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

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the report of the Joint Select Committee on Australia’s Clean Energy Future Legislation—Advisory report on the Clean Energy bills and the Steel Transformation Plan Bill 2011.

We have just heard a discussion about a coalition committee report on the Clean Energy bills. What would not have been obvious to people is that the Senate Select Committee on Scrutiny of New Taxes is not a standing committee of the parliament; it is a select committee dominated by coalition members and it reflects the coalition view on this matter.

I wish to address the report of the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Clean Energy Future Legislation, which actually looked at the Clean Energy bills, not the fantasy put forward by the opposition, the hypothesis that they went around to try to prove. This committee actually looked at the bills. We had hearings here in Canberra, then in Melbourne and then in Sydney. This joint house committee was made up of members of the coalition, the government and the Greens and Independent members of the federal parliament. It specifically looked at the bills. The extraordinary thing is that when the coalition were asked to engage on these bills with the witnesses it became obvious that, after months and months of just the 30-second grab and the diatribe, they were not actually across the detail of the bills. They did not know what to ask the witnesses. They were largely ineffectual and in many cases, when we finally got to the Sydney hearing, most of them were not present.

I want to talk about what actually happened, because the real story out of this investigation of the joint house committee is that the overwhelming majority of witnesses support the package and came along to say so. Contrary to the advice we have just heard from Senator Cormann, we had, for example, the Investor Group on Climate Change, which is a group of large-scale investors, including superannuation funds, which control billions of dollars of finance in Australia. They came along to say that what business needs is certainty. They believe that this set of bills provides the certainty that will unlock significant amounts of investment, particularly in the energy sector. It has been the uncertainty in the energy sector that has led to increased prices in electricity around the country over the last few years as old infrastructure has been patched up and extended while people waited to see what direction this country was going to take.

We had everyone from the Investor Group on Climate Change through to big companies like AGL coming before the joint house committee saying: 'Yes, we support the Clean Energy package. Yes, we support emissions trading.' Interestingly, AGL said that it was the coalition's threat to repeal the bills that was a billion-dollar dead weight on the Australian economy. How interesting is that? I pursued that with them and said, 'Do you mean just the threat of repealing the bills is a billion-dollar dead weight on the economy?' They said: 'Yes, because it is increasing the cost of finance. Business needs certainty, and the coalition going around threatening to repeal the bills is leading to more expensive finance for everybody in the sector.' So let it not be said that people are out there saying that these bills are going to undermine confidence in rural and regional Australia. Quite the contrary.

That brings us to the Steel Transformation Plan, which is coming to a vote in the House of Representatives. The coalition went to South Australia and to the Illawarra and told people there that Whyalla would be transformed into a dust bowl and that thousands of jobs would be lost in the Illawarra. Now, there is a plan on the table to actually get OneSteel and BlueScope through the next few years and make them more sustainable so that they can take advantage of the clean energy revolution, which will be financed in part in this country because of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which we are also facilitating here. What better solution than to have Australian steel going into Australian made wind turbines, going into wind-turbine towers, going into solar-thermal and going into a very fast train in Australia, with OneSteel producing the sleepers and so on? This is a good news story. If you move to a low-carbon economy you make the steel industry more sustainable in the face of international competition and the higher dollar and so on. It is the coalition who are now saying that there will be jobs lost in regional Australia. They are voting against the Steel Transformation Plan, which puts $300 million in during the next few years to try to sustain a steel industry in Australia and make it more environmentally effective and efficient and will also maintain jobs. Let that be on the record. For all the ranting about the loss of jobs in rural and regional Australia, you can point to one place, and that is the coalition.

During the discussion on these bills, when people came before the committee we were congratulated as a committee for the effort and consideration that had gone into the bills that are complementary to this package, like the Carbon Farming Initiative. It was recognised that that will bring significant investment to rural and regional Australia. Local government in particular recognised that this is an opportunity for them, not to mention Indigenous and remote communities, which saw big opportunities with the Carbon Farming Initiative in terms of creating jobs.

Going on to some of the recommendations of the joint committee report, one recommendation was that the Senate and the House of Representatives pass the Clean Energy Bill, and the other 17 bills in the Clean Energy package, and the Steel Transformation Plan Bill. Secondly, it recommended that the government examine the proposals made by LPG Australia concerning the treatment of LPG under the mechanism and, where appropriate, refine the provisions to ensure that a carbon price is most efficiently applied to all users of LPG. Contrary to what the coalition is saying, LPG were begging to get into the scheme. A number of industries are now saying that they want to opt in. They said they do not want to be charged an excise; they want to be able to opt in so that they can leverage and hedge more appropriately. They are asking that the bills be changed to enable LPG to come in, particularly where it competes with other forms of stationary energy use. But one of the other areas that was raised was in relation to synthetic greenhouse gases and in particular the Green Cooling Association's recommendations. This is another really important issue. How do we stop the release of refrigerants, these cooling agents, when old fridges and the like are dumped and crushed? How do we go about making sure that there is an incentive for people to reclaim and deal with these pollutants rather let them go into the atmosphere? That is something that the government should take up separately to this set of bills. I have not been impressed to date by the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. They have failed to address how we can make this happen. I put the government on notice here that this is something that we want dealt with. The synthetic greenhouse gases are very powerful gases and we need to act on those.

The other recommendation was that the government intensify its efforts to promote awareness and understanding of the mechanism by working with the Clean Energy Regulator to provide information and guidance to liable entities about the mechanism and compliance with it in good time for the start of the mechanism on 1 July 2012. It is very clear that we need to put more effort into educating people about how the carbon price will be applied to the large polluters—those who pollute more than 25,000 tonnes—and how it will be managed.

Needless to say, the overwhelming story out of these hearings was that those who have opposed the carbon price to date could not find major flaws with the package. The coal industry could not do that, the chambers of commerce could not do that and the Minerals Council of Australia could not do that. Frankly, they came before the committee with a mantra of opposition but they could not nominate any major flaws in the bills. That was very reassuring, as I am one of the people who worked on the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee to design this package. (Time expired)