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

This is not hypothetical. These are the actual figures and this goes to the heart of what Senator Rice said earlier in terms of: what area are we talking about that is covered by your assessment of high-value versus the rest? Are we going coupe by coupe or are we going district by district? How are we actually going here? We have had Senator Colbeck interjecting from the back of the chamber saying to Minister Birmingham, 'Just say no' to the question 'Will you rule out this getting renewable energy certificates?' Senator Colbeck is saying no because he knows as well as I do that the whole purpose of renewable energy certificates for logging native forests is to put value back into logging native forests. There is no way that this is viable unless you create some value from the 90 per cent of the coupe that is left after you have taken the 10 per cent for sawlog. That is the whole point here. This is about propping up native forest logging, it is about undermining wind in the deal with the crossbench and it is about propping up the big polluters by exempting the energy-intensive trade exposed. This is a disaster and it is also a disaster for nature because, if you are serious about renewable energy, if you are serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and if you are serious about the extinction crisis we are now facing, the best thing you can possibly do is protect native forests. Stop the logging of native forests, maintain the carbon stores and maintain the biodiversity. The best thing you can do to upgrade your economy is to require your industries to become efficient—that means energy efficient—not to give them more exemptions to be able to carry on with less-efficient practices and subsidise them from the state, because that is what leads to inefficiency and industries being forced to close down.

We all know that the energy-intensive trade-exposed have had the biggest windfall gain from the change in the exchange rate in recent times. That has been a massive gain for them. This is just the icing on the cake to prop up those jobs in the aluminium smelters at the cost of new jobs in renewable energy. If you are serious about innovation, if you are serious about science, if you are serious about upgrading the economy to a low-carbon economy then you would be investing in new jobs, new innovation and new industries, not subsidising the efficiency of the old economy. That is exactly what is going on and why this is so bad and out of step entirely with the rest of the world.

I think this Senate does not actually realise how far behind the eight ball Australia is becoming. You just step out of the country and you find that everyone else is gearing up for the major climate talks in Paris at the end of the year. Australia is pretending that we can act as if we are living on another planet. Well, we are not. And this is going to cost us dearly in the future because the slower we take it now the more disruptive it is going to be when we have to accelerate the transition. What is going on here in this Senate tonight is absolutely stupid—that we would even consider slashing the renewable energy target, propping up coal, exempting the inefficiency of the trade-exposed and creating a witch-hunt after wind energy. It is unbelievable and people in other countries must be watching and wondering what on earth has gone wrong in Australia.