Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the answers given by Senator Wong in question time today. The minister indicated that the government is in constructive engagement in respect of the emissions trading scheme. The minister indicated that the government is listening. The minister indicated that the government is intent on balancing a range of factors in dealing with the emissions trading scheme. She talked about balancing the environment; she talked about balancing the needs of households; she talked about balancing the needs of business. When will the government work out that, if you have three factors to balance to reach a conclusion, if one of those factors vanishes or is significantly reduced, then it has a clear effect on the others? Putting that in a nutshell: when will the government realise that if you have less business, if you have fewer jobs, then you have fewer households and you have less care for the environment?

But it is worse than that because if, indeed, the government is listening—as the minister attempts to assert it is—then why does the general manager of Port Pirie based Nyrstar say, as he did say on Radio 891 ABC Adelaide today:

We don’t understand what the government’s rush is with respect to this. If they get it wrong there will be serious consequences.

Nyrstar employs, in Port Pirie alone, almost 800 South Australian workers. It employs 3,000 workers across the country. Mr McMillan has indicated that, if the government proceeds on its timeline with this emissions trading scheme, then not only are the Port Pirie operations rendered unsustainable but so are the operations in my good colleague Senator Parry’s home state of South Australia. Yet, the minister says the government is listening.

The government are not listening. The government, when it comes to a so-called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, is governing by assertion. We have a government that is asserting; therefore it is. We had an ozone hole. We had global warming. We had climate change. Then we supposedly had a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Well, actually, we have an emissions trading scheme masquerading as a carbon pollution reduction scheme, because how and on what basis will trading in emissions reduce carbon? The government have not done the analysis or produced the evidence to show that that is the case. Instead, they are quite happy to have it devolve to the community and a very well-intentioned debate about the detail of trading in pollution and of an emissions trading scheme: about who should be in, who should be out, which industries should be in now, which industries should be in later, how much carbon will cost, how much a permit will cost, how long it will last for, who should be compensated for what—very important details, which need to be discussed and debated if we are to forge ahead with this exporting-jobs and exporting-pollution scheme. They are very important details, but we are not able to ask—business is not able to ask—the real question, which is: ‘What are we doing this for again? And can you, government, please prove that it will fix the problem.’ Oh, no. The government are not only trying to shut business up—far from listening to business, they are trying to shut business up with this—they are happy to see business shut down, and jobs and carbon pollution exported. That is why Mr McMillan said what he also said on ABC Radio this morning. Let me explain what he said, because the government are obviously not listening to the likes of Mr McMillan. Let me tell the government what he said on Radio 891 today, to explain why exporting jobs and exporting carbon is going to increase carbon pollution worldwide. He said:

What this means is business here may not be viable. Therefore, they’ll shut down. The world is not going to reduce its insatiable demand for zinc and lead. The demand will be supplied by somewhere else in the world which does not have the same environmental constraints; for example, China and India, where operations are less mature, less efficient. And what will happen is carbon leakage. You’ll shut efficient production …

(Time expired)