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

I rise this evening to make some remarks with regard to the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Bill 2007, legislation intended to establish a national framework for reporting greenhouse gas emissions and certain abatement actions as well as energy consumption and production by corporations from the 2008-09 financial year. In rising to speak to this bill, I note that the Australian Greenhouse Office in 1998-99 went to great lengths to develop a framework for emissions trading, and it was shelved. Here we are all these years later, at the end of possibly the last sitting day of this government, and legislation is brought into the chamber to set up arrangements to actually measure greenhouse gases. I think that gives some indication of where we have been under the Howard government in relation to climate change.

Before I go to the substance of my remarks, I put the government on notice that there is one aspect of this legislation on which I would really appreciate an explanation. Since we are unlikely to go into committee, I give notice now so that, hopefully, when the government representative, Senator Colbeck, responds, he might be able to give some explanation in relation to it. It is with regard to clause 27(1A), which states:

... the Greenhouse and Energy Data Officer may refuse to disclose information under this section if satisfied that there would not be adequate security measures in place in relation to the confidentiality of the information.

Given that there are already secrecy provisions that govern these arrangements, I seek an explanation for that provision.

We should all remember that the Kyoto protocol was signed in 1997. Here we are a decade later and we are just beginning the process in Australia that the rest of the world has been engaged in for a decade. When Minister Robert Hill came home from Kyoto a decade ago, he boasted to the Australian community about what a fantastic job he had done in browbeating the rest of the world in achieving for Australia an increase in greenhouse gases on 1990 levels when the rest of the developed world all accepted cuts. The reason the developed world finally accepted, in the middle of the night, Australia wearing them down was that the rest of the world wanted Australia in the tent. They decided to compromise and allow Australia an increase.

In subsequent years, Australia continued to frustrate at almost all the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Kyoto protocol meetings. Of course, it was not until 2005 that the protocol was ratified. Australia took so little interest in this process that even in this last week the Minister representing the Prime Minister in this chamber told the Australian people that China had still not ratified the Kyoto protocol. Let me inform the government that China not only signed but ratified some time ago. China has been the recipient of substantial funding under the clean development mechanism.

Let me go back. When Kyoto was signed in 1997, there were three financial mechanisms under the protocol to be worked through: firstly, the clean development mechanism—investment from developed countries to developing countries; secondly, joint implementation—investment from developed to developed countries; and, thirdly, emissions trading. Over this last decade that has been worked through substantially. The Europeans developed their pan-European trading system and they made some serious errors. One of the errors was to trust the corporate sector to appropriately calculate the level of their emissions. What occurred was that the corporate sector inflated their emissions in order to come in underneath the free permits that they had been given and therefore trade in the market in what was essentially a false carbon saving.

We learnt from the emissions trading system in Europe that it is desperately important, if you are going to have an emissions trading system, for that system to have integrity and the integrity has to come from the measurements that you put in place. That is why the legislation here is so important and that is why it disappoints me, because we have to deal with greenhouse gas emissions and we have to deal with it urgently. The science tells us we have to deal with it urgently. Only this week the Antarctic scientists have told us that the ice melts both in the Antarctic and the Arctic are going much faster than any scientist anticipated. They are telling us that the IPCC report, for example, failed to incorporate ice melt and that the likely sea level rise is going to be much higher than the 59 centimetres predicted in the IPCC reports. So we know that we are faced with a catastrophe and I do not think the government believes that. And, even if it has now come around to believing that climate change is real, I do not get a sense from the government that there is any urgency. And urgency is the key thing because the scientists are telling us that global emissions have to peak by 2015 and then reduce. And there is no suggestion that is going to occur, because under this legislation emissions trading does not get up and running until 2012. That is way too late. The Europeans have been into it for a long time. Several states in the north-east of the United States have set up their own emissions trading system. They are all working together to try to make sure that they are consistent so that, when we get to a global emissions trading system, there will be an easy knit of those systems.

Australia is now in a position, having learnt from the experience of the Europeans, to do something comprehensive. But emissions trading by itself is insufficient to address greenhouse gas reductions, and that is the other problem with this legislation—that is, it is in isolation from a comprehensive policy framework. We have had that already. Emissions trading will not drive renewable energy rollout in Australia. You not only have to have a price on carbon; you also need a mandatory renewable energy target high enough to secure investment. You also need feed-in laws that give you a guarantee that the energy utilities will purchase renewable energy at a fixed price for a fixed period of time. You also need to look at this issue of land use, land use change and forestry. Again, we saw an example of that today where the government has rushed ahead with tax laws. Unfortunately they are not coming into this place. Again, this is the contempt that the Howard government has for the Senate. The House of Representatives have gone home because they know that there is a government majority in this place and it does not matter what we might want to do to amend legislation; they have got the numbers to block any amendments and so they have more or less thumbed their noses at the Senate and gone home. I hope that the community realises that having a majority in both houses is a very bad idea for good legislation, because you do not get it if you do not allow scrutiny of legislation through committees and then through amendments.

I now return to the issue that is in front of us with this particular bill. As I indicated in relation to that tax bill, the idea of addressing land use, land use change and forestry by bringing in a tax deduction for so-called carbon sinks without requiring permanence of those carbon sinks, without putting a time frame on it, is just a pork barrel for the plantation sector. Indeed, a plantation sector on this occasion will come from the cement industry, the coal fired power stations and the aluminium sector. As if it is not bad enough that we have the managed investment schemes out there distorting the market, we will now have the cashed-up energy sector investing in the establishment of trees without any hydrological analysis, without any requirement that those plantations be in any way biodiverse and without any requirement that they stay in the ground for any length of time. If you have a situation where you call a tree-planting a sink and you can log it at any time, it makes absolutely no sense and makes zero contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. What you need is a comprehensive, integrated framework of policy which looks at emissions trading, which looks at land use, land use change and forestry and how that will intersect with food security and how that intersects with ecological integrity and ecosystem maintenance in terms of water. You also have to look at the financial mechanisms that will drive the rollout of renewables and you need regulation that will set in place national energy efficiency targets and energy efficiency standards for appliances and buildings and so on.

With this particular bill, the government made a huge mistake by squandering the goodwill of the states. The states have gone ahead and developed a lot of work on emissions measurement and they were going to go ahead with a national emissions trading system in the absence of the Commonwealth doing so. They agreed at a COAG meeting to establish a mandatory national greenhouse gas emissions and energy reporting system. They were prepared to give up some of their powers on the understanding that the Commonwealth would consult with them adequately and that there would be an agreed system. The minute the Commonwealth got that, the Prime Minister announced his emissions trading task force and, without any further ado or consultation with the states, the Commonwealth just drew up its legislation and made a total mess of it.

I am delighted that there was at least a one-day hearing where Senator Wortley from the Labor Party and I were able to sit all day and question everybody who came, and I am grateful to all of the representatives from state governments who came. Clearly there was an overwhelming case that clause 5 of this particular legislation had to go, because effectively it was overriding the states and undermining their ability to keep going with the good initiatives they had in place and the need for states to continue to collect appropriate data. I am pleased to say that as a result of that Senate inquiry evidence, which was so overwhelming, the government amended its original bill and has at least now recognised that it is not going to be able to override the states in the way that it wanted to. Also, the bill as it was previously drafted said that the federal government officer who was overseeing this only ‘may disclose’ information to the states and not ‘must disclose’.

Again, after considerable evidence, I am pleased that the federal government now understands that they must disclose information to the states. The states wanted reassurance that, if there was a dispute about information being freed up for them, there would be an appeal mechanism. I am glad to see that that has also been incorporated. But the issue that I would really like an explanation on—and it is important for the states that this is on the record—is what is meant by the energy data officer’s capacity to refuse to disclose information if satisfied that there would not be adequate ‘security measures in relation to the confidentiality of the information’? It is really important that we get an explanation from the government in this second reading debate as to what that means. Otherwise, the comfort that the government has given the states by replacing ‘may’ with ‘must’ will be undermined by that particular clause. I would appreciate knowing from the government what is actually meant by that.

Even though I welcome those changes, one of the real issues that remain with this bill is that the essential elements of a reporting scheme include comprehensive coverage of emitters, data at both corporate and facility level, reporting on a range of relevant activities, transparent and objective processes for calculating emissions and public accountability of the scheme. That is not included here because the government has given in to the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network, which desperately does not want public disclosure at a facility level. We now have a bill in which, although the data will be collected at the facility level, there is no requirement to disclose that data to the public. There are only aggregated totals across company levels and that is not going to give the public what it wants in terms of being able to hold companies to account. That is a mistake. There will now be no transparency for the public to know how emission permits are allocated. Even though there is an overwhelming body of evidence that all pollution permits should be auctioned, there is no doubt that a number of them will be allocated for free.

Unless you can have absolute transparent reporting at both facility and aggregate level, how can the community have any confidence in the integrity of any scheme? I think that is a real mistake. The thresholds are too high. They should have been much more stringent. Also, there is no need for the phase-in over three years, as is the case with this bill. We should be able to move much faster than that, and that is why I say that I do not think the government understands the urgency of dealing with climate change. The government does not understand that we are facing dangerous climate change and, in the face of that, we have to act quickly. We cannot sit around and wait for several more years to get this underway.

Our only insurance is if there is a change of government. Hopefully, we will then be able to come back and amend this so that we can put it in the context of a holistic set of measures on climate change. That will hopefully include land use, land use change and forestry. Hopefully, it will include the big emitters and be much more comprehensive because the thresholds will be different. Hopefully, we will also get much more urgency and transparency into the debate. If you do not have that transparency then you will end up with no public confidence in the system, as is the currently case.

The community’s right to know is not part of this bill. As I indicated, information at facility level is part of the community’s right to know. Only total gross greenhouse gas emissions and energy produced and consumed is made public. Australians will be very angry with a reporting system that allows for the information to be reported but to be then kept secret from them. The other issue is that we wanted to make sure that external auditors were accredited to avoid conflicts of interest, and the same applies to the greenhouse and energy data officer. There must not be a conflict of interest in any shape or form, because those positions are absolutely critical. Also, in order to get transparency and the appropriate compliance and enforcement, it is critical that there be opportunity for random audits and that the auditors be accredited so that we do not effectively have self-regulation. Self-regulation has undermined quality control in so many industries across Australia and, because it has been self-regulated for so long, the community has very little confidence in the land use, land use change and forestry sectors.

I finish by making the point that I do not think that the government fully understands what a mistake it has made in squandering the goodwill of the states. To get an effective emissions trading scheme you have to have cooperation at all levels of government and confidence at all levels of government that there is going to be a collaborative approach and a fair system. The states most certainly felt that they had been done over and, to use the words of one of the states, knifed by the Commonwealth. That is not the way to begin to set up the basis of what will be an extremely significant financial mechanism to address climate change.

I welcome the changes that the government has made. I am sorry that the transparency and the facility level is not there, and I would appreciate an explanation from the minister about what is meant by that the amendment that I referred to earlier. I hope that will give some additional comfort to the states that this is not a backdoor means of restricting information to them.