Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

To take note of the answers provided by Senator Brandis to questions asked by myself and Senator O'Neill.

In question time today Senator Brandis expressed some surprise that I would ask a question along the lines of:

Will the Turnbull government commit to using the Finkel review to end the policy uncertainty that is delivering higher bills, higher emissions and less secure power and deliver a coherent plan for Australia's energy sector?

I am surprised that he would express some surprise, because there could be at this time probably no more significant crisis in the Australian political system than the crisis in the Australian energy system, which highlights one of the great failures of our political system itself: the inability of our parliament to reach agreement around a policy framework has fundamentally undermined our capacity to generate the investment needed to renew our energy system. On top of that, we are seeing the gas providers adding further to the enormous strain that is being placed upon our enterprises, particularly in manufacturing, and, of course, households across this country.

Mr Matthew Warren, the CEO of the Australian Energy Council, says:

Right now, we couldn't do it worse if we tried. We're making everything worse. We're making prices higher, reliability more unreliable, and we're not delivering the emissions we're required to deliver.

We have a circumstance here where the Chief Scientist has brought down a review in response to the Prime Minister's somewhat hysterical outburst against the South Australian government. For context: on 6 February this year, Treasury officials were telling the estimates committee that no work had been undertaken by Treasury into the domestic energy system, yet the Prime Minister was prepared to launch this quite extraordinary assault upon the Labor governments in South Australia and Victoria about the question of renewable energy. We saw, of course, circumstances where extraordinary weather events had caused widespread disruptions to the reliability of the system.

The Prime Minister sought to take short-term political advantage where he had undertaken no serious policy work, which of course reflects the approach that this government has taken for quite some time. It is a Prime Minister that had, of course, lost the leadership of his own party on this issue and said he would never actually lead a party which would not have a serious approach to climate change. Of course, now the circumstance is he is a captive of the hard right of his own party, a captive of the most vicious opponents of dealing with modernity. The great knuckle-draggers of the Liberal Party now dominate that party. We have a Prime Minister that stands for nothing and is not prepared to actually defend what he has historically defended. Now he has the view, of course, that he needs to get himself out of a political problem. Of course, the Chief Scientist has provided him with a way forward, and his proposition in regard to the reliability, security and governance arrangements do provide us with an opportunity to break the impasse on electricity prices and energy prices in this country.

It is important for us not to lose this opportunity. While it may well be that there are better approaches available, this is the approach that is on the table at the moment. That is why the Labor Party and the leader of the Labor Party, Bill Shorten, have made it very clear that we are open to discussions about the capacity for this country to move forward on the issue of a clean energy target. We are open to the proposition that a properly worked out arrangement can be made across this parliament to introduce, by legislation, a new clean energy target. This would ensure that we are able to secure the future of our heavy manufacturing in terms of our capacity for steel and for aluminium, and to ensure that we have the capacity for baseload power so that plastics, chemicals, cement and other industries will not be forced out of this country because of the policy failure of our political system.

The government also has a responsibility in meeting our international obligations, so we want to know what the precise details of the Chief Scientist's initiatives are. We are prepared to discuss those details to ensure we meet our energy needs, the security of our energy needs— (Time expired)