Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens, as our leader, Christine Milne, articulated in her contribution to this debate, will be opposing the abolition of the Climate Change Authority. The Climate Change Authority is an essential part of our national infrastructure. It, along with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, is essential in creating the zero-carbon economy which we all must achieve if we are to continue our shared prosperity. We always believed, and we continue to believe, that the carbon package which was debated in this place under the previous government is an essential package of legislation which, if it continues to be implemented, will reduce carbon emissions and ensure that we have an economy able to grow into the future and develop our prosperity. It will also enable us to hold our heads up high as part of the global economy in the knowledge that we have a robust economy which can withstand the impact of climate change.

There is absolutely no doubt that climate change is already impacting on our economy, on our environment, on our health, on our agriculture and on our marine ecosystems. Every part of our existence will be and is being impacted by climate change. To know this you only have to look at the extreme weather events of this summer and see the number of people being impacted by them—the casualties of the heatwaves who have unfortunately passed away as a result of the excessive heat we are suffering. This century has seen the 13 hottest years on record.

The Climate Change Authority was established as part of the Clean Energy Future package of legislation, along with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. They are both key to achieving the change that we need in this country. They are institutions that the Abbott government has targeted in its effort to wind back the clock—part of this government's denial of climate change and its impacts. It is irresponsible of this government to be getting rid of this essential infrastructure. We know that a five per cent reduction in emissions is totally inadequate; in fact, unless we recognise this, we are and will be for the future a global joke. The Climate Change Authority was set up to depoliticise the process of setting greenhouse gas reduction targets. Perhaps Mr Abbott thinks that, by getting rid of the authority, he will make climate change go away! The Prime Minister has not distinguished himself in his leadership on climate change. He continues to make Australia a pariah and a joke by his denial, by burying his head in the sand, and by dismantling institutions that are leading-edge in their ability to tackle climate change. The Prime Minister is crippling our economy with his denial of climate change and his denial of its impacts on our economy. He is putting the halters around the process of developing a clean green economy and our ability to be leaders in renewable energy. We are looking backwards by continuing to subsidise fossil fuel industries, and by continuing to believe they are the future. It should be recognised that they are fossil fuels—that is, fossils of the past. The future is investment in renewable energies.

We in this country used to be leaders in the development of renewable energy. My home state of Western Australia was a leader in solar research—until the Howard government came in, cut funding to that research, and took us backwards again. We are just getting back on the right track with that investment, just starting to get ahead in showing our leadership once again in the development of renewables—and we are being nobbled again by going back to the future, by burying our heads in the sand and by trying to undermine the clean green economy. And this is happening just at a time when we are losing some of that manufacturing base in Australia. Here we go again, let's undermine the very industries that can start leading our economy and developing our economy again.

The Climate Change Authority is, as many speakers in this place have articulated, an independent advisory body. It is a very difficult task—and they always envisaged that it would be—to depoliticise this process. But, of course, it is the very independence of this body that is an anathema to the government. They do not want to hear the advice—because then they may need to take it on board and action it—about climate change and about how we could be really making a difference. We have the old industries that have a vested interest in continuing business as usual, while the government make their money from subsidies and wring out the last little bit of money they can from an economy that they are wrecking—because they are entrenching the old way of doing business, while hobbling what is going to be the new future for this country in terms of our economy. They have got those old big-business buddies in their ears saying, 'Get rid of it, wind it back.' It is winding us back. It is hobbling our futures and our children's futures. That is what this process does: it undermines the future for our children and for their children.

The authority should be able to provide fearless advice based on the science. And that is the other area where we are having a problem: climate change is actually based on science. Not on what people think, not on what it is in their waters, but on the science. We now do not have a minister for science, and we have seen other examples of the failure by the government to look at the evidence and the science. It is almost as if science has become a dirty word in this country. But if it was not for our investment in science, where would we be? The CSIRO has been a world leader and has developed world leading technology based on—I hate to say it—science. And yet here we are again, ignoring and getting rid of the body that can provide that independent advice that is based on the science.

The authority exists to provide advice to the government, to the parliament and, through them, to the Australian people. The advice is independent, it is based on science, and it is given in the context of international action and responsibility. The authority's draft report said of the major parties' mutual pact for the five per cent reductions that it 'would require an implausibly rapid acceleration of effort beyond 2020'. It would also mean that Australia would have used 86 per cent of its national emissions budget at the halfway point to 2050. The authority is there to chart our country's course through the 21st century by issuing and helping to develop the level of capped emissions our economy can produce in any given year. They gave us a figure of total emissions Australia could produce to play our part in limiting global warming to less than two degrees: 10,100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent until 2050. That is one per cent of the global budget. Any future national discussion around so-called budget emergencies should be based on this figure provided by the Climate Change Authority. This is part of a budget. This is a true budget emergency. If we do not properly address climate change, we will be having lots of budget emergencies in the future. That is not being recognised.

Another crucial role the Climate Change Authority plays, which is completely absent in the government's Direct Action Plan, is the provision of investment certainty. The authority recommends emission caps in five-year blocks out into the future. This sets the number of permits for the market, ensuring that all players know exactly how to arrange their business affairs over those periods. With the Direct Action Plan, we will only have contracts that last for five years. Banks will not want to finance any investments over such short, finite periods. The Climate Change Authority is the bedrock for clean technology investors. These investors are the future of this country. They are the future of our economy. They have been thrown into deep turmoil. Investment has ceased because of the absence of certainty under this government. The Climate Change Authority disappearing will entrench that turmoil and undermine investment in the development of renewable energy.

The Climate Change Authority also has responsibility for reviewing climate programs, such as the renewable energy target, as part of its legal obligation to provide independent advice. As I said, it is this independence that the government does not want. I think the whole business sector should be nervous that the government does not want this independent advice. This repeal bill hands renewable energy review powers over to the minister's department. It takes away that independence. Why is the government afraid of the independent advice the authority provides?

Getting rid of the Climate Change Authority will make us even more of a joke on the global stage. We set up these two bodies—the Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation—to be a critical part of the infrastructure we need for charting our way through climate change, for developing an economy that is robust in the face of climate change. We set up these two bodies as part of our package, as part of our legislative process to address climate change. The world thinks we are a joke for abolishing them.

This is all about the impact of climate change. While the coalition government continues to deny it, the reality is that businesses, farmers and others who are managing our natural resources are addressing climate change and managing its impact virtually every day now. In my home state of Western Australia, it is true that we have had a bumper harvest. You could look at that and think: 'All is well. This climate change stuff—what are they talking about?' But, if you delve behind the headline figures, you see that there are at least 150 farmers who were, yet again, in drought this year. They did not get adequate rainfall and were not able to get a crop off—and this is not the first year this has happened to them. Some of them have had a bad run for the last three, four or five years. That is happening more and more.

We also have the drought in Queensland of course. Our Minister for the Environment says, 'You can't plan for drought—this is an exceptional circumstance.' Unfortunately, with climate change, droughts will not be an exceptional circumstance. Climate change means we will get much drier and more variable conditions and that we will get more and more extreme weather events. So our farmers and our agricultural sector have to plan for that—plan for droughts, plan for extreme weather events. We can no longer treat them as 'exceptional circumstances', because they no longer will be.

We are a long way behind the eight ball because we have not been adequately planning for the impact of climate change. We do not have in place the resilient agricultural systems we need. We do not have ready to go the new crop varieties that can adapt to climate change. We do not yet have the landscape scale models of land management that we need in order to address climate change. We do not have the investment in R&D to develop those systems. In the programs we are developing to address drought, we are not building in climate change issues. We are not building processes for working in partnership with the farming community to develop more resilient systems or to address climate change issues across catchment and farm boundaries.

Given this government's approach to climate change, I have no faith that, in the short term, we are going to be taking those messages on board. In fact it is quite clear, given Minister Joyce's comments, that we are ignoring the impact of climate change. That is not to say that we should not be helping those farmers affected by drought. We need to do that. But that assistance needs to incorporate an investment in helping farmers build resilience into their operations over the long term. That is missing. But how can you expect such sensible policies from a government that is in denial over the impact of climate change?

I have spoken a number of times in this place about the impact of climate change on the marine environment. We have had marine heatwaves off the west coast of Western Australia. We are seeing the impact of climate change and warming oceans. Again, the science—I say that word again, although I am wondering if it will soon be one of those words you are not allowed to say in this place—is showing those impacts. We need to be putting in place systems that manage that climate change. But what do we see from this government? Just before Christmas we saw them abandon—axe—the management plans for the world's leading system of marine parks.

Debate interrupted.