Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I will be very brief. My colleagues Senator Heffernan, Senator Macdonald and Senator Birmingham will have a whole series of questions, and I will have to leave my questions till Monday. But some comments were made that I want to make a brief observation about. Firstly I want to thank Senator Singh for encouraging people across Australia to read my first speech. It is a very good read and I commend it to people. The point I would make, though, about her assertions about our views back in 2007 on an emissions trading scheme in Australia is that the world has changed since then. The world changed in Copenhagen. The expectation in 2007 was that other countries around the world, such as the US, would have cap-and-trade schemes in place. As we progressed through 2008 and 2009 it became increasingly obvious that that would not happen.

I would encourage Senator Singh, Senator Wong and others to read every single comment I have made about an emissions trading scheme and a carbon tax throughout 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. They are all consistent—and that is that it is not in Australia's national interest to impose a price on carbon when none of our trade competitors are likely to go down that path.

I will just close on this point. Senator Singh was just now making the assertion that China and India are taking all this action on climate change. I just thought I would refer Senator Singh to the Treasury modelling—it is a good reference document—to see what is right and what is wrong in the assertions made by the government. The Treasury modelling of the CPRS in 2008 told us that CO2 emissions in China would be 16.1 billion tonnes by 2020. Three years later the Treasury modelling in the context of the carbon tax told us that CO2 emissions in China by 2020 would be 17.9 billion tonnes. So in just three years the Labor government's expectation as to what will happen with emissions in China has gone up by 1.8 billion tonnes, which is three times as much as the whole of Australia puts out in a whole year. That is just the margin of error in the Treasury modelling between what Treasury expected would happen in China by 2020 back in 2008 and what Treasury now thinks will happen in China by 2020.

Finally, on the point relating to India, I strongly encourage Senator Singh to look at chart 3.1, and the footnote in particular, in the Treasury modelling where it actually makes the point that India is not included on this particular chart about regional contribution to mitigation action because 'its emission mitigation is zero compared to the baseline'. I do have a whole series of questions, but I will leave them until some of my colleagues have had a chance to ask questions.