John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to this debate. It's a serious and severe drought. I remember the drought of 1977 in South Australia, when my father said I could have my first paddock of barley. Sixty-three acres I sowed into barley. It was a drought when we harvested the barley. It just covered the freight, the contract harvesting and the fertiliser bill. There was nothing left—my first lesson on farming.

I remember so well the '82 drought and the '94 drought, where grain prices went through the roof. We had a piggery and were paying $240 to $250 per tonne of wheat and barley. When we sold our pigs at the end of each month, we didn't have enough money at the pig sales to cover the grain prices, let alone the work, the electricity and everything else my brother Peter and I had to contribute. How well I remember the 2002 drought.

I've been very lucky where I'm situated, where my wife, Nancy, and I farm near Inverell. We had 39 inches of rain last year and average rainfall of around 29 inches. We had 36 inches the year before. We had hay in the shed. Sadly, we've only got two bales left. With rains in March this year, I got oat sown. We fluked some further rains after that—a couple of inches. It is amazing how patchy the rain was. My good friend, Storm Baldwin, just 10 kilometres down the road, when I had two inches of rain, had not a drop. We were lucky to get another 43 mils about five weeks ago and a few more crops sown.

What amazes me is that people in this chamber think that we're going to change the planet. No, we are not. If Senator McAllister is serious about reducing carbon emissions, team up with the Greens and your left wing. Go across to China and protest in a couple weeks time about the extra 299 units of coal-fired power generation being constructed to add to 2,107 units already in action. Those extra coal generations being built in China will produce 670 million tonnes of CO2 a year. We produce a total of 550 million tonnes a year in Australia. Just those extras in China will produce more than the whole of Australia. Somehow we think if we reduce our emissions from 550 million tonnes to 500 we're going to change the planet. Senator McAllister says that Labor in government will have cuts right across the board—the transport industry and the generation industry. They'll probably attack the agricultural industry as well.

I remember well, when we had the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, about 90 million tonnes of CO2 were put into the atmosphere. I said to the department, 'What goes here? Do you count that?' and the department said: 'No. When the grass burns, it grows again and absorbs the CO2, so we don't count that.' That can be the same for the farmers and graziers as well: when the cattle eat the grass, the grass grows again, and that will neutralise it. That's how the department works with bushfires; it can do the same with agriculture. If you think winding back our cattle and sheep numbers is going to change the planet, you are off this planet, seriously.

The number of coal-fired generation plants being built is amazing—32 units in Indonesia, 34 units in Vietnam, 10 units in Japan and 130-odd units in India. Guess what they're going to burn in those coal-fired generation plants. They're going to burn coal. Will they burn more efficient, Australian coal? Of course they won't, because the green movement and the Labor Party are opposing coalmines. So they won't buy the more efficient, blacker coal in Australia, the older coal that puts out fewer emissions; they'll choose the less efficient brown coal from Indonesia, China et cetera and, on a global scale, produce more CO2. And you think, through this motion here, you're going to do away with droughts! This is just amazing.

The big drought of the late 1800s and early 1900s, from 1897 to 1902, was a drought that so many of our grandparents talked about, the severe one. Drought has been going on for a long time. If you think you're going to change drought by upping our CO2-emissions reductions in this country when the rest of the world, the big emitters such as China and India, are producing more and more—Dr Finkel told Senator Macdonald at Senate estimates that Australia could reduce all of its emissions, the whole lot, and the change to the planet would be virtually nothing. We're going down this costly road for energy, shifting our industries overseas and shutting down manufacturing. Those industries are going overseas to countries where it's cheaper to produce and manufacture, and they are actually producing more CO2 than they would have if they had stayed here. The cement industry is a classic example. If you produce a tonne of cement in Australia, you make 0.8 of a tonne of CO2; if you produce a tonne of cement in China, it will be 1.1 tonnes of CO2. Under that stupid carbon tax of the previous Labor government—which we're never going to have—which threatened to shut down our cement industry and shift it to China, we would actually produce more CO2 for the 10 million tonnes of cement we produce in Australia.

I'm amazed at the poisonous gases in the atmosphere. When you see the pollution in places like Vietnam and Hong Kong, that is not CO2. CO2 is odourless, colourless and non-toxic. But what are we doing to reduce the poisonous gases—the carbon monoxide, lead, sulphur and smoke? We don't hear any complaints about that. The poisonous gases are all right; just keep them going up and up around the world. You go to countries where you don't even see the sun and you don't see any stars. Luckily, I live out on a farm where you can see the stars, sadly too often at the moment because there's no cloud at night. But to think that you're going to change the planet—go to those countries, Greens senators. Line up with your left-wing Labor senators. Go there and protest about the building of new coal-fired generation and see how you get on. You won't get on very well at all.