Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I would like to speak to the Department of Environment and Energy's Quarterly Update on Australia's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory. In speaking to this report, emissions for the year to June 2019 are estimated to be down some 0.1 per cent on the previous year. For a nation that is supposed to be reducing its climate change impacts, for a country that is as energy intensive as we are, that is an abysmal failure. And it would have been even worse had it not been for the significant gains in the renewable energy sector that have made some room in those results. The increases in hydro and wind generation—and a decrease in coal and natural gas generation—have assisted this reduction of emissions in these sectors.

But what I want to highlight to the chamber today is that the other factor that has seen a reduction in emissions is truly tragic. The report says:

Strong growth in emissions from stationary energy and fugitive emissions were offset by the combination of the ongoing reduction in emissions from electricity and the effects of the drought on agriculture.

It is tragic that it took the drought across Queensland and New South Wales and the loss of some 600,000 head of cattle to give us this number. The government and those opposite carry on about meeting our climate change emissions targets. You need to have a good hard look at yourself in terms of the policies that lead to disastrous outcomes like this—and by 'policies' I mean a complete lack of leadership in the climate change base. I know you are not entirely responsible for global climate change, but the simple fact is that Australia has been missing in global leadership on these debates. We might be responsible for only a couple of per cent of the world's pollution but the rest of the world looks at the fact that we are incredibly high emitters per capita. We need to be seen globally to be pulling our weight in order to argue strongly that others should do the same. Farming communities are feeling the full effect of a changing climate. We've had no real global action on climate change that has seen global emissions come down. We can see that very much linked now to our drying climate. We want a government that's serious about energy policy and serious about climate change.

I note that the report also shows large gains in fugitive emissions, and that this is due to an increase in gas extraction and processing in Australia, particularly in my home state of WA. Gas production during this quarter increased by 10.1 per cent. But the problem is that this government has left us with no framework of accountability for driving down emissions in these sectors. Under our policies we had an overall cap that meant that when you had rises in one sector you would have been able to offset them as efficiently as possible and drive down emissions in other sectors as well. But there is no accountability under this government.

Today, as we've heard a number of times, marks 10 years since the Senate voted against the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a scheme that would have given us that accountability. Under that scheme, Australia's emissions would have been reduced by 81 million tonnes a year. As this report shows, we're now on a trajectory that will see emissions rise until at least 2030 according to the government's own projections. So it's heartening that projects like Chevron's Gorgon are now sequestering carbon and storing it underground. While the Gorgon project began extracting gas two years ago, the capture and storage project only became operational a few months ago, and there have been no costs to the operator in that time. I understand the importance of the minerals and resources sector, but we need a government that shows leadership and accountability for these emissions. (Time expired)