Lin Thorp (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Over the centuries, there has been a colourful history of groups incorporating under the common belief that planet Earth is flat—despite a mounting wealth of scientific evidence to the contrary. While this idea can trace its origins back to ancient civilisations, it has been revived many times in recent decades across the globe. The philosophy reached a peak in the 1970s when the International Flat Earth Research Society of America was reported to have a following of around 3,000 people.

A newsletter by society President Charles Johnson declared the goal of the organisation was to 'replace the science religion with sanity'. He contended that science is nothing more than 'a weird, way-out occult concoction of gibberish theory-theology' and that scientists are 'the same old gang of witchdoctors, sorcerers and tellers of tales'. Even today, in the age of Google maps and satellite tracking, the flat-earth cause continues from a base in California and boasts around 420 members. For those interested, it has an active internet presence at theflatearthsociety.org.

While flat-earth theories and the like provide a rich seam for ridicule in internet memes and weird-and-wacky columns for slow news days they are generally regarded as harmless, if unconventional, additions to the world of ideas. We have come to accept that, regardless of how hefty the weight of evidence at their disposal, some people will always cling to curious, if not completely absurd, beliefs.

However, this phenomenon can result in more sinister outcomes if these same people are invested with the power to use their strange thoughts as the basis of public policy. In the area of climate change, I fear that some of these people are our nation's elected representatives and that some of their unfounded beliefs form the foundation of bills like the one before us today. Of course, most members of this coalition government will tell you that there is no question that they believe in climate change and that their commitment to combat it is sincere.

They would assert that they agree with the 97 per cent of scientists who say that climate change represents a very real and present danger to the planet and the quality of our life on it. But the truth is that we hear a lot of words in this place. And Australians are not foolish. Australians understand that the only way to judge elected representatives is not on professionally-crafted rhetoric, but on actions. And therein we have the rub.

Perhaps we can forgive the Prime Minister for misspeaking when he put on the public record his belief that climate change is 'crap', during the now infamous interview in The Australian. After all, we cannot forget that the Prime Minister himself has cautioned us not to believe everything he says in the heat of discussion and that we should only take heed of his prepared, scripted remarks. So, maybe, in this case Mr Abbott got carried away with political pointscoring. It certainly would not be the first time he has let political convenience come before the truth. After all, the Prime Minister has also said in the past that it makes sense to have an ETS 'to take precautions against significant risks', so it is difficult to determine what he actually believes.

But, before we give the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt, we need to ask ourselves a few questions. Firstly, would a government that truly believed in climate change make it one of its first priorities in power to abolish the Climate Commission, which was established to provide the nation with vital information on the effects of and potential solutions to global warming? Would a government that is truly committed to reversing climate change turn its back on the United Nations climate change conference, which contributed to Australia winning the 2013 'Colossal Fossil' award from the Climate Action Network? And would a government that accepts the serious risks that face the globe if we do not act on climate change attempt to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation? This body, as has been said here previously, has leveraged an impressive $1.5 billion worth of private sector investment in clean energy projects and, in doing so, has cut 3.9 million tonnes of damaging carbon from our atmosphere. Even more importantly—and this is the kicker—this activity has also brought a return of seven per cent to government coffers. This would result in $200 million a year of pure profit. But, despite all common sense and, indeed, fiscal responsibility, the government persists in its bloody-minded plan to shut down this important body. Finally, we need to ask whether a government that is honest about its intention to cut carbon output would replace the almost universally accepted mechanism of pricing carbon with a direct action scheme that has been recognised as a dud by policymakers, scientists and economists alike. These questions are exactly what we are considering today in the bill that is before us.

We also need to consider this 'policy' of direct action, because what the government have given us to date barely qualifies for this description. Despite the fact that the government first announced Direct Action in 2010, in the intervening three years it came up with little more than thought bubbles as to how it could funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to polluters and rip away all the economy-wide incentives for investment in green, energy efficient projects. In order to cover up this lack of policy, Mr Hunt tried to slip out a vague, undetailed 'green paper' on the Friday afternoon before Christmas. Presumably he hoped it would fly under the media radar and public scrutiny could be avoided.

Currently, I serve as the Chair of the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee, which has recently been charged with considering the impacts of the government's direct action policy. The inquiry has received more than 100 submissions from across the country, and the overwhelming message we are getting is that the Direct Action Plan is simply not up to the task; it is expensive, is riddled with design problems and will not come close to meeting Australia's carbon emission reduction targets. In fact, the committee is yet to hear evidence from one single witness who is willing to support direct action as an effective or appropriate stand-alone solution to address climate change.

To meet our commitment of reducing Australia's carbon output by five per cent by 2020, the government has allocated $1.55 billion over three years, but modelling by SKM MMA and Monash University has shown that this falls $4 billion short of what will be needed. This leaves the government with three options: change the policy to a more cost-effective one, increase funding or fail at meeting the five per cent reduction target. The government has been very clear that it will not change the policy and even clearer that there will not be any more money on the table. Unfortunately, this all but guarantees that Australia will not meet its carbon reduction target.

One key failing of Direct Action is that it throws away the widely accepted market based model of 'polluter pays', in favour of an underresourced 'taxpayer pays the polluter' plan. This is very curious when you consider that the environment minister himself penned a graduate thesis entitled 'A tax to make the polluter pay', proving he fully understands the effectiveness of a broad based market pricing that places the burden of pollution on the polluter, rather than on the taxpayer. When interviewed on the topic in 2010, Minister Hunt reiterated this position, saying:

My support has always been for two things. And this is a life-long commitment back to my thesis. And that is firstly, to reduce emissions. And secondly, to use economic instruments to do that.

Despite this, Minister Hunt seems to have turned his back on years of learning to champion the Emissions Reduction Fund, where the government will pay organisations to undertake projects intended to reduce carbon emissions.

Pollution is a waste output of business like any other. Just as we would not expect someone else to pay to dispose of the skip bins of rubbish that any business generates, it is quite unfair to require the taxpayer to pick up the tab for big business and their carbon outputs. Unfortunately, this direct action policy also has some serious design flaws which open it up to being 'gamed' by big polluters. Firstly, it is very difficult to determine what a business would have done anyway as part of its normal operations. It is easy to envisage a scenario where a company could secure government funds to do something that it planned to do all along. And, perversely, businesses that have already reduced their carbon output could be penalised because they will be starting from a lower baseline, despite taking responsible and very effective action earlier. But, worse than this, the government has already pointed to a 'flexible' approach where there will be no penalties for not meeting the required carbon abatement. It has been made clear that the government will not penalise organisations for 'business as usual' operations—even if 'business as usual' pumps out tens of thousands of tonnes of polluting carbon dioxide.

In this context, it is not surprising that the government has completely done away with the national cap on emissions, as there is no chance of meeting any meaningful target through Direct Action. In fact, the Climate Institute tells us that, far from helping to mitigate climate change, Direct Action will actually result in an increase in carbon emissions of eight to 10 per cent on year 2000 levels. According to Climate Institute modelling, if other countries followed the Abbott government's policy lead, the world would be on track for a catastrophic rise of up to 6.5 degrees Centigrade by the end of the century. For Australia, this would mean a five-fold increase in droughts in southern Australia, the virtual destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, forced abandonment of many coastal communities and a 90 per cent reduction in agricultural production from the Murray-Darling region. Another problem of Direct Action is that it is completely silent on what will happen post 2020. We simply do not know. This creates serious uncertainty in the business community and threatens the viability of long-term investment planning, particularly as many projects would have a time line extending well beyond that of the policy itself.

With the removal of the broad based carbon price, the government is removing the financial incentive for businesses to invest in low-carbon solutions. By doing this, it is essentially subsidising fossil fuels at the expense of clean, renewable energy. While the rest of the world is embracing the transition to low-carbon economies, Australia may find itself an economic and environmental backwater through the government's determination to cling to last century's technology. In fact, the GLOBE Climate Legislation Study which was released last week highlighted how far Australia is falling behind the rest of the world in this area. This study of 66 countries across the globe found Australia is the only country to be taking negative legislative action on climate policy. Only three months ago, China's second-largest province, which has a population of over 100 million, introduced the world's second-largest emissions trading scheme. Meanwhile, Australia stands alone as the only country currently that is dismantling a market based approach to minimising climate change. It is very hard to believe that these are the actions of a government that is truly committed to avoiding the damaging environmental and economic impacts of climate change.

Today, we are looking at a bill that threatens to turn back the clock on the advances this country has made toward meeting our ethical obligations to future generations and replace them with a widely derided option that will do nothing but line the pockets of big polluters. This is a bill that, if passed, will undoubtedly set us on a reckless path and abrogate our responsibility to protect the planet from the potentially devastating impacts of climate change. Well, I refuse to stand with this government on the wrong side of history. Instead, I will stand with the 87 per cent of Australians who believe that the target to reduce Australia's carbon emissions by five per cent by 2020 is either on the mark or does not go far enough. And I will stand on the side of the sheer weight of scientific evidence which tells us that we are heading down a perilous road if we ignore it. This is why I refuse to support this bill. Instead, I support replacing the carbon tax with an emissions trading scheme, which will help us to fulfil our responsibility to the international community and generations to come.

It is important to point out at this stage that the current government has long engaged in irresponsible myth-making about carbon pricing. Despite the Prime Minister's rantings about the carbon tax in recent years, it did not 'take a wrecking ball to the economy'. In fact, the economic impact of the carbon tax was determined by experts to be less than 0.7 per cent. And, even though we had a carbon tax, the economy continued to grow, jobs continued to be created and we registered an impressive growth in national wealth. At the same time, a fair compensation package was put in place to ensure that Australians earning under $80,000 a year would suffer no negative financial impacts as a result of the carbon tax. That is hardly a wrecking ball, from anyone's perspective.

At the same time, the carbon tax resulted in an 8.4 per cent drop in carbon emissions from the electricity sector in its first six months. That is a very tangible drop of 7.5 million tonnes of carbon when compared to the same half of 2011. However, in Labor we recognise that the economy may have some difficult times ahead. This is why we believe that an emissions trading scheme will strike the right balance between protecting the economy and meeting our obligations to reduce carbon output. The proposed scheme would put a floating price on carbon from 1 July. Notably, it would also reduce the economic imposts on business, industry and Australian families, as the carbon price would drop from the current $25.40 a tonne to the standard European floating price, which is around $6 a tonne.

As policymakers, one of our primary responsibilities is to recognise problems and find sensible, evidence based solutions to them. At the moment, we have a very serious problem facing us. We only need to look at the serious weather events occurring across the globe to realise that lip-service and token gestures from those opposite simply will not cut it. From the heartbreaking bushfires in New South Wales to the devastation wrought on the Philippines by Typhoon Haiyan, there is little doubt that the weather is changing. Experts across the globe who have devoted their lives to the study of climate are unanimous in warning us that if we do not act to decrease carbon emissions, these sorts of extreme weather events will only escalate in scale and regularity. Experts have also told us that the most sensible, effective policy solution to the problem is to put a price on carbon and that so-called direct action schemes are expensive and ineffective.

So we stand here at an important junction in history. Do we take the responsible path of putting an effective, evidence based response to the problem of climate change in place? I have worked closely with people on both sides of this place, and I have to say that there are many on the other side that I believe to be rational, intelligent and ethical. I know where I stand on this, and I urge these more sensible members of the government to lobby their short-sighted leader to reconsider this regressive, irresponsible action so future generations do not have to pay the price for their flat-earth-type thinking.