Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

a drought—that is right, Senator Williams—and a broken Basslink Interconnector, which is the extension cord that effectively connects Tasmania to mainland Australia. As Hydro was trying to keep up with demand for electricity, we were running down the dams to dangerous levels. We had to ship in containerised diesel generators to keep up with demand and to ensure that we did not empty the dams. We are not immune to a power crisis, so we need to make sure that we have in place plans to increase capacity to keep up with growing demand and trends in power consumption. This is why I am excited about the announcement that the Prime Minister made with regard to the future of Tasmania's hydro power scheme. There is the pump storage proposal that is being examined by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and also a number of other schemes and projects, including the refurbishment of the very successful and historic Tarraleah Power Station, which will generate in excess of 2,000 megawatts. As ARENA pointed out at Senate estimates, those projects will necessitate the establishment of increased interconnectivity with mainland Australia—be that a second or third cable, I do not know, but I am excited by the prospect of Tasmania becoming the nation's battery and providing base load renewables in the form of hydro.

On Tasmania—if we can go back in time a number of years—a lot has been said about whether coal should be in or whether it should be out. I thought it would be interesting to put on record something that I know is already on the public record.

I refer to an article in The Mercury newspaper, dated 20 October 1981—which, for the record, was before my birth! It is entitled 'Coal-fired power "best option"'. It was written by a fellow by the name of Wayne Crawford. The article says:

TASMANIA'S environmental lobby has expressed its preference for coal-fired thermal power generation over the construction of more hydro-power dams.

So, to be clear, that is the Tasmanian Greens and associated entities opting for coal fired power as opposed to renewable energy in the state of Tasmania. The article continues:

The director of the Tasmanian Wilderness Society; Dr Bob Brown—

Who would be known to many in this place; he is a former senator—

said yesterday that if there was to' be a new power station, then coal-fired thermal was "the best centralised option we have."

He went on to say:

… the conservation movement regarded a coal-tired thermal station as a "manifestly better" option than more dams.

It is there in black and white: for coal fired versus dams they would go with coal back in 1981.

Also in the article, Mr Peter Blackwell, from the Tasmanian Conservation Trust, which exists to this day, talked about coal fired power stations yielding more energy than what was proposed at that time, and that was the Gordon-below-Franklin Dam, which—according to this article—was only going to generate 180 megawatts. Further, he went on to say that pollution levels quoted by the Tasmanian Chamber of Industry's advertisement, which is what this article was in response to were for a station:

… five times as big as what was proposed in Tasmania, and apparently involved an old-fashioned combustion system and no equipment to control emissions.

So in here I read that the Greens also believed in clean coal technology. It is amazing how things have changed in the course of over 30 years. They have gone from believing in clean coal and opposing renewables to opposing clean coal and only supporting hydro and other forms of renewables. But I suppose that anyone can change their mind over time.

I will return to another point that Senator Paterson made, about the obligation on the opposition in this debate. I think that it is a point that he also made well in his take note address a day or two back. His point was that the Australian opposition needs to be up-front about what its proposal is. Senator Polley said that the opposition will consider the report, look at ways forward and make a decision. Whatever that decision is, I think that it is right to give certainty to the Australian community—to all of the people who we represent in this place—and to tell Australians what they will do and what they will sign up to, and to stick to that.

What did concern me was Senator Moore effectively saying no and reserving the right to move the goalposts after a decision is made. In effect, this was everything that Senator Paterson was warning us about—that the Labor Party will say one thing now for the purposes of a political point before an election and then say something very different afterwards. That could mean new targets and new rules, and therefore no certainty—which is what we are trying to avoid. So I was quite disheartened to hear that from Senator Moore.

The point was also made about the debate being divisive and that we need to move away from the sniping and hyperpartisan nature of this debate. I would have thought that was right, but when you look back at question time over the last three days that is exactly what it has been. The questions have not been serious ones like: 'What are you going to do? How can we help? What is the best way to advance Australia's future here?' They have been all about: 'Is it true that this was said in the party room? What do you say about this comment in the paper?' Those are nothing that I think would aid Australians when it comes to this debate in any way, shape or form.

I will touch on just one other issue, that of our obligations to the globe and part of that trilemma that I mentioned at the commencement of my contribution. We are told that we need to adhere to our global obligations when it comes to emissions reduction. I do not think there are that many people who would argue against that. But I suppose that the other end of that is that we need to take into account the global situation—how we stack up as a country against other emitters across the globe. If we are genuinely interested in emissions reduction then we should be genuinely interested in our brothers and sisters overseas committing to emissions reduction too. We cannot go it alone, as it has been said previously. We do have an obligation and we should adhere to that. But if you look at other countries—China and India, for example—they are high emitters. And, yes, I know they are very different countries to ours. We do have to take into account what they do and what they plan to do to meet global obligations that we have been told we need to meet, as well, and we have to look at their challenge relative to our own.

I will conclude on that note. I do thank Senator Xenophon for bringing on this debate. It is good to have the ability to air my personal views on this issue—and from the Tasmanian perspective. I look forward to seeing the debate unfold over months to come.