Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Families and Communities) Share this | Hansard source

Climate change and energy have been in the media again this week after reports that this issue was raised by disgruntled voters on polling day in Victoria on Saturday. I'm always glad to see climate change being discussed, but I think it does a disservice to the issue to speak about it just as an electoral question. The government doesn't need to address climate change because of what happened in Brighton or Hawthorn or, indeed, Wentworth. The government needs to address climate change because of what is happening to the Great Barrier Reef, what is happening to our bushfire season and, indeed, what the science tells us is happening all around the world.

The need to act is real, and the government is failing to meet it. There is no plan at all to address climate change. What is their policy on climate and energy? Minister Cormann was asked about it repeatedly in question time today and it was very clear that there is no answer. There's a jumbled set of recommendations that draw on a really important report by the ACCC, but it goes nowhere near being a comprehensive energy policy. It goes nowhere near creating the kind of long-term certainty that industry tells us again and again and again that they require if they are going to invest. That's what's needed right now.

We need to be very clear about the problem in the energy sector. It is an investment strike. Investors in that sector are saying that, until there is clarity and until there is certainty about energy policy, they will not be in a position to make the necessary investments. All the while, our existing capital stock is running down. It's past its used-by date. It is going to need to be replaced, and that's going to need private sector investment. But no-one will invest while the government is all over the shop about the energy policy that they propose. Part of it is a failure to be able to deal with emissions reduction. Nothing about the energy policy that they've got at the moment—weak as it is—deals in any way with climate change. It's confirmed explicitly by no less than the energy minister. Mr Taylor, in the other place, has stated:

Emissions reductions are the least of our problems …

Tell that to the people of Kiribati. Tell that to the people who risk having their livelihoods eroded by damage to the Great Barrier Reef. Tell that to the people who work in the alpine area during the ski season as each year we see a decreasing likelihood we'll get the kind of snow cover necessary to sustain a skiing area. Tell that to people whose houses will be threatened by bushfire. Tell that to people who are at risk of very serious illness or death owing to the increasing frequency and severity of heatwaves. Tell them that emissions reductions are the least of our problems.

Emissions reduction ought to be at the forefront of our thinking, but this government cannot come to terms with it. They are bereft of policy ideas. The environment minister, Melissa Price, has indicated that the government may revive the Direct Action policy, a relic of the Abbott period. We're five years in and back to what was always a cobbled-together policy. Direct Action is expensive and ineffective. It is a form of corporate welfare. Research confirms that many of the projects funded through the Direct Action program are projects that would have gone ahead anyway. Landfill operators have been awarded subsidies in each of the auctions. Their projects, often, were already generating revenue from electricity sales and already generating revenue from renewable energy certificates.

Advice from the Wilderness Society is that land clearing undertaken in states where the LNP have wiped out land clearing protections has basically taken out all of the value obtained by the $1.5 billion in taxpayer funded emissions gains. That's according to the government's own figures. So public money that was spent cutting greenhouse gas emissions by planting trees and restoring habitat under the coalition's own Direct Action policy will effectively have been negated by little more than two years of forest clearing elsewhere in the country. It is a hopeless joke.

The $2.5 billion Emissions Reduction Fund has contracts to present 124 million tonnes of emissions through vegetation projects, but, in the same period, forest clearing has released more than 160 million tonnes of carbon dioxide since the fund began in 2015.

The very sad thing is that there has been no lack of options for this government. But, like a fussy toddler, they've just taken everything that's been given to them, chewed it up and spat it out. We understand, more than anyone in this chamber, the need for bipartisanship. We've offered bipartisanship, because we think that's what the country deserves and what industry deserves. We offered it for the emissions intensity scheme, but that was vetoed by then Prime Minister Abbott. We offered it for the clean energy target developed by Dr Finkel, and that was also vetoed by Prime Minister Abbott. We offered it for the National Energy Guarantee, the next iteration of their policy mess, but that was first abandoned by Prime Minister Turnbull and then ignored by Prime Minister Morrison.

Why does this government keep proposing energy policies and strategies and then abandoning them? It is because they are fundamentally divided. They cannot work out what they stand for on energy policy. They cannot come to any internal settlement about how they ought to approach this question, because half their party room doesn't even believe climate change is real. Many of them are in this chamber, and I'm certain their contributions this afternoon will reflect that.

The government is wrong. We do need action on emissions. Climate change has, in one way or another, cost the Liberal Party two Prime Ministers, but the Liberal Party's inaction on climate change has really cost Australians. Australia's emissions in this last year, once you exclude unreliable data on land use in forestry, were the highest on record, and it's the third consecutive year for record-breaking emissions. At this rate, we will not meet our Paris commitments. No amount of wishfully saying, 'We've met them in the past and that in itself is sufficient guarantee that we'll meet them in the future,' will cut it. You actually need a policy. Prices are going up. Industry tell us that it is the uncertainty in the market that is driving up prices, and they are demanding action.

Back when the Finkel review came out, the Business Council chief executive, Jennifer Westacott, said:

Australia hasn't a moment to lose now that we have a comprehensive, independent blueprint to restore the security, reliability and affordability of our electricity system.

The CEO of Energy Australia and a board member of the Reserve Bank, Catherine Tanna, has said, 'The solution to high prices is a national plan to transition the future of energy into renewables.' How has the government responded to this? With nothing—nothing about the future emissions intensity of our energy system. They have the big stick of divestment, which they talked about endlessly, but that is a policy that is almost entirely bereft of support or friends. How far from the pack have the coalition government drifted if the BCA is criticising them on their policy because it provides insufficient certainty to industry? The BCA have described the government's current energy plan as 'ad hoc' and 'extreme' and, like Ms Bishop, they have urged the government to adopt the NEG.

We have a plan to reduce emissions. I say this to the Greens political party: it doesn't matter if a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice. The real thing that matters when it comes to the environment and when it comes to climate is your target. I will tell you what our target is. It is zero net emissions by 2050 and 50 per cent renewables by 2030. We know that investment in technology will be necessary to meet that. That's why we've announced support for batteries and that's why we're saying that we will double the investment for the CEFC. Research and analysts are telling us that the best policies not only have an impact on emissions; they will drive prices down. That's the basis of the Labor policy. That's the policy we've put together, because we know renewables are the cheapest form of new generation.

We know that we need new generation capacity, and we know that we cannot afford to muck around any longer. We have had five years of inaction. Consumers are suffering, the environment is suffering and, frankly, confidence in our national political process is suffering. We take climate change seriously. We take energy policy seriously on this side of the chamber. That is not a question of electoral maths; that is a question of science and a question of engineering.