Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

What a night—from one bill that will have a negative impact on the Australian economy to another! And what a way it has arrived in this place. This legislation, the Safeguard Mechanism (Crediting) Amendment Bill 2022, is the subject of a Senate inquiry and, of course, a secret backroom deal where dodgy agreements have been reached in secret with no transparency, and here we are now, at the eleventh hour, dealing with this bill. We'll be sitting late into the night, I expect, to hear contributions from across the chamber.

It's a dodgy deal we should have seen coming. It's one that we should have expected because there is form developing here. This is what the world looks like now. Post the last federal election the Australian Labor Party are relying on the Australian Greens to do business in this country. It's this new power-sharing arrangement, a new coalition, and the end result we are seeing, every step of the way—and I should know; I'm from Tasmania. I've seen what happens when these deals are struck up. It's never good. Just a tip: punters always miss out. Power prices always go up. The cost of living always goes up. It's harder for people to achieve their dreams.

This dodgy deal, as I say, is one we should have seen coming. This dodgy deal between Labor and the Greens is one that's going to drive up power prices and drive industry, and those jobs attached to those businesses, offshore. This dodgy deal won't improve environmental outcomes at all, contrary to some of the assertions. It's actually going to make them worse globally. We are part of the world. We're not just some bubble out off to the side. We actually do contribute to global emissions. When they're offshored, as this bill will drive emissions offshore, this problem simply becomes something elsewhere for someone else to deal with, not for us.

It was most interesting, on the road to where we are today to finally be debating this bill in the Senate, to observe the faux interest in accountability we observed from the Greens. On the way through in the Senate inquiry we heard evidence from various stakeholders who were concerned about the impacts, some who were, of course, supportive of what was before them. This was before any of the secret deals had been hatched between Labor and the Greens. There was this faux interest in accountability. It was about the modelling that underpins this legislation, modelling that the government wasn't going to release to us.

They hid behind this ridiculous claim of public interest immunity—complete contempt for the Senate. It's our right, as senators, to see this information, to understand what it is we're voting on, to make sure we're apprised of all the facts. I went along with this. My colleagues Senator Hanson-Young and Senator David Pocock on the Senate inquiry into this legislation all made it clear that it was not acceptable. It was not okay that this modelling was hidden from us—modelling that would give us some assurance that what this bill was proposing to do could actually be achieved. That is, that businesses that couldn't meet their emissions reduction targets could rely on carbon credits or safeguard mechanism credits to offset their emissions to continue to trade here. The alternative is they have to pay a penalty. This tax is a $275-a-tonne tax for businesses. That is not going to make the cost of doing business lower. That is not going to drive down the cost of manufacturing. It is not going to create jobs. It is, in fact, going to make it all worse.

So here we were, all of us—everyone except the government—asking for this information. All the while, the same people I was sitting in the committee with, asking for this information, were cooking up a sneaky backroom deal to get this bill through. As I said before, we should have seen it coming. But we genuinely asked the question, 'How could we actually vote on this legislation without this information?' It's a concern I still have. We don't have this modelling. We don't know. We have no further comfort that this bill will do what the government tells us it will. All we have is: 'Trust us. We've got modelling. We've seen it. We know what we're talking about.' I guarantee you that through the duration of this debate, and through the committee stage, we won't be given anything by way of supporting information.

But the one thing that did change was that those I was teaming up with to move motions to demand that this information be released suddenly don't think it's important anymore. They are now happy to bring this bill on for debate, to rush it through this week without the modelling that was so important, that we had all this concerns about. As I say, we should have seen it coming. It's just another Labor-Greens stitch-up, and one that is becoming all too commonplace in this parliament. This is the brave new world of Labor-Greens politics in Australia, where these deals are hatched. The people that pay for these deals, of course, are going to be the people of Australia. They're going to pay for these deals—this one in particular, much like the one we've just voted on—with higher power prices. This new tax on heavy emitting industries, carbon intensive industries, is going to drive up the cost of electricity.

You don't really have to take my word for it. You can actually go and listen to the concerns and the complaints of industry. In good faith, industry peak bodies and entities right across this country have worked with government to try and minimise the harm that legislation like this will do to their sectors. I would dearly love them to speak up a bit louder about the concerns they have, because we'll be in their corner, fighting with them, but instead they've gone along with it. Let's have a look at some of the concerns that have been raised about the impact that this legislation will have on the economy, all elements of it—everything from the cost of living and the cost of doing business like power prices, like the cost of fuel and like inputs to housing and construction. Let's look at what it does to certainty around gas supply.

We'll start with Saul Kavonic from Credit Suisse. He's their energy analyst. He said that while the safeguard reform deal with the Greens is a far cry from a ban on new oil and gas, 'it certainly doesn't indicate new oil and gas supply is welcome'. He also said:

It lays the groundwork for more obstacles to new investment in gas supply, contrary to Labor's recent message that Australia needs more gas supply.

This is what happens when a government does a deal with their natural bedfellows, the Australian Greens. It starts to make it harder to bring on the essentials we need to have a functioning economy.

Samantha McCulloch, the chief executive officer of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, said that the deal would ultimately make Australia's climate change targets harder and more costly to meet, given the importance of gas in providing a backup for renewables, and:

New gas supply investment needs policy and regulatory certainty but instead, the Labor-Greens deal creates additional barriers to investment, further diminishing the investment environment and adding to the growing list of regulatory challenges facing the sector.

The changes announced today strengthen the need for strong government direction on critical step change technologies such as carbon, capture and storage (CCS).

But I tell you what, I don't reckon we're going to see much of that, if that Greens tail continues to wag this Labor dog.

Andrew McKellar, the CEO of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that the assurance that energy affordability and supply have not been compromised in this deal with the Greens has not been given. He says:

While we welcome the certainty that an agreement will bring, business remains concerned about access to affordable and reliable energy—

and I could go on. But the point, which is a very clear and straightforward one, is that this legislation, designed to bring down emissions, has a further far-reaching impact than just doing that. This is no longer carrot; it's all stick. It's a blunt instrument, and it's gotten worse in the last 24 to 36 hours because the government found some dark room somewhere in this building—probably smoke-filled, who knows—and did dodgy deals with a group who are actually not pro industry, who are not pro job. The end result, as I say, is that Australians are going to be paying a lot more for their electricity and all of the other inputs into their daily lives. Australians are going to be paying more for every single one of the essentials they rely on every day.

Businesses are going to suffer too, and it's not just going to be the 215 big emitters that were originally caught under the safeguard mechanism. They, of course, are directly impacted by these decreasing baselines, the 4.9 per cent per annum to the year 2030. And, of course, if they can't meet those targets and if they can't offset those targets then they have to pay the penalty. That's bad. They are going to be making investment decisions based on this new tax that Labor and the Greens are putting on these businesses, sending a chilling message out to the rest of the world that we really aren't open for business. For the small- to medium business enterprises in their hundreds, if not thousands, that work with these big businesses—that rely on contracts with these big businesses for maintenance, for upgrades, for other services they provide—that work will dry up. The small to medium businesses are going to be paying more for energy and other inputs that these large emitters put in. They're going to become uncompetitive. Business and productivity will slow. Productivity is going to be driven down by this legislation.

It's just so ironic. The last bill that we dealt with in this place was something that the government vaunted as this manufacturing boon-creating piece of legislation. It's going to open up the economy and drive all sorts of new innovation and high-paying jobs. And here we are with the next bill bringing in taxes and arrangements that are going to drive jobs and productivity offshore. In addition to that, it's going to drive emissions offshore. This is not good: jobs will be lost; the economy will slow; everyone will be worse off. And here we are dealing with legislation that should be stopped. This legislation is going to do all of this.

Basic economics has gone out the window here. I touched on this before, with regard to the CEO of Appia talking about the need to bring on gas as one of the step-change technologies for supporting a transition to renewables. The fact is all of the levers that are being pulled by this government, in partnership with the Greens, are going to drive down the incentive and drive away the interests in investing in gas exploration. We need it. We can't just switch it off tomorrow, because if we don't have it there, coming on, we will be having blackouts this winter. If we go down this pathway of banning fossil fuels, which is what the Greens have told us their deal on this legislation will do, we will not be able to cater for the economic and energy needs that this country has. And so economics is gone, the laws of demand and supply have been ignored and we've been warned about the impact that these changes in laws will have. But it has fallen on deaf ears when it comes to this government, and of course to the Australian Greens.

As I said before, we are part of the globe, we are part of a global economy, we are a part of a world that has a global environmental responsibility. It's not something we can just look at in isolation and pretend everything that happens offshore from this country is not our responsibility. These laws will not improve environmental outcomes. They won't improve economic outcomes. They are, indeed, inflationary. As I said before, it is a new tax.

I have many concerns about the nature of some of the amendments that have been talked about in the media—circulated, I guess, at the eleventh hour—these 20 pieces of silver that they've been given in return for supporting this legislation—legislation, incidentally, that doesn't seem to have been met with universal acclaim from one of the supporting parties. Indeed, I was looking at reports today about a tweet from one of our colleagues here, Senator McKim, who said:

We have been in negotiations with the corrupt, ecocidal government of a petro-state that was prepared to hold a gun to the head of future generations by threatening to blow up climate action unless they could continue to approve massive new coal and gas projects.

He said this on Twitter on Monday night. This is coming off the back of foundation life member and former senator Bob Brown, who is a man of conviction. Whether you agree with him or not, you know where you stand with him. You know he's never, ever, ever going to change his view on stuff when he says, 'This is what I believe, and this is what I'm going to do.' He resigned from the Australian Conservation Foundation because of their support for this disastrous piece of legislation. He has different views about this. He doesn't like it for different reasons than I don't like it, but I tell you what: he's going to stick to his guns, hold his nerve and stick to his values and what he believes to be right.

I can't say the same for the Australian Greens. They have done a deal which does not meet with the demands. I will be interested to see what former senator Bob Brown says over coming months about the Greens and their new deal with their friends here, their coalition partners, the Australian Labor Party. But, at the end of the day, do you know what? I can say all of these things, but they will ignore what I say. Power prices will go up. The cost of doing business will go. There is, as there was with the gas price cap legislation at the end of last year, one test for this, and it's going to come in the middle of this year.