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

I have to say that I have not heard quite so many cliches rolled together in one speech in a very long time—from the entrails of a festering chicken through to marshmallows, steel in the spine and all manner of things. Entertaining as that might be, I would like to return to the substance of the matter before the Senate—which is an amendment to change the reporting date in the motion put forward by the government. I rise today to say that I will be supporting the reference of the bills relating to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme to the economics committee for inquiry and I support the reporting date of 15 June, which is the day that the climate policy committee, which I worked with the coalition to establish, will also be reporting.

The fact of the matter is that between now and June 15 June the matters to be looked at are the changes to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme that have been announced since the Senate economics committee reported previously. They relate to some very specific matters. They relate to the government’s decisions to: delay the commencement of the scheme for one year; establish a $10 price for the following year; and give further compensation to the trade exposed sectors, as shown in the budget this week, of $1.1 billion out of the public purse for extended compensation. This is the first time we have really seen a figure for the extent to which this scheme will not be self funding and the extent to which it will dip into the public purse for the next five years for that $1.1 billion—and that is just the beginning, I suspect, but that is a matter to be looked at. The other issue is the target. The government has changed its previous target range of five to 15 per cent to five to 25 per cent conditional upon a number of matters which the government has specified.

The government have said that the targets must be underpinned by mechanisms to meet them, and I will look forward to hearing the government explain how they will achieve a 25 per cent reduction on 2000 levels. Given the current parameters of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, the extent of compensation and so on, I cannot see how in the eight years between 2012 and 2020 that 25 per cent reduction will be achieved under the CPRS. I can only assume that if the government did commit to that and if by some miraculous outcome the rest of the world agreed to the conditions—and I do not believe the government itself thinks they will ever be agreed to, but let us assume they were—then the government is meaning to buy in the rest of the commitment from overseas at-again-a huge cost. I am very interested to know about that, but that will come out in the Senate committee report. Those matters are going to be looked at by the Senate economics committee and by the climate policy committee. I think that reporting on 15 June, before the next session, is within the time frame that the government established at the beginning of this year. Anyone taking any notice of the projected timetable for government legislation would have noted that on no other piece of legislation have we had a clearer timetable established by the government for a very long period of time. It is not my intention to delay the legislation.

I have to say, having listened to the contribution from Senator Joyce, that, when you have already made your mind up as emphatically as he has—whether it is dancing with Nureyev, playing with marshmallows, looking at the fermenting entrails of chickens or all of that combined that leads you to you a ‘no’—why would you want longer to investigate something? You have already indicated to the Senate that, come what may, no matter what, in no uncertain terms whatsoever, the answer is no. So the answer of ‘no’ should be available on 15 June as well as in August or whatever date the coalition is putting forward.

I think the reality of the coalition’s position here in terms of a different date comes down to two things. Firstly, it is to avoid a trigger for a double dissolution and, secondly, it is to avoid a split in the coalition because if the legislation is put forward in June as expected then Malcolm Turnbull, the Leader of the Opposition, if he were to choose to support the legislation, would be seen to have a split in the Senate and would lose control of his party. So it is clearly in the coalition’s interests to put this as late in the year as possible. That would suit the coalition because it wishes to avoid a public split on a major piece of legislation like this. To me that is clearly the main reason behind the delay. The other thing is that, as we all know, for a trigger for a double dissolution you need three months between a piece of legislation coming in and it coming in again and being defeated. If the government was hoping to go to a double dissolution on the climate change legislation then it needs to get it into the Senate and have a decision made on that in June in order to be able to bring it back and be able to go to an October or November election before Copenhagen.

So let’s be very realistic about what is going on here. The reasons the coalition is putting up for delay have nothing to do with further scrutiny of these bills; they have much more to do with holding the coalition together and avoiding triggers. Senator Joyce has said nothing that would persuade me to the contrary on that. Also, Senator Joyce said by way of interjection earlier that he believed climate change was real but that there was nothing you could do about it. That indicates that he does not believe that human activity has any contribution to make. Otherwise, he would understand that you can do something about it by stopping carbon dioxide emissions going to atmosphere. You can make a significant reduction in carbon dioxide going to atmosphere through industrial processes and all the other means by which it is happening. I would say to Senator Joyce that stopping the logging in the Florentine in Tasmania would stop massive amounts of carbon dioxide going to atmosphere. Indeed, stopping the regeneration burns across Tasmania this autumn would stop massive amounts of carbon dioxide going to atmosphere. So there is plenty we can do. If you believe climate change is real, there is plenty we can do, and we could be doing it tomorrow.

I have seen no evidence of a genuine commitment to deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in the urgent time frame that is required. The IPCC has said that global emissions must peak and come down at 2015. They must peak and then come down. The scientists are telling us we are already beyond 450 parts per million carbon dioxide equivalent. The Prime Minister has said that 450 parts per million CO equivalent is in Australia’s interests. I remind the Senate that 450 parts per million gives us only a 50 per cent chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change—that is, defined as an increase of more than two degrees—and the scientists are saying that they are not persuaded by that any longer. They are saying we should be aiming for much lower. They are saying we should be aiming for something like 350 parts per million. That shows that 450 parts per million is not the target but the absolute minimum aim. We should in fact have a much lower target as a global ambition.

Having said that, we do not have time to delay the implementation of the scheme another year. We do not have time to start slowly. The assumption that you can finish strongly assumes that there is no urgent time frame for stabilisation. I notice one of the government’s conditions on the 25 is stabilisation at 2020—which, according to the IPCC, is too late. We can have these discussions in the economics committee and in the climate policy committee, and people who are interested enough to be there can ask those questions and have those discussions at that time. I will not be supporting a delay in the reporting date of these committees. The matters that need to be discussed are there. I note that in today’s paper there is a reference to ‘technical matters’ that the government wants to sort out. ‘Technical matters’ have turned out to be more compensation for the coal industry. I want to put the government on notice: that is not a technical matter; that is yet more compensation. It should be signalled clearly before the Senate economics committee or the climate policy committee actually hold their inquiries. That is not technical; that is a yet bigger burden on the public purse.

In conclusion, I would say this. If you really aspire to dealing with climate change then you do not lock in a weak target until 2020 and leave the Australian budget and therefore the Australian people vulnerable to huge compensation payouts to the industries that caused the problem in the first place. The reason the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Industry Group now want this legislation passed is that they know that the big polluters and the big emitters in Australia—the coal industry in Australia—are never going to get a better deal than the one on the table now. The Business Council of Australia—the members of which are the Liberal Party’s biggest donors—will be on the phone to the Leader of the Opposition saying: ‘Pass this, because we’ll never get a better deal. If this doesn’t get through before Copenhagen, the situation will only get worse as the rest of the world will call for deeper cuts and faster and more stringent action.’ That is why the Australian Industry Group and the Business Council of Australia want it passed. They want it locked in for 2020 so that their members—from the public purse—get paid. The polluters will get paid every time between now and 2020 there is action taken that is beyond the scope of the scheme as it is currently.

That is why they want certainty. They want certainty about the extent of the compensation; they want to know that no change will occur without them being massively compensated. Locking in a low target for such a long time is one major structural weakness of this scheme. It is a disingenuous 25, because I do not believe that even the government thinks that the rest of the world would possibly agree to the conditions. I note that, when this was announced, the government emphasised time and time again the conditionality of the 25 in order to signal to the big polluters that there is a high probability—almost a certainty—that nobody will agree to Australia’s conditions. It is setting up quite an interesting debate for the next short while. There is no group of people in this parliament more committed to urgent action on climate change than the Greens. But the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is an economic tool to give effect to an environmental aspiration—that is, stopping catastrophic climate change. If an economic tool does not deliver environmental effectiveness or economic efficiency then you have to ask yourself: what is the point in putting it in place?

Environmental effectiveness is the priority for the Greens, and environmental effectiveness comes from the science. The science tells us that deep cuts by 2020 are required. We do not have generations to go; we only have a matter of years. And in fact everyone in this parliament has a personal responsibility in terms of making deep cuts. Incrementalism will not get us there. Half a bridge will not get us there. Deep cuts are what will get us there, and what will get us there, in an Australian and global context, is for Australia to put 40 per cent on the table in Copenhagen as a goodwill statement towards a global agreement. But what Australia will do, regardless of what the rest of the world does, is put 25 per cent on the table. That is the Bali negotiating range. China has said that they expect developed countries—annex 1 countries—to put on the table offers at the top end of the 25 to 40 per cent range. The developing world has, for some time, felt a failure of the annex 1 countries to act in good faith on the basis of the original Kyoto bargain—and indeed the other climate negotiations in recent years—and I do not believe it is going to see Australia’s current approach as being a good faith offer in relation to what is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change.

I cannot put to the Senate more strongly the emergency that we have on our hands and to contrast the response of the Prime Minister to the global financial crisis with his response to the climate crisis. The global financial crisis saw the Prime Minister rushing to the United States and Europe—rushing to meetings all over the place—to talk about what could be done on the global financial crisis. We have not seen the same urgency in relation to climate change. We have not seen the same commitment in terms of dollars. We had no money to spend before the global financial crisis; now we have billions. In fact, millions has become such an outdated figure it just seems a meaningless thing. If you want to spend money now, you have to do it in billions. But there were not billions to spend on structural adjustment on climate change. There are still not billions to be spent on getting Australia off its addiction to coal. But it seems to be that there are plenty of dollars, billions of dollars available, to continue to support the coal industry.

The budget this week is underpinned by the assumption that coal will be back, that the boom times will come again and that Australia’s future prosperity will be underpinned by a resources boom of the future. Hence we see the billions going into the Hunter Valley railway line and the port expansion, into ongoing support for the coal industry and into carbon capture and storage—which is simply legitimising ongoing coal mining. Today there is a major marine conference in Indonesia that is talking about the disaster of the oceans and the collapse of the Coral Triangle. And where is the Prime Minister? He is turning a sod in the Hunter Valley for the new coal railway line. That gives you a sense of where this Prime Minister’s priorities are. He may talk about climate change but his priority is the maintenance of coal and coal exports. He cannot see beyond coal. You have to look at those compensation provisions and ask yourself what happened to the principle of polluter pays. What happened to that principle in Australia? We have now got to the principle that the polluter is paid, and is paid by the taxpayer. We are all going to pay higher energy bills around Australia because the government has exempted the big energy users and emitters from the Renewable Energy Target. Everybody else is going to pay more because of that, not to mention those provisions of compensation, and that is why the scheme is economically inefficient.

Nevertheless, I believe that the hearings we are going to have between now and 15 June will shed some more light on those extra billion dollars to be spent on the big emitters, and we will be very interested to see how Australia is going to get to its 25 per cent given the mechanisms, the delay, and the weak carbon price. We will also see whether there was ever the intent towards transformation in the Australian economy, because delaying a year and setting a $10 price is no signal for transformation. The biggest signal for Australia to pick up on today is the Prime Minister turning that sod for the coal railway in the Hunter Valley. If you want to see where Kevin Rudd wants to take Australia, look at that and recognise that this scheme is simply an economic tool. But it is not an efficient economic tool nor is it an environmentally effective tool, as I am sure the hearings for both of these committees between now and 15 June will demonstrate.