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

I rise to also express my disappointment that the Labor Party will not support the amendments and, presumably, the Australian Greens amendments, which we will deal with shortly, which try to achieve the same thing—that is, to put some teeth into this legislation. I thought it was the role of a legislature, when making laws, to make the best laws that it can for the country. To say that we do not want to broaden the debate now and we do not want to increase any part of the framework at this time is an excuse for inaction. Only yesterday the shadow minister for the environment, Peter Garrett, was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald as saying how wonderful the European Union was for having set a 20 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases below 1990 levels by 2020. I agree. Labor has a policy of 60 per cent reduction on 1990 levels by 2050.

How are Labor going to get there if at every turn they back off from any mandatory requirement for industries to do anything? Whilst you can talk all you like about the residential sector, the fact of the matter is that we have 250 corporations using more than half a petajoule of energy per year and they cover round 40 per cent of Australia’s total energy use. That is from the government’s own explanatory memorandum.

This is an opportunity to act and act now. If you accept what Sir Nicholas Stern has had to say and what the world’s scientists have had to say in the IPCC report, we have fewer than 10 years left as of last year. So we have until 2016 to significantly reduce greenhouse gases and to try to maintain global temperatures below an average two-degree rise. How are we going to do this by 2016 if we allow five years of fiddling around before we say whether this has worked? I hear the minister say that that is crazy and that of course they would do it. Perhaps the government can explain to me why it is that, according to the International Energy Agency, Australia’s energy efficiency has improved at less than half the rate of other countries? Are our industries just not bright enough? Are other countries better? What is going on here? The difference is that other countries have regulated. They have regulated because they do not want to penalise progressive companies. Progressive companies are disadvantaged by the implementation costs of energy efficiency measures relative to companies not prepared to act under voluntary schemes. That is a fact.

If you read yesterday’s paper you would have seen that AGL has gone offshore and joined the Chicago trading exchange. Industry is well ahead of the government and the opposition. In fact, the irony is that, while the Treasurer and the government argue that they are the best managers of the economy, Australia’s most progressive businesses are all saying, ‘We are fed up. We are sick of the uncertainty. We know a carbon price is coming. By not acting you are disadvantaging us and we are having to go offshore.’ So off goes AGL—not some small start-up company by any means—to the Chicago exchange. The minister needs to explain why, if the government are managing this so well, these companies are rushing offshore. It is because they can see the opportunities in the carbon market.

More particularly, I would like an answer to the fact that the 2004 energy white paper stated that energy efficiency could deliver 40 per cent of energy savings to the year 2010. We are already in 2007. It noted that energy efficiency improvements in Australia have occurred more slowly than in other nations, with just a three per cent improvement from 1973-74 to 2000-01. Why is it that Australian industry has failed on energy efficiency? Why is it that the European Union had to have a directive on energy efficiency that has led to building a competitive advantage in the whole environmental and energy management area? Why did the European Union do it if it was crazy for companies not to act without it? The fact is that it has not happened for all the reasons that Senator Allison has just indicated. The government have not acted and now we are in a global crisis.

It is quite apparent to me that the government does not believe we are in a global climate crisis and that we have only until 2016 maximum to make significant greenhouse gas reductions. It is obvious to me that that is the case. It is obvious to me that we have climate sceptics and the government advocates—such as Ziggy Switkowski, who was in the paper today saying that climate change is not the greatest threat facing Australia, without going on and saying what supposedly is—at the same time as we have state governments moving to cut off wetlands and so on because of a water crisis that quite clearly is linked to climate change. Yes, there are climate sceptics. There are nuclear advocates in the coal industry saying: ‘Our technology won’t be ready for 15 or 20 years, so climate change is not that urgent. It can wait for our technology to come on-stream.’ It cannot wait, we cannot wait and, what is more, the Australian economy is suffering because progressive businesses are heading offshore.

We have hollowed out the manufacturing sector and we are losing the innovators, who are going offshore because of government policy. The minister has still not explained to anyone in this house why it is that the government think that voluntary regulation is going to work and why there is no target. One of the amendments I am going to move in a moment is for a national target. The minister has said he has no idea at all what level of energy this might save in five years. At the end of five years they will add up what they did save and then tell us. There is no target. There is no performance limit or benchmark at all. There is just a country ramble when we are faced with a huge global crisis.

I would like an answer from Senator Colbeck as to why it is that Australia’s energy efficiency has improved at less than half the rate of other countries if voluntary schemes work so well. In terms of Labor’s objection, I want to know from the Labor Party whether they endorse the target that the opposition’s shadow minister for the environment, Peter Garrett, suggested was a good thing in the paper yesterday—the European Union’s target of 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. If so, how are they going to get there if they, too, refuse to make mandatory the energy efficiency savings identified in the audits that relate to 40 per cent of Australia’s total energy use? It suggests to me that they are prepared to talk up climate change in every forum except the parliament, where it counts.

Question put:

That the amendments (Senator Allison’s) be agreed to.