Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I wasn’t pointing at you, Senator Williams! Whilst he is not a bad debater—he has a few interesting hand moves, but I am prone to that at times myself—the fact that the opposition chose to bring to this debate neither the Leader of the Opposition in this place nor any frontbencher shows that they are not taking this seriously. It demonstrates that this is a stunt they are jumping on board with. They do not have the courage of responsible opposition to treat it seriously—or to simply not support the motion. They should know, as a former government, as a party of government, that censure motions are serious business. To not have anybody of any seniority on the other side leading off, or speaking at all, in this debate demonstrates how they regard it.

Senator Birmingham tried to defend the opposition’s credentials on the environment whilst in government. A couple of facts ought to be put on the record. The first is in relation to the renewable energy target, which he trumpeted as a Howard government achievement. Well, yes, it was, but let us remember, firstly, that it was only a five per cent target: 9½ thousand gigawatt hours by 2010. We are going to deliver four times that. More importantly in many ways, the coalition in government commissioned at least one review—the Tambling review reported in September 2003—which recommended increasing the target out to 2020, and what did the Howard government do? Absolutely nothing. They ignored even their own advice from the Tambling review, which included former Liberal senator David Kemp. So, when Senator Birmingham comes in here trumpeting the renewable energy target, he should also say: ‘And we ensured that we ignored advice about how we could make this better. We stopped at five per cent because we didn’t want to go any further.’

The senator also went on about solar panels. If those opposite want to have a go at this government for what it has done, let us remember that this government has put more solar panels on Australian roofs than any other government in Australia’s history—full stop. In 12 years, solar panels were provided by the Howard government to about 10½ thousand homes. In two years, we have funded, or are on track to fund, more than 120,000 installations. That is 10,500 in 12 years compared to 120,000 in two. In their 12 years, solar hot water rebates were provided to 4,000 households—in two years, 100,000 households have received a solar hot water rebate. So for senators from the other side to come in here and talk about their environmental credentials, citing solar panels and renewable energy, is kicking an own goal, because their record after 12 years in government is extremely poor.

I will turn now to a couple of points made by Senator Milne. Senator Milne talked a lot about coal, and I understand that the Greens have a view about wanting to close that industry. It is not a view shared by the government, and that is not because we are corrupt or we are in the pockets of anybody; we just do not agree. I want to take the following global perspective around the industry of coal. It is something which seems to have escaped some of the contributions to this chamber on this issue. If Australia chose to stop mining and exporting coal—which is not the government’s position—does anybody in this chamber honestly believe that the demand for coal in other nations would decline? Of course not. There are many other countries which already export coal, and the International Energy Agency’s prediction out to 2050 is that coal usage will increase globally. If you do not have a low-emissions solution for coal, you do not have a solution on climate change. The answer is not Australia deciding not to export it, because some other country would simply export it—it would have absolutely no effect on global emissions. That is the logical position: it would have no effect on global emissions if we did not export. What would have an effect would be to find, along with other coal-producing nations, a technology which reduced emissions from coal. I know that is a logical position that many on the other side of the chamber disagree with, but the facts are inescapable. You have to find a lower emissions solution for coal, and that is why we are putting in excess of $2 billion on the table: to help work up that solution, a solution the planet, the globe, needs.

I would also like to remind the chamber that we are not disregarding solar energy. The $1.5 billion Solar Flagships Program is about substantial investment in developing the baseload renewable solar power that the world and also Australia needs. That is part of the government’s agenda. Frankly, to deal with climate change we need a whole range of policy mechanisms which will work. The proposition that seems to be being put—that somehow it is wrong for us to recognise that Australia is a coal-producing nation—is simply illogical.

The reality is Australia’s carbon pollution is rising, it will continue to rise and by 2020 it will be around 120 per cent of what we were producing at the year 2000. It is this pollution which is contributing to climate change. Carbon pollution is what causes climate change. The fact is that the Greens have made tackling climate change an explicit part of their platform for many years and they have had not one, but two, opportunities in this chamber to vote to reduce Australia’s carbon pollution. Not once, but twice, they decided that it was better politically for them to oppose that reduction. Not once, but twice, they sat with Tony Abbott or his senators and Senator Fielding, people who do not believe in climate change. Tony Abbott, who believes that climate change is absolute crap, is who Senator Brown voted with. The Greens voted to ensure that Australia’s carbon pollution would continue to rise. The question is now, and will be in the years to come: why did they do that?

It is well known around this place that some in the Greens have made the strategic decision that, if there were an election fought on climate change, they would gain more seats. I am only quoting from the Greens themselves. Drew Hutton, one of the Greens campaigners in Brisbane, is quoted in the Brisbane Times as saying that his party would be ‘the big winners’ in an ETS double dissolution and could expect to at least double their current representation of five senators as well as pick up lower house seats. The article reads:

‘We would be very confident of winning our first Queensland (Senate) seat,’ Mr Hutton said.

Senator Brown said on Lateline last year:

… if it could go to a climate change double dissolution, if you like, at the expense of the Opposition, it would try that, and the analysis is that the Greens will come out stronger in the Senate as a result of the next election, and if it's on climate change, we Greens will be the constructive opposition going to the Australian people …

If this is why the Greens have voted this way, it is a cynical political decision indeed—a cynical political decision to vote to allow Australia’s carbon pollution to rise. Let us remember that there were two Liberal senators who honoured the agreement we struck with Malcolm Turnbull and who crossed the floor to vote with the government and if the party that claims to be the party of the environment had also voted with the government Australia would now have a carbon price. It is regrettable that this party chose to stand in the way of that progress. It is an unfortunate reality that the Greens wasted that opportunity not just to do something very significant for our environment but to put in place the required changes to our economy.

This government is committed to tackling climate change. It is committed to a comprehensive strategy to tackle it and to support investment in renewable energy. As I said, we have delivered through this chamber a fourfold increase in Australia’s renewable energy sector by 2020 on top of the commitments I have already outlined on the Solar Flagships program. The government had a big ship to turn around. Let us remember that renewables actually went backwards under the previous government. Over the 10 years between 1997 and 2007, renewables dropped from 10.5 per cent to 9.5 per cent.

The reality is that some in this chamber who profess to be pro environment should think very carefully about whether they are prepared to take responsibility for the sorts of policies which are required to implement that change, because we have too often seen the members of the Greens playing politics without regard to policy. I recall being chided quite stridently in this chamber by Senator Hanson-Young, who demanded that I deliver the amount of water that a particular academic report was proposing for the Lower Lakes. I pointed out to her that that amount of water was in fact more than we had drawn at the time from the River Murray for Adelaide and for all the towns—