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

I support the notion of a greenhouse trigger in the EPBC Act, and I note that the Greens have an amendment to do just this. The Labor Party’s proposal is for a trigger of 500,000 tonnes. The proposal of the Greens is more stringent, at 100,000 tonnes. By that, I mean the Labor Party’s proposal says that if a development proposal were to emit more than 500,000 tonnes then it would trigger environmental assessment under the EPBC Act. It would be a controlled action. The Greens are saying that should be 100,000 tonnes.

I note the Minister for the Environment and Heritage did not really discuss the trigger. I would like to get back to the specific trigger, because the Howard government has done a complete backflip and there is the opportunity to do another backflip and go back to where it was in the year 2000. I will read to the chamber what Senator Hill said:

In line with the Prime Minister’s May 1999 commitment, the Government has consulted widely on applying a Commonwealth greenhouse trigger under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act in relation to new projects that would be major emitters of greenhouse gases. Under the draft Regulations released in November 2000, the trigger would apply to actions likely to result in greenhouse emissions over 0.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in any 12-month period. The Minister for the Environment and Heritage is considering the views of State and Territory Ministers and key stakeholders on the proposed trigger.

Then Senator Hill actually released the details of the trigger on 5 May 2000, when he put out a press release ‘Greenhouse trigger design released’. He then gave the details of the greenhouse trigger. At that time the Greenhouse Office did all the work that was involved in inserting a trigger into the EPBC Act. Senator Hill went on to say:

Consistent with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the National Greenhouse Strategy, it is proposed that ‘greenhouse gases’ would be defined to include carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol. Emissions from proposed projects would be estimated using accepted methodologies used for the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory, those being developed for the National Carbon Accounting System, or where necessary those agreed between the Commonwealth and the proponent.

So the work was already done, the trigger was determined to be 500,000 tonnes and the regulations were out there—it was all in place. The reason for it was cited by Senator Hill, and this is why I want particularly to ask the minister why the government changed its mind and, having changed its mind once, why it cannot change its mind back again. Senator Hill said:

Diffuse emissions arising from a large number of small and dispersed sources are not intended to be subject to the greenhouse trigger.

That is why he set it at 500,000 tonnes in any one year. He went on to say:

All direct emissions (those that are within the boundary of an action) would be considered in determining whether an action is a controlled action. Major sources of indirect emissions would be considered where these emissions are one step upstream from the action, ie directly attributable to activities that are outside the boundary of the action and provide inputs for that action. Emissions from activities that use the outputs of the action (downstream emissions) will not normally be considered in the triggering process. However, during the assessment and approval processes, the option of examining all emissions from upstream or downstream processes at least one step removed from the action will be retained, to allow consideration of any net change in Australia’s emissions that may flow from an action.

This is the whole point. How can an Australian government run an inventory of Australia’s greenhouse gases and then determine whether it is on track to meet a target if the national minister does not have the potential to examine any major project proposal that is likely to result in more than 500,000 tonnes a year? That will significantly affect whether we are on track to meet a national target. If the federal minister is in charge of meeting a target and yet all these development proposals are being put forward around the country which allow for more than 500,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases to be emitted, then how is he ever going to keep track of whether or not he is on target? If you are not on target, then surely the minister can say, ‘We cannot afford any more of these large emitting proposals because they are going to blow out our national target.’

That was Senator Hill’s logic. The work has been done. The logic is sensible, everything was in place and then it all went away. The government abandoned it. Now we have the minister telling us that this is an anticoal proposal, this is an anti-jobs proposal, this will shut down industries and so on. Senator Hill did not think so. The Greenhouse Office did not think so. Nobody else thinks so. I feel sorry for the minister trying to justify a position that I actually think he does not believe in. He knows full well that this is what Australia needs to do and must do. What we have to do is somehow create the space for the government to change its mind and save face. Ultimately, that is what is going to have to happen.

The reason the Greens are moving for a much more stringent target than 500,000 tonnes is that at the time Senator Hill set that proposal—1999—the world was not aware of how rapidly greenhouse gas emissions were going to increase in terms of parts per million in the atmosphere. Scientists were also not as clear five or six years ago as they are now about the accelerating rate of climate change. The minister said that, while Australia is on track to meet an eight per cent increase on its 1990 levels, that is still not certain. We are going to have to take more action. I would be interested to know what other measures the minister has in mind to put into place to meet what is now clearly a trend that is not going to see Australia meet its target, even though that target is incredibly generous. We are the only country that got an increase on 1990 levels; everybody else accepted a decrease. But we are not going to make it. I am interested in the minister’s proposals anyway as to how we are going to stay on track for that target.

As for this notion that anybody is demonising coal, coal is a fossil fuel. Coal is a major driver of greenhouse gases around the world. Coal is one of the reasons that we have global warning. That is the fact of the matter. It is not a matter of demonising or not demonising; it is stating a fact. We have to get to renewables; we have to get to a low-carbon economy. We do not need to be driving coal exports. As to Justice Pain’s decision, the minister has misrepresented Justice Pain. She is not closing down the coal industry. What her decision said was an environmental impact assessment of a project was inadequate because it did not take into account the greenhouse gases that were going to be emitted from that project. In the case of the Anvil Hill coalmine, it was 12.5 million tonnes a year, which is 0.1 per cent of total global emissions.

I would like the minister to explain to me how Australia is going to stay on track to meet its target and reduce its greenhouse emissions if the minister does not have to take that into account, if that is not referred to him. Queensland can go and approve new coalmines; New South Wales can; anybody can do what they like around the country. And the federal minister is left with how we are going to get our greenhouse gases down when everybody around the country is approving projects that are going to increase greenhouse gases. That is why this issue about the net change in Australia’s emissions that might flow from any action needs to be taken into account by the federal minister. What Justice Pain is saying is that it needs to be taken into account in environmental impact assessments. Then a decision can be made as to whether you are prepared to take that risk or incur that damage. Her decision of itself does not shut down anything; it requires that that be taken into account.

This greenhouse gas trigger would require the federal minister to take it into account. It is a question of how far you want to go. I do not believe that half a million tonnes is stringent enough given the rate of climate change and given the real concern of the scientists. As I said in here yesterday, it is too late for the world’s coral reefs. They have already passed their threshold of dangerous climate change. We are going to see coral bleaching occurring more frequently than every five years. We know that the reefs cannot recover in that time. We also know that the acidification of the oceans is such that the corals are already weakened and we know that there are several coral reefs around the world that are dead and now covered in algae. That is the future for the world’s coral reefs. All we can do now is to try to strengthen the reefs’ resilience in the face of climate change by stopping other forms of pollution and other forms of development to give them their best hope. But we are now faced with the reality that it is too late. And 100 million people around the world depend on coral reefs for their livelihoods. This is extremely sobering. We also know that the rate of melt on the Greenland iceshelf and the west Antarctic iceshelf is much faster than ever was anticipated previously. And we have scientists this week who have just got their results from the Ross iceshelf, saying that their study demonstrates that the sheet broke up once very quickly previously and it could happen again. That is the context in which we are talking about a greenhouse trigger.

Other countries, such as Germany, have made a rapid transition to solar. They have done that by helping people make the transition from jobs involved in industries which were heavily carbon dependent. They switched them across, retrained them and assisted them to move into other industries. The great benefit of solar is that the skills can be transferred. In solar, you have the high-level jobs, which are in the universities, in R&D, and in the high-level engineering areas. But you also have maintenance, installation, retail and all the other jobs. It is not beyond the wit of Australians, surely, to work out a just transition for people working in certain industries to get them across to, and working in, the new low-carbon economy—a carbon constrained economy.

Let us not devalue the debate on climate change and the seriousness of this issue by starting at, ‘We love coal and jobs and you hate coal and want to put people out of work.’ The government, the Senate and the House of Representatives have a responsibility to the Australian people to do our best to secure their future. That is what dealing with climate change is about. That is why I support this trigger. I am going to support a 500,000-tonne trigger. I hope that the Labor Party will reconsider its position and vote for the more stringent trigger that I have put on the books here as an amendment, which is coming up a bit later. I believe that what Robert Hill, the former minister, thought was appropriate five years ago is no longer appropriate. We need something that is more stringent than that. I would like the minister to specifically address this issue. I would like him to specifically tell me why it was a good idea for the Prime Minster and Robert Hill to support it in 2000 but it is not a good idea to support it now. How is the federal government going to keep a handle on Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions if there is no requirement to check it? How are you going to keep a handle on that if you have no capacity to look at proposals that generate large volumes of greenhouse gases so as to work out any net change to Australia’s emissions that might flow from such proposals?