Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The first thing that needs to be said is that one has to have some sympathy for Senator Colbeck in this situation. It is a complex area, and it is not one that he has been used to debating. Indeed, it is an area that the government has turned its face against for a decade now. One of the things that have put Australia in a very disadvantaged position is the Howard government’s scepticism about climate change and therefore its failure to follow through with world’s best practice in this area.

The first thing to be said about Senator Colbeck saying, ‘We don’t want industry to be disadvantaged,’ is that that is the government again lining up, saying it wants to be there with the world’s worst practice. You will find countries such as maybe Russia, India perhaps and the United States under the Bush administration—and this will rapidly change if the Democrats keep control of the legislature in the United States and there is a Democrat president next year. But why should Australia be lined up with the world’s worst practice? And that is endorsed by the Labor Party in refusing to take up these very sensible amendments.

Then Senator Colbeck says as an excuse that Australia attracts a higher proportion of high energy use companies. If that is the case, that simply means that Australia has a bigger opportunity to employ energy efficiency to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, because the bigger the corporations, the more energy they are using, the bigger in general the opportunity for cutting back through efficiency.

We now have the enormous burden on our shoulders to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But the problem here is that this government is under the thrall of the coal industry; the aluminium industry, the huge consumer of coal-fired power; and the heavy metallurgical industries, which consume so much of the power. Those companies do not want to have their responsibility to the world and to coming generations imposed on them, because they are looking at the profit line and it is cheaper for them to do nothing. It is cheaper for them to continue to hyperpollute the atmosphere at no cost. And that is what the government and the Labor Party opposition are endorsing here today.

We do not have, as Europe has, a carbon tax. That is world’s best practice. We do not have, as Europe has, a carbon trading scheme. That is world’s best practice. And we do not have, as Europe has, mandated energy efficiency targets. That is world’s best practice. The shadow spokesperson for the environment, Peter Garrett, said in a column in the Australian yesterday that at last Britain is bringing in the world’s first climate change bill. Where has he been? That is what Europe has been effectively implementing over the last couple of decades. Indeed, Senator Milne brought a climate change bill into the Senate for the Greens last year, which will be debated later this week. We will find that, on today’s performance, the Labor Party will oppose it—and the government will oppose it.

What we have here is the two big parties in this parliament, nobbled by the high energy use companies that Senator Colbeck referred to, refusing to take up the responsibility that is incumbent upon them to change this country from world’s worst practice to world’s best practice and to do the right thing by all Australians, their kids and their grandkids. The Stern report, let me remind the chamber, said that a one per cent cut in gross domestic product to fund doing the right thing now will save our grandkids a 20 per cent cut in their gross domestic product because of the impact of climate change. We are charged with the responsibility to act now and to act urgently—all the more urgently because of the failure of the Howard government over the last 10 years to act responsibly and in accordance with world’s best practice.

What we are getting here today from both the government and, surprisingly, the alternative government—the Labor Party—is world’s worst practice. This is driven by the coal industry and others who say: ‘Let’s not legislate. Leave it to us—who have failed to do the right thing for decades—to do the right thing some time in the future. But let’s not get us ahead of world’s worst practice.’ The Democrat amendments, and now Senator Milne’s amendment for the Australian Greens, head us towards being world leaders.

Let me remind the chamber that with energy efficiency targets come enormous job-creating opportunities. This is not neutral in terms of jobs. When you move to cut wasted energy in industry and in the retail, the agricultural and the domestic sectors, you create jobs. If people are going to have inventories of their power use implemented, that requires tradespeople to fix up the waste. It requires consultants to advise people. I advise every business in Australia to get an inventory done to cut their energy wastage. Even the Prime Minister is now talking about carbon taxes and a potential carbon trading scheme. When that happens the price of power is going to go up. What then happens is that those people who are energy efficient and are using less power have much smaller power bills. The extraordinary thing about this process is that it ends up cutting the power bills of people who employ energy efficiency measures and it creates jobs. The European experience is that you also create technology that is then exportable to other countries and you gain a windfall in export income. That is the business side of this.

We can be, as the government and opposition are now, lazy about this and say: ‘Leave it to industry; we will draw their attention to it but we will leave it to them to implement it.’ But the world is changing rapidly and there will be mandated targets a little way down the line. It is coming. It is unavoidable. Wait till we see what targets the second round of Kyoto talks, due in three to five years, set for the world. Just the week before last the countries of the European Union went back to their own domestic parliaments and, while the government and Labor Party here are blocking this legislation, all legislated for this. They want a 20 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions and a 20 per cent delivery of renewable energy by 2020. They are going to legislate for it. Prime Minister Blair in Britain and his environment secretary, Mr Miliband, consequently announced that they are going for a 30 per cent target. Here we have a government and an opposition led by Mr Rudd who want no targets at all in the short term.

Why are targets not being set? Because they are in the thrall of heavy industry, against the interests of the average Australian—the average Australian family, the average Australian small business and indeed the big businesses themselves. When you have that sort of blinkered thinking, you wonder just how much the Australian economy is going to be disadvantaged by this lazy failure to implement world’s best practice now. That is what this amendment is about; it is saying, ‘Let’s move up to the European level of practice.’

Angela Merkel, the conservative Chancellor of Germany, spoke about the disaster stalking humanity. She understands that somebody has got to take the lead. When she, Prime Minister Blair of the UK and others were asked if Europe was going to be put at a business disadvantage, they went straight to the clear ethical requirement on the world to change course and talked about somebody having to take the lead. How different that attitude of conservative and Labour premiers in Europe is to that of the coalition and the Labor Party here in Australia, which says: ‘We measure ourselves by world’s worst practice. We are not going to step up to the plate, be ethical and take the lead here.’ I am afraid there is a penalty clause—that is, the business end of this operation. Since 2003 Germany has created 60,000 jobs just in the area of renewable energy. How many have been created in the area of energy efficiency, which is the area before the chamber at the moment? I cannot give you figures but let me tell you: it is thousands of jobs. Because that is what happens when you move wise, world-leading legislation.

So on all counts the government and the opposition have got this wrong; the Greens and the Democrats have got it right. These amendments should be passed, and the pity of this is that in a year or two from now we will be back in here passing these very same amendments as legislation simply because the world is going to force the Australian government to. The Australian people want these changes—80 per cent of the polls show that, for example, the Australian people want the Kyoto protocol ratified—but this government says no. But these changes will come, because the public is wiser than the leadership of either the coalition or the Labor Party.

There should be time for rethinking here. I am amazed that the Labor Party lines up with the Howard government on this. I am amazed that the Labor Party cannot see that world’s best practice is what we should be leading. We are not saying, ‘Go out into some unknown territory;’ we are simply saying, ‘Line up with those countries in Europe and with California and the other states in the US which have decided to break away from the Bush mantra of pushing oil and coal.’ Let us put our children and their interests ahead of those of Exxon and the other big corporations which do not want any legislated result.

We have got the big corporations winning in Australia on ‘Let’s not have legislated targets’, but the Greens have taken a more responsible attitude to this, as have the Democrats. That is why these amendments are here and that is why they should be supported. They should have the support of the opposition. The last 10 years of failure might lead us to the conclusion that the government could not raise itself to do the right thing by Australia even in 2007.