Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Bernardi for raising this very important subject as a matter for debate today. There is certainly a need for the government to take immediate and meaningful steps to reduce electricity prices. I am very proud and pleased to say that I am part of a government that has been doing just that over recent times. The Senate will be well aware that the coalition federal government had the courage—some might say 'stupidity', but let me use the word 'courage'—to intervene in what has, up until now, been an issue for state governments. Many people—and, I might say, including me—asked, 'Why does the Commonwealth want to get involved in an issue that the state governments have shown themselves just absolutely incapable of dealing with?' We saw the fiasco under the Labor government in your state of South Australia, Senator Bernardi, where they couldn't keep the lights on at all. There are difficulties with the Labor state of Victoria, where the Labor government can't work out whether they want brown coal or black coal. My own state of Queensland is apparently anti-coalmining, yet the budget of my home state of Queensland is run by a typically financially incompetent and corrupt Labor government. They simply need the royalties from coalmining to balance their budget. And what they don't get from royalties for coal—they use the profits from the government owned generating company to pay them huge dividends every year so that they can make some attempt to balance the budget in my home state of Queensland.

In my state one of the real problems—why we pay such a lot for our electricity—is that all the generating companies in Queensland are owned by the Labor government. They rip out huge profits from residents and businesses in Queensland each year. Senator Bernardi spoke about the Paris climate change accord. To a degree, I agree with what he said, although we don't need to legislate on emissions from Australia, because the target that was set for Australia—about 26½ per cent—Australia has all but met, and we're confident that within the time required Australia will be one of the few countries in the world that will meet its emission reduction targets. Many other countries pay lip service to it. They get a warm, fuzzy feeling from saying what they're going to do. But very few of them do as Australia does and actually meet those commitments. I agree with Senator Bernardi that we don't need to legislate for that. It is, after all, an aspirational target, and certainly Australia's aspirations have been to meet what we committed to. But again, like Senator Bernardi, I don't think that we should be legislated to meet targets set by others who barely do the work themselves.

Senator Bernardi also mentioned some of my friends in Pacific Island countries who, cleverly—they might be Pacific Islanders, but there's no doubting their wisdom and their ability to extract a dollar where they see it—talk about how they need money for climate change. And I say to them: 'You don't mean climate change, do you? You mean resilience to climate change.' I'm one of those who acknowledge that the climate is changing—because it always has. Once upon a time the earth was covered in snow. Once upon a time there was a rainforest in the centre of Australia. Clearly those two things don't happen anymore, so the climate has obviously changed. If carbon emissions were the cause of that—and I say 'if'—then Australia's contribution to carbon emissions is less than 1.4 per cent of the world's carbon emissions.

As Senator Williams mentioned earlier, I asked the Chief Scientist, Dr Finkel, at an estimates committee hearing not long ago what impact Australia's emissions have on the changing climate of the world, and his answer was, 'Virtually none.' So, there is virtually no impact from Australia on any climate change from Australia's emissions, yet the Labor Party would have us increase our emissions reduction to somewhere around 50 per cent; I think those are their latest dreamings. The Greens want 80 per cent or 100 per cent. As the Chief Scientist says, we can make it 100 per cent and it will make absolutely no difference to the world's climate change, because Australia's emissions are so small. Emissions from China, Russia, India and America keep rising, and none of those countries are involved in the Paris climate change accord. So, again, I agree with Senator Bernardi on those sorts of issues.

This is a government that has taken on the task that should have been the task of state governments, most of which are Labor. But our government wouldn't stand by and see Australians being slugged with unaffordable increases in the cost of electricity, so we've taken on the challenge. It's not easy, but we're doing what the states should have been doing over the past 10 years, because we understand that Australian families are struggling with the cost of living and rising power prices. We know that small business, which is the backbone of the economy, is also struggling with power prices. In fact, a constituent who owns a skating rink in Townsville and the same sort of facility in Bundaberg came to see me and told me that he is paying almost three times as much for electricity in Townsville as he is in Bundaberg—so work that out and tell me how that operates. You have to ask the Queensland government owned electricity generator and retailer what that's all about.

I live in North Queensland, not far from an area that has unlimited quantities of high-quality black coal. That is the coal that used to give Australia a competitive advantage by providing perhaps some of the cheapest and most efficient electricity anywhere in the world. But over the years the Greens political party and the Labor Party have ignored the interests of their workers and of the residents of Australia, who are now paying enormous prices for electricity. Because Labor and the Greens are concentrating on renewable power, which is highly subsidised by the taxpayer and very expensive for the consumer, electricity prices have gone up, while huge reserves of high-quality black coal not far from where I live are left untapped. As a very good ad on the television at last says, 'We export all this to Japan, which is converting Australian coal into high-energy, low-emissions energy. We export our coal to the world, but we can't use it in Australia, according to the Labor Party and the Greens.' I'm pleased to say that even the CFMEU, not a union that I usually have much truck with, at least now is working out that the Labor Party's policy on renewable energy is wrong and not good for the workers it's supposed to represent.

To conclude, I see Senator Burston sitting here, who I'm delighted to say told me earlier—I hope this is right, and it is not for me to promote Mr Clive Palmer, I might say—that Mr Palmer has announced that he is going to build a coal-fired power station in the Galilee Basin with his own money. If that is correct, Senator Burston, then all credit to Mr Palmer, because if he does that we will be able to get cheaper electricity into the grid from a modern, efficient, low-emissions, coal-fired power station in Queensland. I am delighted. I hope that information is correct, Senator Burston, because that would really brighten my day.

This government is concerned about the rising cost of electricity for ordinary Australians. We have taken steps to see how we can force the generation companies and the states into reducing that cost, because we are concerned about the cost of living for all Australians.