Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Gloating or not gloating, the fact that the senator did seem to take some joy and some pleasure and was referring to it in a very positive way, I would suggest, would be something that those workers who had lost their jobs would probably view as rather disappointing from somebody who constantly comes into this chamber purporting to support jobs in this country.

But that is not what we are here today to talk about. We are here today to talk about what is a responsible and an achievable target for Australia to be able to meet its obligations and play its part in ensuring that we have responsible and sustainable industry into the future but at the same time we do not completely and utterly decimate our industries, that we do not end up with a situation in Australia where we just push the cost of doing business here so far through the roof that we become a country that it is no longer possible to do competitive business in. This government is a responsible government and it will come up with a balance between what is in the best interests of our environment and what is in the best interests of our economy so that together we can move forward on both of those fronts so that the triple bottom line gets delivered every time, instead of just putting the entire emphasis on one component of the outcome at the detriment of the others.

Mr Acting Deputy President Back, you were in this place when we saw the extraordinary damage that was done when we ignored the triple bottom line with the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. In the initial proposals for the implementation of the economic and social impacts on the communities along the Murray River, the Darling, the Murrumbidgee and all the other rivers that make up the connected basin were completely overlooked in the interest of just making sure that we had the most healthy environment we possibly could. Well a healthy environment is all well and good and it would be a tremendously healthy environment, I would imagine, if there was no longer any capacity whatsoever for any community to exist on the river because the environmental outcomes that were sought were so totally restrictive and over the top that these communities could no longer exist.

What we have seen in the last couple of days is a responsible government come out and say, yes, we understand that we have to play our part in emissions reductions. We have said that by 2030 we will reduce those emissions by 26 per cent, possibly even up to 28 per cent. We have done so on the basis that it will be sustainable, it is a deliverable outcome and it is an affordable outcome. So I think this is a strong, credible and responsible target. It is not some pie-in-the-sky thing that you put out there and say we are going to achieve 50 per cent or 60 per cent, which we know is going to be unachievable without massive damage to our economy and possibly unachievable anyway given the kind of economy that Australia is and the industries that Australia has. So why do we not just be honest and set ourselves a target that is responsible and also a target that is not going to completely and utterly destroy our budget, the budget that has already been destroyed by those opposite over the last six years with the help of Labor's colleagues the Greens.

The other thing too is that what we are proposing here is to achieve a target without putting a punitive tax or a punishing tax like a carbon tax on the Australian economy. I think the one thing that we do need to realise is, as much as we would like to see a clean-energy future with us immediately, the reality is that you cannot just go from where we are today to where the Greens and the Labor Party seem to think that we should be by 2030 with the speed that they are proposing. It is just completely unrealistic, unreasonable and unachievable. The fact is that if we did seek and if we did choose to go to a 40 per cent to 60 per cent target reduction, first of all it is projected that it is going to cost $633 billion to be able to achieve that target. Now I am not quite sure where we are supposed to find $633 billion to achieve this target without completely decimating the Australian economy, without turning us into a Second World or a Third World country. It is the most irresponsible proposition that I have ever heard.

It has also been further predicted that there will be a six per cent fall in national income per capita, a $4,900 reduction in take-home pay and a carbon price that would be in excess of $200. I do not know where that quite fits on the world stage when we are out there quoting numbers about the comparative targets that are being sought by countries that we respect. I mean there is not a country in the world that would have a carbon price of over $200 per tonne. Nearly every coal generator in Australia would be closed, and you can imagine the devastation that that would cause for our regional communities, particularly places like Victoria's Latrobe Valley, the Hunter Valley in New South Wales and Central Queensland—the state that Senator Waters purports to be representing. As you can see, it is all well and good to come in here and put out big flashy numbers that are going to go out there and grab the Green vote on election day when we know that there is absolutely no possibility for it to be achieved without such extraordinary damage to our economy, to our communities and to Australia. It is just the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard.

I need to reiterate that this government, I believe, has the right balance in place for a healthy environment, an economy that will flourish and communities that will remain vibrant. There are a lot of things that the Australian government is doing to ensure that we take a responsible approach to our environment. I could sit here and quote many things, but I will put just a couple on the record to reinforce that this government has a very good track record in environmental behaviour. The amount of money that we have put into the Great Barrier Reef—the commitment of $100 million to the Reef Trust—is an example, and that is in addition to the $40 million that we announced in the 2014 budget. Between us and the government of Queensland, over $2 billion will be invested in the Great Barrier Reef over the next decade. It is all well and good for those down the other end of the chamber to start rabbiting on, but we only have to realise that a lot of the scaremongering that they came up with over this particular issue first of all did a massive amount to damage the reputation of one of the great icons of Australian tourism and, in the process, provided a whole heap of false information. At the end of the day the benefit to the reef, our commitment to its ongoing sustainability, was reinforced with the decision recently that the Great Barrier Reef did not need to be put onto the endangered list.

Another thing is the money that has been invested into water infrastructure. I mentioned the Murray-Darling Basin Plan at the start of my contribution, but that is not the only water infrastructure that we are putting in place to make sure that we have sustainable water delivery into the future with a minimum amount of impact on our river systems. Of course, in the driest continent on the planet it is extraordinarily important that we make sure that our water infrastructure is such that we do not waste a drop of the very precious water that sustains this country and, particularly, allows us to be leaders in primary production and to grow the food that we would like to think that the rest of the world aspires to have. We need to remember that for all the badgering, bantering and misinformation that gets put out into the public domain—particularly by those at the other end of the chamber in this space—this Australian government has a great track record of delivering on the promises in the environmental space.

Finally, before I conclude I would like to make the point that it is all well and good for us to have all these wonderful targets, particularly in relation to renewable energy and that we no longer burn fossil fuels, but until we can actually come up with a system that allows us to store the power that is generated from our renewable energy sources—wind and solar—we really are being very foolish. We still will require baseload power. Unless we can store this power in such a way that, when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine, we have a source of continued and reliable energy we have a situation that is completely unsustainable. If we close all of our coal fired stations down before we are able to store this energy in a way that is cheap enough to be affordable to the Australian community then all we are doing is condemning this nation to a very backward and retrograde place. (Time expired)