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

I rise tonight to defend the existing emissions trading scheme, which is the law in Australia. What we are now seeing is the logical conclusion to the fundamental mistake made by former Prime Minister Julia Gillard. I remember this with absolute clarity. It was 24 February 2011 in a 7.30 interview with Heather Ewart. Heather asked the Prime Minister whether she conceded that what had been legislated was a tax. She said:

…I am happy to use the word tax, Heather.

Therein lies the massive problem that has resulted ever since and has led us to this ridiculous position that we are in tonight, where the Labor Party is trying to defend a strategy developed by the next Prime Minister after Julia Gillard—that is, Kevin Rudd.

So Prime Minister Rudd in trying to distance himself from the carbon tax—so-called by the Leader of the Opposition of the day, Tony Abbott—said that he would get rid of the carbon tax and instead bring in an emissions trading scheme. The whole thing is a complete fabrication. From day 1, what has been legislated in Australia is an emissions trading scheme, with a fixed price for three years, moving to a flexible price in 2015. That is what is legislated, that is the law and that is as it stands.

Now, because the former Prime Minister Rudd in an election campaign decided to pretend that there was a carbon tax and conceded what should never have been conceded in the first place, this has now let us into this ridiculous position where we have the Labor Party pretending that what they want to move for is emissions trading. We have the framework. It is the law in Australia. We have an emissions trading scheme. It is due to go to flexible pricing on 1 July 2015 and the first auctions were meant to being held right now. The only reason they have not been is because Labor joined with the coalition and refused to support the Greens' disallowance motion, which would have maintained the scheme as we currently have it.

Let us get it completely on the record from the start of this debate. Far from shifting from a tax—and in basic terms you would have to say that a tax would have to come under the taxing powers in the Constitution, and this legislation does not do that—what we have now is a situation where all Labor is doing with these amendments is bringing forward everything in the emissions trading scheme by one year. That is why these whole amendments are around bringing forward the dates. The overwhelming majority of the document with the amendments circulated is all about bringing everything forward by one year.

That is essentially what it is doing and it is foolish. That is because if you are committed to reducing emissions and if you are serious about understanding the science—that we are on a trajectory for at least four degrees of warming—then the last thing you would want to do is actually bring down the carbon price. Let me put this to you, Mr Chairman: if the European price was currently $50 a tonne, would Labor be now moving to bring forward flexible pricing by 12 months? The answer is 'no'. Would GE have been out today, talking about flexible pricing? No, they would not. The only reason that anybody is talking about bringing forward flexible pricing is because of the low price in the European Union.

The reason we went to linking the Australian emissions trading scheme with the European Union was because Rob Oakeshott, in the former parliament, would not agree to the amendments that would have guaranteed the floor price. He reneged on that part of the deal. So the upshot of that was that we had to move forward with the linkage to the EU, always on the understanding that the EU price would recover. At that time the EU was moving to backload the emissions permits, because they had an overallocation of permits. The EU was supposed to be taking out large numbers of permits to backload the auction scheme so that it would increase the price, so that by 2015 we would see a recovery of the European price such that there would not be significant dislocation in Australia in going from the $23, $24 and $25 price and then to the flexible pricing with the EU.

As it turned out, the European price has collapsed, but I am pleased to say that on 24 February this year the council gave the green light to the European commission on regulation concerning allowances to be auctioned between 2013 to 2020. It has agreed that 900 million allowances in the third trading period of the EU's emission trading scheme would be able to be backloaded. So the European Union has made that decision.

But if you were actually serious about carbon pricing—driving the transition to the low-carbon economy, making sure you did not get dislocation in Australia and making sure that we stepped up our efforts with the level of ambition that is required—there is no way that you would be seeking to bring forward a flexible price just so you can drop the price in Australia. You would not be doing that if you were serious about the climate. But, quite obviously, this is not a serious addressing of the climate crisis; it is simply a political manoeuvre that started on that fateful night on 24 February 2011, when former Prime Minister Gillard conceded that a carbon price was a carbon tax. That led Minister Rudd to his position, and that has led to the Labor Party position here tonight—and the whole thing is a nonsense. We have a perfectly good framework for emissions trading. We have a well-considered progress towards flexible pricing, and I stand by that.

Secondly, we had set up the Climate Change Authority to in order to determine what the appropriate emissions reductions target for Australia should be. I tested this today in the second reading debate, where I put the Climate Change Authority's trajectory into an amendment saying we should be adopting a target for 2013 of 40 to 60 per cent below 2000 levels—and Labor voted it down. And nothing in Labor's amendment tells you what target they are adopting for the scheme. Yes, they are saying they want to go to flexible pricing on 1 July this year—but what is the cap? Why have we not got an amendment that tells us what Labor's cap is? It is because they are happy with a five per cent default cap. They are not moving to implement the Climate Change Authority's cap. Just a few weeks ago, Labor came out saying that the 2020 target should be 19 per cent below 2000 levels and that the 2030 target should be the 40 to 60 per cent trajectory. If Labor were genuine about this, they would have moved to amend the cap. They have not done that. They have simply said it has to be taken into account. But the way the Labor amendment is worded means that we would end up with the default cap being five per cent. What we have here is not a serious attempt to do anything other than save face from a series of disasters of Labor prime ministers who have not understood either the challenge or the emissions trading scheme and how it would actually work.

That is why the Greens are not going to support these amendments. We think the scheme as it is currently designed—which goes to flexible pricing on 1 July 2015—is the way to go. That is why we moved to disallow getting rid of the auctions which would have allowed business to start preparing for that transition. That is why we put up an amendment today to incorporate the 40 to 60 per cent reduction by 2030 in the legislation so that the serious effort to reduce emissions is legislated as part of the cap. But we are not seeing that from the Labor Party. This is very little more than a stunt. Apart from anything else, even if the Labor amendment were to be passed in the Senate, it would be rejected in the House of Representatives. This is not a serious effort to address the climate crisis.

I would like to go back to first principles: we are on a trajectory of four degrees or more of warming. We are living in a climate emergency. Every scientific report—and they are coming out regularly—is saying the same thing: in Australia, there will be more extreme weather events, more intensity in those events and more people dying. There is a greater likelihood of the spread of diseases like dengue further into Queensland and even into New South Wales. We are hearing reports of the coral reefs dying. We are seeing every kind of scenario that has been predicted by scientists for a long time, in terms of the impacts of global warming, actually happening and being recorded—and yet we have denialism from the government, and we have a failure by the Labor Party to recognise the seriousness of the climate crisis and a failure to build that into the targets.

I would put to the Labor Party as it moves these amendments: why have you not put a cap in the legislation? What is the cap you are proposing for when you want to go to flexible pricing on 1 July this year? And why do you want to drop the price? If you are serious about the transition to the low-carbon economy, why would you not delay moving to flexible pricing until we get a recovery in the European price so that we would see less dislocation in the Australian economy? It seems to me that what we have here is just a playing out of an election scenario from the former Prime Minister.

I also want to go to this idea that it is a logical consequence of the election that, post the change of the Senate on 1 July, carbon pricing will automatically be going—that is not a foregone conclusion at all. People in Western Australia are going to have something to say about that on 5 April. But, apart from anything else, nobody in this Senate can possibly be looking at the abolition of carbon pricing without looking at what is being proposed to take its place. Nobody has said that the Direct Action Plan proposed by the government is anything other than a joke. We have Ken Henry, Bernie Fraser, Ross Garnaut all out there saying, 'Direct Action cannot be scaled up' and 'Direct Action is a joke in an economic framework'. Why would you be abandon the polluter pays principle and instead tax the Australian people in order to pay polluters? That makes no sense whatsoever. There is not a single economist who is out there saying (a) that it will work or (b) that it can be scaled up. How are you going to implement Direct Action for a 40 to 60 per cent reduction in emissions on 2000 levels by 2030? It is impossible. It is a vast amount. We are talking billions in the budget context. It makes zero sense to go down this path—so I would not be making an automatic assumption that people landing here in the Senate on 1 July are going to be condemning Australian taxpayers to the kind of impost that Direct Action is going to mean. And there are others who are already here in the Senate saying that, whilst they do not support the existing trading scheme, they are not going to vote for something which is inferior. Frankly, what is on the table is inferior.

I challenge the automatic assumption that carbon pricing is going. I will do everything in my power to maintain the existing carbon-price mechanism. We have an emissions trading scheme. It is legislated. It is the law. I will do everything in my power to maintain it. These foolish games only undermine public confidence in the scheme which we have already worked through and legislated. I am not going to stand by and let that happen.