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

My question is to the Prime Minister. The climate summit in Egypt reinforced the urgency of phasing out fossil fuels to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown, and Vanuatu's climate minister says their support for Australia hosting a future summit relies on no new coal and gas handouts. Why then does the government's first budget continue to subsidise fossil fuels, including $1.9 billion to open a new LNG terminal and petrochemical hub in Darwin Harbour, and support for a new gas project in Victoria?

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

I thank the member for his question. He should visit Darwin and actually have a look at what it is. He should actually go and have a look at what it is and look at the facts rather than just the rhetoric. The fact is that this parliament has adopted a position of a 43 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030. We have now legislated for net zero by 2050. When I met with leaders at the APEC meeting, the G20 and the East Asia Summit, I did speak to them about Australia hosting a conference of the parties, and, let me tell you, there's enormous support for it. There's enormous support for it because Australia's back in the game of dealing with the challenge of climate change, including in our region with our Pacific neighbours. Our Pacific neighbours have met with the Minister for Climate Change and Energy at the COP in Sharm el-Sheikh, and there was enormous support there from them, as there was from our colleagues in the European Union who I discussed it with, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the President of the United States and other leaders in our region in ASEAN as well.

The fact is that we are dealing with a situation where for nine years we had no energy policy in this country—no climate policy in this country. Indeed, you don't have to rely upon just us. Peter Tomsett had some interesting comments last week—the chairman of Newcrest. This is what he said:

If you don't have a policy for long enough—which has been our situation—you wind up with a situation where intervention is required. This need not have happened had the right energy policy been put in place. What we're seeing is a symptom.

We have every form of energy known to humankind in spades. And we haven't been able to harness that into a coherent policy that encourages the right investments to also meet our greenhouse gas commitments as a country.

What we are doing is putting in place policies that encourage investment in new energy, and the cheapest form of new energy is, of course, renewables. But we saw under the previous government four gigawatts leave the system and only one gigawatt enter the system. No wonder there is a problem. As Richard Court, the former WA Liberal Premier, described it, the past decade of energy policy has been a 'slow-moving train wreck'. Meanwhile, this government is getting on with the policy that's required. I believe very clearly we have an opportunity to be a renewable energy superpower for the world, to create jobs, to create economic growth and to make an enormous difference to drive down emissions while growing our economy.