Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, we've come a long way in the three years since I entered politics on a climate change platform. There is still a long way to go, but there is some progress. I believe that we need to set more ambitious targets and we need to find ways to improve our agility and ways of adopting innovation in policymaking to get us there, and accountability on how we actually measure emissions and impacts from methane and gas. We know that the government have set their ambition at 43 per cent by 2030, and they don't appear to be swaying from that, but thankfully the crossbench secured amendments to the Climate Change Act that was passed last year that clarified that 43 per cent is only a floor for the ambition, not a ceiling. This sent an important signal to the market and to industries that more ambition was needed and was possible.

Another important amendment, which I moved, to the Climate Change Act was the annual climate change statement, and Minister Bowen delivered the first of these in December. That was a very welcome initiative of transparency and accountability, and I believe it's an important document to be received annually in this place.

What was notable about Minister Bowen's statement was that the government believe that, after only six months in office, they are on track to now achieve 40 per cent emissions reductions by 2030. This means, as I have been saying for some 3½ years already, that with the right policies and a little more pressure we could see Australia far exceed 43 per cent by 2030. We have the capacity and the technology, we just need the political will in this place to pull the levers and set in place the regulatory framework that enables the investment and transition to happen as fast as possible.

The International Energy Agency has made clear that we can have no new oil, coal or gas projects opened up if we want to keep temperatures as close to 1.5 degrees as possible. We see countries around the world rocked by successive tragedies and disasters of a scale unimaginable. Here in Australia, on the east coast, we've seen flooding on a scale that has just never been seen before. We've seen the bushfires of 2019. We see these events rock our communities time and time again, and more and more frequently now, and so we must find the political will to act with more urgency.

So I am critical of this government because, despite this commitment, there is a level of greenwashing if it is also going to continue approving gas projects and extending coalmine licences. We now have the prospect of PEP-11 on the coastline between Newcastle and Manly. We see the PEP-11 gas exploration area reopened for decision by the joint authority as a result of the consent orders in the court proceedings. I will strongly oppose that, and I pledge to my community and to the communities along the east coast that we will absolutely be fighting and advocating for this application to be rejected.

The Narrabri gas fracking continues towards production, despite strong opposition from so many local communities, despite the International Energy Agency clearly stating we must—must!—stop new gas projects. And just last week the Lake Vermont coalmine approval was extended—until 2063! Now, seriously! It is greenwashing by the government if it is on the one hand going to extend those kinds of licences but on the other say that it is committed to reducing emissions. We need to be very clear that we need to reduce gross emissions. It's not enough to just say: 'On net, on a balancing of the budget, we're going to get there.' We actually have to reduce gross emissions, and that does mean no longer extending coalmine licences and not approving new licences for gas extraction or coalmining.

In relation to the statement, it is comprehensive, and I welcome that, but it can be improved in a couple of key items. It should include an analysis and direction statements in relation to key sectors of the economy. The report contains emissions projections which actually show an increase in emissions between now and 2030 from fugitive emissions, from land use, agriculture and transport. We need to reduce emissions across the board. I accept that some sectors will be slower than others—that they have a more difficult situation and the technology is not as advanced—but that does not exempt them from needing to reduce emissions. We can't have a situation of increasing gross emissions. We must reduce them.

The electricity sector transition is expected to contribute 90 per cent of the emissions reductions to 2030. I would say that is an unfair or uneven burden on just that sector, and there must still be pressure and focus on the other sectors to reduce emissions.

The statements should include targets for the five-year periods post 2030. I've spoken many times in this place of the need to provide long-term certainty and a clear road map to business and to industry on how they may drive their investments so that there can be confidence of investment—especially when we're talking manufacturing—around innovation and new technologies.

The annual statement has Australia on track for an emissions reduction of only 48 per cent by 2035, including the safeguard mechanism reforms and the electricity target. Now, that is not good enough. We absolutely must have a much more ambitious target for the next nationally determined contribution under the Paris Agreement, which is for 2035, or we will have to be honest with communities about the kinds of disruption, upheaval, uncertainty, risk and catastrophic events that are likely to occur and accelerate and rock those communities.

We absolutely must introduce much better monitoring, reporting and validation of methane emissions. And before the Nationals cry out about cows and say I'm against cattle, this is about gas production. The largest proportion of methane emissions is in fact from gas extraction, and then in the transport and export of gas, and yet we still don't have a system that properly monitors that. Companies are permitted to simply give an estimate and an averaging of what they believe methane emissions are. That is just not good enough.

I believe strongly, as many others do, that it's time to start talking about what our next nationally determined contribution under the Paris Agreement should be. At COP27, we learnt that the current commitments are not enough to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees. We need to accelerate ambition. This is a race, and we are barely on the start line. It's time to accelerate. We must commit—and I strongly push the government to do so—to a 75 per cent emissions reduction by 2035. This is a realistic target and a necessary target. Let's be clear: it is a necessary target if we want any hope of net zero really being meaningful and any hope of holding warming to somewhere close to 1.5 degrees.

In fact, the UK has already committed to reducing emissions by 78 per cent by 2035. New South Wales is aiming at 70 per cent by 2035. Victoria is aiming at 75 to 80 per cent by 2035.

Now, I shouldn't have to explain the implications of not acting. Those are clear, from a safety point of view for our communities. But let's be clear about the economic imperative as well. It's essential for business and investment to know the trajectory post 2030. Increasing our ambition is necessary to attract the investment that is flooding towards green projects in other jurisdictions. In the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act has already started to generate trillions of dollars of investment in US green industries and manufacturing of batteries, electric vehicles, solar panels and associated manufacturing. Australia needs to at least match the ambition of the US to credentialise itself as a partner in the development of new green global supply chains and benefit from the global economic shifts that are taking place.

For me and my electorate of Warringah, the opportunities presented by this green economy transition have always been top of mind when we talk about solving this climate crisis. It is such a fallacy to talk about the cost of transition. It is the opportunity of transition. Deloitte Access Economics forecasts that we could add over 250,000 jobs and $680 billion to the Australian economy by pursuing policies to get us back to net zero.

So I believe we need stronger targets and we need to increase ambition. But I say to Minister Bowen, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, that I welcome the statement. I look forward to working to increase the government's ambition. We need more guidance for the future. The investment sector, business and manufacturing are waiting, ready, willing and able to assist the government in this transition.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

With the election of the Albanese government in May last year, the people of Australia unequivocally voted to end the climate and energy wars. We all hoped that, soon afterwards, so did this parliament. Certainly, from our side of the parliament and from the crossbench, those wars are done with. Unfortunately, as is becoming increasingly clear, the opposition under this opposition leader wants the war to continue.

After a decade of climate and renewable energy denial, disaster and neglect, the Albanese government is taking strong action on the climate and the environment and is seizing the job opportunities that come from the promotion and growth of a renewable economy and a renewable energy future. Following on from the statement from the member for Warringah, I say that of course there will be debates about whether we should be going further and sooner, but we think we've got the balance right. We've spoken widely to all stakeholders in developing this policy that we've taken to the parliament and to the people at an election, and we're confident we've got the balance right.

As a first step, we've enshrined in law our emissions reduction target of 43 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero by 2050, ensuring that this is an obvious and effective target that is actively worked towards, not against. The Australian government is also supporting the transformation of our regions, which have always powered Australia. We are putting downward pressure on energy prices with affordable renewables, all while reducing emissions, which, of course, is good and necessary for our climate. Indeed, five out of six new jobs under Powering Australia will be delivered in the regions, not least in my home state of Tasmania.

Late last year, the parliament passed the Climate Change Bill, which was the first real climate change bill that had been brought to this parliament in a decade. At its core, it tasked the Climate Change Authority to provide advice on Australia's progress against climate reduction targets and to advise on new targets under the Paris Agreement, which will include a 2035 target. The Climate Change Authority must be a trusted adviser to government on climate targets, yet under the previous government there was first an attempt to abolish the authority, and when that didn't work they settled on gutting it completely—a modus operandi they put across all levels of government, it must be said. And gut it they did—so much so that the Climate Change Authority was not even providing advice on climate targets to the government of the day. That's how blind the Liberal-National coalition have been to our climate, to our environment and, frankly, to our economy. So steadfast in their denial of climate change are they that they actively defunded and ignored the agency that had been set in place to provide advice to government on one of the greatest challenges facing this country and, indeed, the entire world.

The 2022 bill also required the minister for climate change to report annually to parliament on progress in meeting our targets, which, of course, is what this government is doing right now with this annual statement. How refreshing it is to have a government in charge that takes responsibility for the climate and for the future of renewable energy, instead of seeking to deny, cover up, ignore and fudge the evidence of the impact climate change is having on our lands and our economy. I remind people in this place that it was the current Leader of the Opposition—with two former Liberal prime ministers, it must be said—who laughed at the impact of climate change on our closest neighbours as they combat the very real impacts of rising sea levels. How any member of the opposition has the face to stand in this place and speak to this statement about climate change is beyond me; they absolutely lack credibility on climate.

I implore members of the opposition who share our understanding of the impacts of climate change and who believe that the science is real: do more in your party room; stand up and be heard. At the moment, it's the naysayers, the deniers, those who have led the war for the last 10 years, putting politics above science and the reality that climate change is real—they're the ones winning your party room debates. You've got to stand up and be heard in the Liberal and Nationals party rooms to ensure that these climate change wars are finally put behind us.

During the 2022 federal election, Labor made its position clear: the future is in renewables. Renewable energy means both lower emissions and a stronger economy. Under the Albanese government, no longer will it be the policy of the government to hold back investment in renewable energy. Under the leadership of the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Australia has seen the renewable energy market grow from strength to strength, and it will continue to do so. Investment certainty has now returned to this market. The private sector knows that it has a government in charge that believes in the future of renewable energy, and we are seeing investors flock to the sector. Already electric vehicle sales in Australia are up 86 per cent since last year. We are catching up at a cracking pace after being left behind for the last 10 years, but there is still more to do. That is why the Australian government has made changes to the Fringe Benefits Tax Assessment Act, making electric, hydrogen and plug-in hybrid cars below the luxury car tax threshold exempt from the fringe benefits tax. In action, this slashes the cost for employers to switch their fleets to EVs, which means more electric vehicles on our roads and lower emissions. In real figures, that's a saving of up to $12½ thousand on the purchase of an EV for an employee. At the same time, individuals can save up to $4,300. No wonder we've seen EV sales skyrocket this year. The demand is there from the public, and finally it's being met. This government has made owning EVs more affordable and more accessible.

At the same time, we are ensuring that our Driving the Nation plan becomes reality, with an investment of $500 million into the national EV charging network. This means there will be charging stations at intervals of 150 kilometres on major roads across Australia. Charging technology is improving all the time. It takes a little time these days to charge an EV, but that waiting time will progressively become less and less over time, which will make EVs even more appealing. Those opposite scorned a future with electric vehicles. One of the most disgraceful acts during the 2019 federal election was senior members of the Liberal Party—not least the former Liberal Prime Minister—saying that Labor was 'ending the weekend' with our policy on electric vehicles. It was great for a headline, great on TV, but absolutely damning for national policy. It put electric vehicle policy in this country back three years, but this government is turning that around.

Under the Australian government's Powering Australia and Rewiring the Nation plans, we are putting renewable energy and clean energy futures at the forefront of our agenda. This has commenced already, with our investments in rewiring the nation being fast-tracked for critical projects in Tasmania. The fast-tracking of the Marinus Link in Tasmania will deliver two undersea transmission cables to connect Tasmania and Victoria. It has been a long talked about and long neglected project, but Labor is making it happen. It took this government no time to commit funding and get the show on the road when we came to power. Marinus Link will support 1,400 jobs in Tasmania and another 1,400 jobs in Victoria during the construction phase. It will also provide a strong boost to the Tasmanian and national economy with up to $4½ billion in positive net market benefits. It's through the leadership and investment of this government, this Minister for Climate Change and Energy and this Prime Minister that my home state of Tasmania has a brighter and cleaner energy future ahead of it, one that has secure jobs at its centre and, of course, fewer emissions in our power structures.

Our commitment to renewable energy doesn't stop with Marinus in Tasmania. The Albanese Labor government has invested in the future of secure Tasmanian jobs and manufacturing by helping to kickstart the LINE Hydrogen project in the north of the state. LINE Hydrogen is working to produce Australia's first operational commercial-scale hydrogen facility, and, thanks to the Albanese government, it will call Tasmania home. Hydrogen is a very exciting prospect for renewables. I could go on and on about Labor's commitment to climate change and renewable futures, but I'll leave it there. It's fantastic to see that the war has ended from our side, and I only hope the Liberal and National parties see sense and end the war from their perspectives as well.

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

At the beginning of this year the world's climate scientists at the WMO formally declared that the last eight years had been the hottest on record. This record heat coincides with the highest ever levels of coal and gas burnt in a single year, trapping more heat in our atmosphere and oceans. Our home is burning before our very eyes—sometimes literally—and the government is currently acting like everything is fine, despite the fact that it's abundantly clear we are in an emergency. We know what is causing this crisis: ultimately, it is the burning of coal, oil and gas. But, really, on that front nothing is changing; in fact, it is going to get worse. The Albanese government, like the Morrison government before them, want to add more fuel to this devastating fire.

One of the documents tabled with Minister Bowen's Annual Climate Change Statement was the department's Australia's emissions projections 2022 report. The document lists seven more projects that they are expecting will open over the next seven years—seven more! There's the carbon bomb of the Beetaloo basin in the Northern Territory, which could release up to four to seven more times more emissions than Adani; Woodside's Scarborough and Browse fields in WA and their LNG terminal on the Burrup Peninsula; Santos' Narrabri fracking fields; Shell's Crux field near Darwin; and a series of other unspecified fracking fields in Queensland. We know that the release of methane and gas is one of the biggest contributors to climate change and in fact methane is over 80 times more potent than CO2 when it comes to trapping heat in the atmosphere. We also know, by the way, that Woodside and Santos were some of the biggest donors to the Labor Party in the lead-up to this federal election.

This is straight-up climate denial. If you understand and appreciate that the burning of coal, oil and gas is what is driving climate change and your government's response is to project the opening of new coal, oil and gas projects over the next 10 years, then that is tantamount to, functionally, behaving as if you see no connection between the opening of new coal and gas projects and the driving of climate change. The International Energy Agency has said that to meet net zero by 2050—our target put into law last year—not one new project can be built. But the Albanese government isn't just satisfied with one—or seven. There are 111 more coal and gas projects in the pipeline to start by the end of this decade.

But for the government even that is not enough. In the most recent federal budget, we saw over $40 billion of subsidies to the fossil fuel industry listed over the next four years. There's not enough money for dental into Medicare. There's not enough money to build enough social and affordable homes for everyone who needs one. There's not enough money to bring mental health into Medicare or tackle the cost-of-living crisis, but there is $40 billion for some of the wealthiest multinational corporations in the world.

You can't have it both ways. You do actually have to choose. Do you want to achieve your legislated climate targets, or do you want new coal and gas? By the way, in the latest climate report, the government's not even on track for their weak 43 per cent emissions reduction target. Let's be clear. The world is on track to shoot past the 1½ degree limit by the end of the decade; in fact, we're on track for 2.7 degrees, which will throw our societies into chaos.

Indeed, the life we know today will be unrecognisable to our children. We're on track for 2.7 degrees of warming and we'll be getting over 1½ degrees of warming by the end of this decade, which means we'll see more bushfires, floods, natural disasters, collapses in parts of our crucial food systems, rising sea levels, the movement of hundreds of millions if not, ultimately, billions of climate refugees displaced from their homes, and the collapse of a lot of the systems that our world currently relies on to feed, house and protect the billions of people on this planet.

Over the last few years Australia has seen a preview of what this is going to look like in events such as the bushfires in 2019 emerging straight into the floods. After the floods I remember hauling furniture out of poor and working-class people's homes in parts of my electorate, and knowing that they didn't have enough money to go anywhere else. I knew that they had to crowdfund just to get enough money to find another home. Those are the sorts of direct material consequences of decisions that people in this place make when giving money to coal and gas corporations to allow the opening up of new coal, oil and gas projects. These events are a direct consequence of decisions that the government has already made, including approving a coalmine that will mine and export coal past 2060, according to the approval.

If we are still exporting coal and gas past 2050, we can forget about even 2.7 degrees of warming—we'll be blowing well past that. I don't know how you logically have in your heads, on the one hand, the idea that it is sustainable to continue to expand the export of coal and gas while literally assuming that under your government's policies we'll be exporting coal and gas past 2050 and, on the other hand, talk solemnly about the consequences of climate change. You're causing that; that is a consequence of your government's policies.

Another issue to consider is that beyond the $40 billion of subsidies, we know that in the last reportable tax year the top 20 coal, oil and gas corporations made $150 billion in revenue. Can anyone take a guess at how much tax they paid on that revenue? It wasn't zero dollars, which I was surprised by; it was $30. Not only do we have the subsidy, not only do we have the knowledge that the coal, oil and gas corporations are driving this climate crisis but we literally have government policies that allow these corporations to destroy our planet and make war profits on their huge revenues whilst we're not taxing them properly.

This government should recognise that we need to rapidly transition out of coal, oil and gas. In the years that we are transitioning, the government should make those corporations pay their fair share in tax. Imagine if we had the sort of sovereign wealth fund that Norway has, a trillion dollars that we could put towards transitioning the affected regional communities. With a trillion dollars we could invest in health and education services that those communities need and revive manufacturing in those communities. Right now the planet is cooking and the money made by those corporations is going into either the coffers of the major parties in the form of donations or the pockets of shareholders.

Over the next few years Australians will increasingly realise that the behaviour of this government is hardly different from the behaviour of the previous government, when you think about the government subsidising the opening up and exporting of coal, oil and gas. That is what the Greens will be focusing on in the next few years. When legislation covering the government's safeguard mechanism comes up for debate in parliament, we'll be focusing on the fact that this still does not deal with the opening up of new coal, oil and gas reserves.

Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

GH (—) (): I rise to speak about one of Australia's greatest climate scientists, the late Professor Will Steffen who died at the end of January aged 75. Will Steffen was born in Norfolk, Nebraska, and trained as a chemist at the University of Missouri before getting his PhD at the University of Florida in 1975. He came to Australia with his wife, Carrie, in the late 1970s after a detour working for the Peace Corps in rural Fiji. He did a post-doc at ANU and then joined the CSIRO as an editor and information officer. He quickly became one of the leaders in the emerging field of geosphere-biosphere analysis. He helped to bring together disparate fields of ecology, biology, oceanography and climate research into a larger study of earth system science. He moved to Stockholm from 1998 to 2004 as executive director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme and then, when he returned to Australia, quickly became an adviser to the federal government on issues of climate. He became director of the ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society and the inaugural director of the ANU Climate Change Institute.

Australians came to know him best as a foundation member of the Australian Climate Commission, which was dissolved, as he put it, within what 'seemed like hours' of the election of the Abbott government in 2013. In response, Will Steffen and his fellow commissioners Tim Flannery, Lesley Hughes and Amanda McKenzie launched a crowdfunding campaign, raising more than $1 million in a single week, enabling them to set up the Climate Council.

As a researcher, he was a significant advocate of the concept of the Anthropocene—the idea that humanity has entered a new geological age. He is known for a 2009 paper, 'A safe operating space for humanity', with Johan Rockstrom and others, which was published in Nature and introduced the concept of planetary boundaries. He and his co-authors identified nine planetary-scale processes that regulate the stability of the Earth's system. That later turned from a paper in Nature to a documentary on Netflix narrated by David Attenborough, brilliantly illustrating the way in which Will Steffen was at the forefront of science and the forefront of science communication.

He continued to appear regularly in the media, where he was always willing to take on climate change deniers. I recall a forum at the Canberra Labor Club in Belconnen in which he talked calmly about the science and the importance of acting on climate change. That earned him vitriol on social media and a number of death threats, but he was undeterred and continued to speak out about the concerns that he had for the planet's future, presenting the scientific data rigorously and calmly in a jargon-free way in which Australians could understand it.

He was a keen Canberran. I mentioned just now the way in which he engaged in the local Belconnen forum. He was always speaking at local Canberra forums and loved his adopted city. He co-founded the Canberra Urban and Regional Futures initiative in 2010, and he said of it:

How we design, build and live in cities of the 21st century is a daunting research challenge. What better place to start meeting this challenge than in our own city and region? And what better way to build the required knowledge than through collaboration among our region's research institutions.

He was concerned about the need for acting and concerned that the risks didn't sit equally on the sides of acting too fast and acting too slowly. As he said in an interview with the Guardian in 2018, discussing tipping points:

Maybe we have 20 to 25 years and then we might be committed to losing Greenland.

But the time we have left to intervene to stabilise coral reefs, for example, is a lot less than 30 years.

He concluded:

To err on the side of danger is a stupid thing to do.

He was extraordinarily generous to me as a member of parliament and as an author. When I wrote a book called What's the Worst That Could Happen? Existential Risk and Extreme Politics, it included a chapter on climate change. I sent the chapter through in draft form to Will Steffen. He came back very speedily with a series of line edits which were generous, incisive and detailed, and I dealt with all of his suggestions and produced a better book as a result—though, I'm sure, not as good a book as Will Steffen would have written if he'd been writing on the same topic.

He was a keen outdoorsman. He enjoyed trekking and hiking, from the Himalayas to the wildest parts of Australia. He carried out extreme ascents in the New Zealand Southern Alps and the Canadian Rockies and was part of a 1998 ANU Mountaineering Club expedition to climb the 7,000-metre Mount Baruntse in Nepal. He wrote the definitive history of Australian Himalayan climbing, Himalayan Dreaming. Here I'm indebted to an article by Carrie Steffen, John Finnigan and David Finnigan which ran in the Fairfax papers, in which they quoted Will Steffen as saying:

Climbing is like science. To get up a hard rock or ice climb, just like when you're solving a problem in the carbon cycle, you have to be ultra-focused, you have to make holistic decisions and you have to be absolutely aware of your surroundings. When you come off a big climb, you really appreciate the beauty of what's around you. That's the buzz you get in science when you solve a big problem and suddenly see how it all fits together.

His wife of 51 years, Carrie Steffen, said:

He was a wonderful, kind and passionate man and he was the same as a husband.

He was the most marvellous companion and the best dinner companion I would ever have, and ever will have. He brought the world to me.

I offer my particular condolences to Carrie and to Will and Carrie's daughter, Sonja. Will Steffen was a remarkable Australian, an extraordinary Canberran and a citizen of the world, and we're lucky to have had his contribution on climate change and on helping to shape a better planet.

Debate adjourned.