John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I take Senator Evans’s interjection, but we will not get onto daylight savings, because that is a real issue that we who live away from the cities do not really enjoy.

I point to the IPCC. The IPCC has done its modelling on the expectation that the globe is warming and sea levels are rising, and that is simply wrong. The sea temperature is not rising, as those 3,300 thermometers have proved since 2003. The global diameter is not increasing. Let us go to the next thing: sea ice, of course. Let us have a look at the sea ice situation. Sea ice around Antarctica has been increasing at a rate of 100,000 square kilometres a decade since the 1970s, according to the British Antarctic Survey. Antarctica has 90 per cent of the world’s ice. While sea ice has been lost in western Antarctica and on the Antarctic Peninsula, sea ice cover over the Ross Sea has increased. So now we are getting the real facts and the truth about the ice. I am saying that there has been a lot of false information presented and the IPCC’s figures are being based on the modelling that CO2 will raise the temperature of the globe. That is where the figures come under question.

What is the government’s plan? The government is bringing in its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Part of that scheme is the emissions trading scheme, and the word ‘trading’ is what we in the Nationals are very afraid of, because when you get a trading scheme what do you have? You have screen jocks, people sitting in front of computers—buyers and sellers. I saw it for years with Australian dollar trading after it was floated. The screen jocks would be there, doing their job, taking their commissions, and the Australian dollar would be going in a very volatile fashion up and down a matter of cents a day as the traders came in buying and selling—and profiteering—on the dealing of the Australian dollar on the foreign exchange markets. Of course, the screen jocks were providing a service and taking their commissions. This word ‘trading’ is the real problem, as it goes in the plan the government is here to bring in.

The National Australia Bank has said that the price of carbon may trade as high as $100 a tonne. The government is obviously fearful of what it is going to trade at, because they have fixed it at $10 a tonne for the first year. We know the government has delayed the introduction of it. Their political plan would be to get an election out of the road before everyone starts losing their jobs. That is why they have delayed it. First it was that if we did not start it next year the world was going to disappear. All of a sudden we can delay it for 12 months and that is not a problem. They are saying, ‘We’ll just wait and try and squeeze an election in before people in the mining industry, people in the agricultural industry, people in the transport industry and all those people start losing their jobs, because they might just have a say at election time.’ That is why it has been delayed for 12 months.

Let’s have a look at what the effect on Australian industry and those jobs will be if the government’s plan comes to fruition. I want to talk specifically about the cement industry. In Australia we produce 10 million tonnes of cement per year and we import two million tonnes as well, so we consume around 12 million tonnes of cement. The cement industry is a big producer of greenhouse gases; in fact, in Australia we produce 0.8 tonnes of greenhouse gas for every tonne of cement that we manufacture, so those 10 million tonnes of cement made here in Australia produce eight million tonnes of greenhouse gas.

Of course, the free permits and discounted permits will disappear as time goes on. Let’s say the cement industry starts off at a 90 per cent discount—very generous. That means that on the eight million tonnes of greenhouse gas they produce they will only have to pay the permit on 8,000. As time goes on and the free permits expire—and if NAB is correct in its predictions that carbon may go to $100 per tonne—for those eight million tonnes of greenhouse gases that the cement industry produces we are looking at $100 per tonne multiplied by eight million. We are looking at an $800 million cost to the cement industry. They will never survive. There are some 15 manufacturing sites around regional Australia employing around 1870 people, let alone the transport and other jobs that rely on that industry. If they are forced out of business then no doubt we will import of our cement from China.

China produces in excess of one billion tonnes of cement per year compared to about 10 million. But there is one catch: when China produces a tonne of cement it produces 1.1 tonnes of greenhouse gases. In Australia we produce 10 million tonnes of cement, producing eight million tonnes of greenhouse gases. Send Australian industry broke, shut down the jobs and we will import cement from China—so the 10 million tonnes they produce in China will produce 11 million tonnes of greenhouse gases. What is the result? The 15 plants are gone, the jobs are gone and we are importing 10 million tonnes of cement. So instead of producing eight million tonnes of greenhouse gases in Australia, we will be producing 11 million tonnes of greenhouse gases in China. How smart is that? This is the point that my colleague Senator Cormann made: if you shift the industries out of Australia, those countries who do not really care about the atmosphere or anything else they are doing, except making money, will take on the jobs and produce more greenhouse gases. The effect on the globe will be worse if that is what you do.

I refer to agricultural industries. They will suffer as well under these costs. ABARE predicts it could cost the dairy industry up to $9,000 per dairy farm. So we will send them broke. What are we going to do: import our fresh milk from China? We have had enough trouble importing food from China recently. Then there is the beef industry. What frightens me is that about 60 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gases are produced through agriculture—around 70 million tonnes. When all the discounts go, when all the costs come on, that will be a $7 billion cost to Australia’s food producers. They cannot suffer that cost. That is where the jobs will go, and there is no doubt that that will happen if this flawed scheme is allowed to proceed.

The aluminium and steel industries are the same as the cement industry—they produce greenhouse gases. Shut them down here and they will move overseas to places like China and India where frankly they do not care. Recently I was talking to a person whose son is currently in China building a power station. He describes it as a 1940s model. The coal that is burnt there is filthy. What is more, China does not care. I am sure that when China, Indonesia and India get to Copenhagen they will play the tune and sing the song and say that everything will be all right but I have little or no confidence that they will be serious about reducing their emissions, because they will be taking over our industries.

Let us move on to the motor vehicle industry. Ford Australia says that the ETS could add millions to its costs and threaten jobs. In a submission to a Senate inquiry it said that additional energy costs would be in the vicinity of millions of dollars. I want to point to those energy costs. I was at Bayswater power station just a few weeks ago in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales. Bayswater produces 40 per cent of electricity in New South Wales. At Bayswater they pay $350 million per year for the coal supplied to power that plant. Under the emissions trading scheme the cost of that coal will go to $950 million.

Debate interrupted.