Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I thank senators for their contributions. I would just like to respond to the minister when he says that he does not want to put the additional cost on second- and third-level industry to conduct the audit and report. The whole point about energy efficiency is that it is designed to save companies money. Frequently, unless they are forced to do the audit in the first place—which is, I am sure, why the government is moving on the large companies—often they do not identify just how inefficient their operations are in terms of the amount of energy they are using and the cost savings that are achievable. Frequently they surprise themselves at how much money they can save.

I object to the notion that the government is about not passing on cost increases to consumers, implying that energy efficiency is going to cost. Energy efficiency will save businesses money directly but it will also save the community and the world a long-term cost associated with increased energy supply. It is the supply and demand issue that has to be addressed here. I think it is reasonable to say that once the large companies get into energy audits there will be a template for how you actually go about it. It is a quarter of a million dollars for the large companies. I am sure it is not going to be a flat fee of a quarter of a million dollars for medium and smaller companies. There will be other ways of doing it. It will be less complex for less complex operations, and so on. So I reject the notion that it is going to be a quarter of a million dollar fee for everyone, regardless of whether it is BHP or some medium-scale business in a regional centre, for example. There will be cost efficiencies in terms of scale.

I agree with what the minister is saying—that at the moment by targeting and carefully focusing the legislation on the 250 largest companies you are looking at 60 per cent of the energy use, and that is a good thing to do. We are also looking for cultural shifts here. We are looking for regional leadership. We are looking for community leadership. We are looking for people to be able to show that, at any scale of business, energy efficiency is a good idea. So by moving to capture more medium-scale businesses, you take this from just the 250 around Australia into, as the minister has himself acknowledged, thousands of businesses across Australia.

Not only are we talking about leadership in energy efficiency, cogeneration and take-up of renewables but we are also talking about competitiveness. Reducing the costs of production is one thing the government ought to be conscious of since it goes into these free trade agreements that put increasing pressure on Australian business to be able to compete with prices when you have China, in particular, sending manufactured goods to the global market that are heavily subsidised by the environment, human rights abuses and low wages. Everywhere I go, Australian businesses say to me that their main problem is that they just cannot compete against low-wage economies that subsidise levels of production by destroying the environment and by poor occupational health and safety standards as well as low wages.

So, given that, if we can help companies to be more efficient and reduce the costs of production it must be a good thing. It is my contention that the only way you will get them to do this is by requiring them to do the audit, which is the very rationale the government is using for big business. I am arguing that the same rationale applies to medium and small business—although 0.2 petajoules would not be a small business, so we are talking medium-scale businesses. Let us encourage these businesses to do their audits and find ways to make the audits affordable. Let us look at that. I do not know what those cost savings are going to be. If the government chooses to reject this, as the Labor Party has in the short term, let us have a look at what the costs would be for businesses of that scale to undertake similar audits. Surely once we get it down to a fine art with the large companies it will not be that difficult to modify for medium-scale companies.

Again, I think that this is a lost opportunity to spread the cultural change—the shift that is required—across the whole of Australia, and rural and regional Australia in particular. I cannot see that by staying with the 0.5 petajoule threshold we are actually spreading the message about energy efficiency and achieving the cultural change and the shift that we need to assist business not only to be better for the environment but to be more competitive in their fields.

Question negatived.

I move:

(8)    Page 30 (after line 26), at the end of Part 9, add:

42 Review of operation of Act

        (1)    The Minister must cause an independent review of the operation of this Act to be undertaken as soon as possible after the fifth anniversary of the commencement of this Act.

        (2)    The person who undertakes the review must give the Minister a written report of the review.

        (3)    The Minister must cause a copy of the report of the review to be tabled in each House of Parliament within 12 months after the fifth anniversary of the commencement of this Act.

During the course of this debate, I have argued that one of the main problems with the bill is failure to require the outcomes of the audits to be implemented. The minister has just said that, by virtue of creating, effectively, a league table amongst big business as to who is doing the right thing by implementing the energy efficiency measures that have been identified, the public pressure will be such that they will do the right thing. That implies a whole new round of activism and requiring the community, shareholders and activists to go out there and start running campaigns on this when there is absolutely no need to do so if the government would actually require the companies to do it.

I have also said that we should establish the goal that we are trying to achieve and the time frame we are trying to achieve it in, and the minister still has not responded to that. What is the level of energy saving the government would expect to achieve within three years as a result of this bill? We need to know so that we can see whether it is in fact being effective. You will have your audits which will tell you what could be done and what has been done, and I guess you will have a running sheet of what has been saved and what is achievable, but I am moving for an independent review of the operation of the act to be undertaken as soon as possible after the fifth anniversary of the commencement of the act.

In other words, five years after this act is implemented let us have an independent review of exactly whether this Energy Efficiency Opportunities Bill has been effective in reducing the amount of energy that these companies use. The review should be given, as a written report, to the minister, and the minister must then table a copy of that review in each house of parliament within 12 months of the fifth anniversary of the commencement of this act. In other words, an independent review will take place after five years, that will be given to the minister and the minister will table it within 12 months of that.

I do not think that that is unreasonable. I expect the government will say, ‘We will be reviewing it all the time as it goes on in terms of the audit.’ But at least if you have an independent review of the act after five years, if companies have not done as the government expects they will do—and that is actually implement the initiatives that would save the greatest amount of energy—it gives us an opportunity to come back and take whatever steps might be necessary at that point. So I think it is more than reasonable.

We have a difference of philosophical opinion here as to whether requiring companies to do the right thing by enforcement measures or asking companies to do the right thing in a voluntary capacity is the right way to go. We have a different philosophical view on it, and mine is that we should require them to do it, within reason, if there is a reasonable payback period. However, since that is not the government’s view, and I have not been able to prevail upon the Senate to accept that view, I now ask that the Senate supports the notion of an independent review after five years so that we can then take other measures if they are necessary. Again, this is not because we have some idea about going after big business. This is about two things. It is about climate change and doing the right thing in terms of the global environment, and it is about saving taxpayers from investing in new energy production on the supply side, which is hugely expensive. However, it is also about helping companies, in spite of themselves, to be more competitive in a global environment by reducing their ongoing costs of production.