Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The minister says Australia should do its bit. The problem in doing our bit is that what has been presented to this parliament is a very elaborate and complex emissions trading scheme. Doing our bit requires that we trade with other countries who have similar emissions trading schemes. There are other ways this could be done, but we—Australia—have elected to have, through the Rudd government, an emissions trading scheme. It is predicated on countries in our region, our major trading partners, all having emissions trading schemes so that we can trade carbon credits with them. But in reality I think it is very unlikely that our trading partners will have emissions trading schemes.

Our top five trading partners are China, Japan, South Korea, India and the United States. A month ago I was in Beijing and I went to a renewable energy forum at the National People’s Congress. I asked the delegates there from China, Japan and South Korea whether or not their countries planned to set up emissions trading schemes. They were all very keen on renewable energy, but I asked: would they have emissions trading schemes? The head of the Chinese delegation, who was the chair of the environment committee of the National People’s Congress, made it very clear that China regarded an emissions trading scheme as very difficult to set up for China. He saw immense difficulties in setting up an emissions trading scheme and said they would be unlikely to go down that pathway.

Similarly, the Japanese delegate, who was their former minister for the environment, said that it was highly unlikely that Japan would have an emissions trading scheme. Japan remains our second biggest trading partner. South Korea is our third biggest trading partner, and the delegates there from the Korean National Assembly also said that it would be highly unlikely—in fact, there was almost no chance—that Korea would have an emissions trading scheme.

India is our fourth-biggest trading partner, having displaced the United States from that position. Anybody who has been to India and seen the immensity of the emissions in India understands that an emissions trading scheme simply will not occur in India. The government simply cannot legislate to cover all the many and diverse emissions which occur in India. While, again, the Indians may be interested in renewable energy and many of these countries may also go down the nuclear pathway, an emissions trading scheme is highly unlikely.

It has been said here this afternoon that President Obama has come up with some brave aspirational targets for emissions reductions in the United States, but what we hear from the United States Senate is that the Waxman-Markey bill, which is the bill to establish an emissions trading scheme in the United States, is very unlikely to be considered until late next year and very unlikely to get through. So here we are, setting up this very elaborate scheme to ‘do our bit’, as the minister says, but there is not going to be anybody with whom we can trade these credits. That means that ‘doing our bit’ is going to result in an enormous extra cost burden for the Australian people. This scheme is a very costly scheme. It is a very complex scheme. It is going to adversely affect many Australian industries. It is going to cause an increase in the price of consumer goods because there will be a massive increase in the price of power. We are going to see loss of jobs and many other adverse effects from the scheme.

It seems to me that the idea of waiting a few weeks, until after the Copenhagen conference, to see what the rest of the world is doing is eminently sensible. It may be that, if we are going to ‘do our bit’, as the minister says, we could do it a different way, with some other form of action, but not this immensely complex emissions trading scheme which will require an enormous bureaucracy to administer and will cost a lot of money.

It is very interesting to look at the position of the industry groups. The Minerals Council of Australia has been opposed to this. Last week the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry sent out the results of a survey they had done, which showed that small- and medium-sized enterprises would be adversely affected by this emissions trading scheme. And it has to be remembered that SMEs—small- and medium-sized enterprises—are the biggest employers in Australia outside government. SMEs employ more people than any other sector of our economy and yet they, through their peak industry body, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, are opposed to this emissions trading scheme because of the adverse impact it will have on small- and medium-sized enterprises.

We know that the agricultural sector has been very concerned about this emissions trading scheme and the impact on farmers. In the agreement that has been reached, only the production side of the agriculture sector has been exempted. The processing side is still going to be subject to the additional costs of this emissions trading scheme. I would have thought that commonsense should prevail and we ought to think this through. We do not have to rush into this. The requirement to pass this scheme within the next few days is an artificial deadline that is being imposed on the Senate by the government. Why do we not just leave it and see what the rest of the world is doing? That is a commonsense approach.

I am getting literally hundreds and hundreds of emails from people all over Australia, but from Western Australia in particular, urging that we delay and that we just move forward cautiously. If this is a scheme that is going to have enormously adverse impacts on the Australian economy if there are not other countries to trade with, then let us just stop and wait and see what the rest of the world is doing. That is the message I am getting from those hundreds of emails that are coming into my office every day. I would agree with the point made by Senator Macdonald—that it seems to be sensible to delay further consideration of this bill until we know what the rest of the world is doing. I would urge the minister to think about that and come up with a process whereby we do defer this until after the Copenhagen conference.

There is no need whatsoever for the government to go to the Copenhagen conference with Australia alone in the world—except for New Zealand and the European Union, which has a small emissions trading scheme with lots of exemptions—triumphantly waving a bit of paper saying, ‘This is our ETS,’ and expecting the rest of the world to follow. The only reason we are doing that, it seems to me, is to satisfy the ego of the Prime Minister. He wants to trumpet to the rest of the world that Australia is doing its bit, but the price of the bit is going to be the loss of jobs and an extremely adverse impact on the Australian economy. We proceed with this legislation ahead of Copenhagen in defiance of common sense.