Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose the Carbon Farming Initiative Amendment Bill 2014. The government is seeking to amend the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act 2011 to allow for the Emissions Reduction Fund to be administered and to allow its fundamentally flawed direct action plan to start.

Firstly, I would like to say that Labor is very supportive of the Carbon Farming Initiative—as we always have been. But we do not support the direct action dud of a policy. Well, what a day of surprises we saw yesterday! We saw both the government and the Palmer United Party backflip on their promises. PUP's promise to the Australian people and to legendary climate hero, Al Gore, for an emissions trading scheme to be legislated went by the wayside. His commitment to reject the appalling direct action policy was unceremoniously dumped. The government's promise to shut down the Climate Change Authority was promptly overturned. Amongst the ever-growing list of broken promises by this government, this is one that I can support.

So, now, we have a very curious situation. We have a government that has done absolutely everything in their power to tear down Australia's climate change. They have abolished the carbon tax, making Australia the only country in the world to be moving backward on climate change. They have shut down the Climate Commission. They want to axe the Clean Energy Finance Corporation despite the fact that it has made a positive return to government finances. They are trying to shut the doors on the Renewable Energy Agency.They commissioned a climate sceptic to launch an inquiry into the Renewable Energy Target, with the excuse that the RET is pushing up power prices.When the inquiry found that the RET will actually reduce electricity prices in the medium term, they still ploughed on with attempts to reduce the RET by 40 per cent.

This is a government that is single-mindedly focused on demonising renewable energy while praising dirty fossil fuels. This is a government that is belligerently holding Australia back fro m the vital transition to a low- carbon economy. And this is a government that is turning its back on Australia's responsibilities as a global citizen to contribute to reducing global emissions. We have heard the Prime Minister , Tony Abbott , say :

Coal is good for humanity …

He has accused the executive secretary of the UN framework on climate change of, and I quote :

… talking through her hat.

He has refused to attend both the international Climate Summit in New York and international climate change negotiations in Warsaw.

We saw the Prime Minister try and fail to organise a global alliance of climate denying countries to turn back the tide on climate change action. W e have listened to the Prime Minister's climate change denying side kick , Mr Joe Hockey , bemoaning that wind farms are ' utterly offensive ' . Despite all this, the Abbott g overnment is launching an inquiry into emissions trading schemes. But worse: they have already promised they will do nothing about it, regardless of what the inquiry finds. In fact, Minister Hunt has said the inquiry was given to the Climate Change Authority because, and I quote :

… they might as well do work.

What a dismissive and demeanin g thing to say about these hard working experts and their important work. And w hat a terrible shame that the government is too arrogant, too stupid or too conflicted to listen to their expert advice.

In about 18 months, we know the inquiry will tell the government what scientists, economists and policy experts across the world already know. That is, that the government needs to implement a market based mechanism to tackle climate change. This is sound advice indeed, which the government will promptly ignore. What a strange world we are living in!

We in Labor know that all evidence shows that the most efficient, lowest cost means to achieve carbon abatement is through market mechanisms like emissions trading schemes. We also know that the government is absolutely determined not to do anything to address climate change. The bill before us today is not so much about carbon farming as about the Abbott government's direct action policy. Direct action is bad policy, direct action is expensive policy, and direct action is ineffective policy. It will not achieve its goals and it will cost the Australian taxpayer $2.55 billion in the process. The truth is that direct action is little more than a multibillion dollar slush fund for polluters. It has received scathing reviews from the scientific community, which knows that it will not meet its carbon abatement targets.

Economists have pointed out that the Abbott government is pursuing one of the most expensive means of carbon abatement around. This is particularly hard to swallow when you consider that those opposite are blatantly wasting money while they are lecturing the country that they can no longer afford appropriate funding for health, education and our welfare safety net. This is quite simply outrageous.

Direct action throws away the fundamental principle of polluter pays in favour of a government funded slush fund for big polluters. Pollution is an output of business, like any other, and it should be levied as such. Environment Minister Greg Hunt knows that this is a key principle of achieving low-cost carbon abatement. In fact, he is an expert in the area, after penning his honours thesis which was entitled 'A tax to make the polluters pay'. On the issue of reducing pollution, Mr Hunt's thesis argues:

Ultimately it is by harnessing the natural economic forces which drive society that the pollution tax offers us an opportunity to exert greater control over our environment.

I do not know about you, Madam Acting Deputy President, but it sounds very much like a solid argument for an emissions trading scheme to me.

As we all know, those opposite, who are normally the greatest champions of free market solutions over subsidies, have taken a very bizarre path on climate change. They are throwing away market mechanisms in favour of direct and substantial government subsidies through their direct action policy. Perhaps the only member of the government who has been honest about the direct action policy is the member for Wentworth, Mr Malcolm Turnbull. In December 2009, Mr Turnbull penned a piece for The Sydney Morning Herald calling Tony Abbott's climate change policy an objectionable word that I cannot use in this chamber. In this article, Mr Turnbull wrote:

… as we are being blunt, the fact is that Tony and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change.

…   …   …

Now politics is about conviction and a commitment to carry out those convictions. The Liberal Party is currently led by people whose conviction on climate change is that it is "crap" and you don't need to do anything about it. Any policy that is announced will simply be a con, an environmental figleaf to cover a determination to do nothing.

That is what Mr Turnbull said. Then, on 8 February 2010, Mr Turnbull reinforced his justifiable disgust for the policy, telling the parliament that direct action would be:

… a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale.

This perspective is borne out by the recent Senate inquiry into direct action which could not find one single witness willing to support it as a credible stand-alone solution to address climate change. During the May 2014 estimates, the environment department itself admitted it was unsure of the policy's chances of success due to its incomplete state.

There are some glaring fundamental concerns with the direct action policy. Firstly, as I have mentioned, it is highly unlikely to meet its emissions reduction targets. Recent research from RepuTex shows that even if the full $2.55 billion is used to buy abatement the government will fall 300 million tonnes short of its carbon emissions reduction targets. 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 work done by SKM MMA and Monash University shows this falls $4 billion short, even using the most generous parameters.

Similarly, former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry and leading Australian economist Ross Garnaut found it is likely to cost up to $5 billion to reach the target with the proposed Emissions Reduction Fund. We also know there are serious concerns about the design of the program. The Emissions Reduction Fund is supposed to be based on the principles of lowest cost emissions reduction through a reverse auction and genuine emissions reduction. However, the definition means that projects that were going to go ahead anyway will qualify.

Another flaw is the fact that baselines will be enormously difficult and incredibly burdensome to administer. There is a lack of a robust safeguard mechanism with stringent baselines, especially when no historical data exists, nor do penalties for exceeding baselines. Even if there were an effective safeguard mechanism, the government only expects around one or two hundred companies to be subject to it, covering only around 52 per cent of Australia's emissions. Industry representatives also criticised the difficulty in setting benchmarks and enforcing emissions reductions.

But it gets worse. Not only are there industry benchmarks, but the government's dodgy direct action policy does not even include a cap on emissions. This is a virtual admission from the government that they have designed the program to fail from the beginning. Also, the Emissions Reduction Fund, as designed by the government is an entirely voluntary program which businesses can choose to participate in or ignore on a whim.

For so many reasons, this is a deeply flawed policy. It will not only give big polluters a free run, it will actually pay them for the privilege. At a time when the world is moving toward coordinated action, this dodgy deal represents a serious threat to our global credibility and to global action on climate change. I am proud to be standing on this side where we will oppose the bill.