Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate Senator Joyce on his erudite contribution to this debate. It is my view that the reintroduction of these bills into this Senate typifies the cynical political opportunism of the Rudd Labor government. Just three months ago, these bills were overwhelmingly rejected by this Senate. Not one non-government senator supported the government’s flawed legislation. Despite that, exactly three months later, the government is again seeking Senate support for what is frankly a disastrous set of bills. The government’s cynical political agenda is quite naked: it is using the threat of a double dissolution to blackmail the Senate into supporting this radical legislation. There is no other reason for devoting the last two weeks of the Senate this year to the reconsideration of bills overwhelmingly rejected just three months ago.

Frankly, the timing of this debate is also testament to the vanity of Prime Minister Rudd. Right on the eve of the Copenhagen conference, Mr Rudd is determined to have this Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 [No. 2] passed so that he can strut the stage in Denmark, showing off to the world and looking extremely pleased with himself. The government has no justification whatsoever for forcing this bill through before the Copenhagen conference. The government itself has delayed the actual commencement of this scheme until July 2011—18 months away. So there is no reason the government cannot wait until after the Copenhagen conference to deal with this legislation. Frankly, Mr Rudd is prepared to sacrifice Australia’s national interest on the altar of his vanity. Mr Rudd wants to go to Denmark in December boasting about his new tax on carbon dioxide.

The coalition has maintained from day one that this legislation should not be voted upon before we know the outcome of the Copenhagen conference. Australia, of all countries, should not entrench unilaterally an emissions trading scheme which will damage the competitiveness of Australian industry, cost thousands of jobs and increase the cost of living for every Australian. Until we know that other major economies are making firm commitments to enact domestic emissions trading schemes, Australia should not act alone to enact such a scheme. Our national interest demands that we consider the preparedness of other nations to make commitments to put a price on their carbon dioxide emissions before legislating an Australian emissions trading scheme. It is literally crazy to be committing to an emissions trading scheme before we see the outcome of the discussions at Copenhagen.

It is also, frankly, idiotic of this country to legislate an emissions trading scheme before the US congress does so. Indeed, US Senate leaders are today reported as confirming that debate on the US legislation will be delayed at least until March next year. The coalition has repeatedly said that we need to know exactly what sort of cap-and-trade scheme the US legislates before Australia finalises its legislation. The US is, as we all know, the biggest emitter of CO2 on the globe, so until we know what that country is going to do, we should not complete our consideration of these bills.

May I remind the Senate that Australia produces only 1.4 per cent of global CO2 emissions. The zealots, of course, like to talk about our per capita emissions—which, frankly, are utterly irrelevant to the global debate. The only relevant statistic is our total contribution to global emissions—and, because of our very low level of emissions, nothing Australia does on its own will have any effect whatsoever on the global climate. Australia could literally shut down its whole economy tomorrow and China alone would replace all our emissions within just nine months. So how dare Mr Rudd play with the lives of ordinary Australians just to make him look good at Copenhagen and allow him to indulge in the politics of gesture. Mr Rudd is literally prepared to put at risk the viability of businesses all over Australia, to put at risk the jobs of thousands of Australians, just so he can enjoy himself in Denmark in December.

Passing this law in this fortnight would condemn Australia to lower living standards for absolutely zero environmental gain. Not only is unilateral action by Australia ludicrous, given our minute level of emissions; it is also ludicrous given Australia’s particular dependence on relatively cheap and readily available coal and gas to supply the energy which sustains our living standards, our jobs and our international competitiveness. Australia’s economy is much more adversely affected by policies to reduce CO2 emissions than most, because of the extent to which we have relied and continue to rely on fossil fuels to provide our vital energy source. Many other comparable countries have substantial nuclear power capacity—which, of course, being emissions-free, means they are not nearly so adversely affected by putting a price on CO2 emissions.

This Labor government seems to be blissfully ignorant of the structure of the Australian economy and the realities that underpin the viability of our industries and sustain our high living standards. Labor has consistently preached the virtues of sustaining a viable manufacturing industry in Australia, and encouraging value-added activities in our resources sector, yet this scheme will do untold damage to those sectors and all who work in them. Given these realities, Australia should only act in concert with other nations to tax carbon emissions. To do otherwise simply hurts every Australian for no environmental gain at all. I have to say that Mr Rudd’s arrogance and vanity in wanting to lead the world on cutting CO2 emissions is really sickening. He is happy for every Australian to pay a huge price to satisfy his ego. As Rupert Murdoch rightly said, if we act unilaterally to increase our cost of living, it will do nothing for the environment and the rest of the world will simply laugh at us.

I also take this opportunity to again condemn the government for its Orwellian description of its emissions trading scheme as a so-called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Only the most cynical of governments could so distort science and the English language as to describe carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Whatever one’s view of the contribution human-induced emissions of CO2 make to the global climate, it really is a disgrace to describe CO2 as a pollutant. CO2, I remind the Senate, is a clear, odourless gas, vital to life on earth. But, of course, in order to try to get away with this massive restructuring of the Australian economy, the spinmeisters in the Rudd government decided that Australians had to be deliberately misled into believing CO2 is a pollutant. So parents like me are left having to explain to our children the essential role of CO2 in the life of our planet, and that it is completely wrong to describe CO2 as pollution.

The Rudd government should also be condemned for its hysterical attacks on those who do not accept that a UN committee is the gospel on the causes of climate change. The Prime Minister’s recent Lowy Institute address was a raving rant against anyone who dares to suggest this UN committee might not have it right. Frankly, the PM needs to engage in a bit more earwax excavation if he is deaf to the considerable ongoing scientific debate about the causes of the small degree of warming that occurred in the late 20th century. Literally thousands of eminent and highly qualified scientists in Australia and all over the world do not accept the IPCC’s hypothesis that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are the main cause of global warming. It is one thing for the Prime Minister to respectfully disagree with those eminent scientists; it is quite another for him to condemn them as evil deniers, as he did in his Lowy Institute rant. The very fact that the science clearly remains in dispute is another reason to approach this matter with great caution, and another reason why Australia in particular should not act unilaterally and ahead of the rest of the world.

The package of bills before the Senate constitute a massive and damaging impost on the Australian economy and every Australian. The coalition has, after much deliberation, put forward a set of major amendments designed to lessen the damage that these bills will do to Australia. Labor’s bills, as they are, will impose the equivalent of a substantial new tax on almost everyone and everything in Australia, in the name of reducing the temperature—which of course it will not do. They involve a substantial churn of billions of dollars of costs imposed on Australians, which is then passed through the government’s hands and back to those that the government chooses to compensate for the impact of its imposition of a price on CO2. To a complete outsider it looks like the work of a madman.

In the name of reducing CO2 emissions it seeks to put a price on CO2 but then proposes to give all the money back and more to compensate people for the increased cost of living caused by its scheme. What on earth is the point of that, and what is the environmental gain? This extraordinary scheme achieves nothing for our environment but seriously damages the competitiveness of Australian industry and puts at great risk the very viability of Australian electricity generators.

As respected business reporter Robert Gottliebsen observed in the Business Spectator this week:

The current CPRS legislation will have a net enterprise value reduction of $6b for the four Latrobe Valley electricity generators in Victoria.

He reports:

Within a week of the current proposed legislation being passed, the boards of each of the companies that own the Latrobe generators will meet with their auditors on whether the companies’ debt covenants have been broken. Almost certainly a majority, if not all the boards, will decide to appoint official administrators.

The generators will be forced to cut back on long-term maintenance, with frightening implications for the reliability and price of electricity, and that will be at enormous cost to industry. And of course these effects will be felt not after the actual scheme commences in July 2011 but beginning in 2010 as a result of the passage of this scheme.

The scheme which Labor so desperately wants in place is the holy grail of all those who zealously believe in big interventionist governments controlling every aspect of our daily lives. It is one of the most interventionist, authoritarian pieces of legislation it has been my misfortune to witness in the Commonwealth parliament. Most particularly—and offensively—it proposes to establish a really quite disturbing compliance and enforcement mechanism in the form of the ‘Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority’, described, in typically Orwellian fashion in the bills, as ‘The Authority’. The authority is to be given extraordinary powers to demand information; to require every affected entity to keep copious records; it will be empowered to send inspectors to enter premises; to require occupiers of premises to answer questions and produce documents. Non-compliance with the inspector from the authority can result in a penalty of up to six months imprisonment. Self-incrimination will not be a defence against a charge of noncompliance. Indeed the bill’s provisions in this respect subvert the rule of law by abolishing the right to silence; by reversing the onus of proof; and by setting aside privacy laws. This so-called ‘authority’ established by this legislation to enforce compliance with the draconian rules and regulations required to make its cap-and-trade scheme operate will be the envy of every past and present authoritarian regime on the planet.

In closing, this is one of the worst packages of bills ever presented to the Senate. The Senate overwhelmingly rejected this abomination in August; it should do so again.