowering emissions—uranium must be part of the conversation. In Western Australia, there is now a ban on new uranium mines. I proudly approved the last uranium mine when I was the environment minister. I call on state Labor and federal Labor. We need to start having the conversation in a very respectful way and make sure our Indigenous Australians know what's at stake. (Time expired)

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

House adjourned at 2 1:27

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ) took the chair at 09:54, a division having been called in the House of Representatives.