Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Pursuant to standing order 74(5), I ask the Minister for the Environment and Heritage for an explanation as to why answers have not been provided to questions on notice Nos 1708 and 1709, asked on 21 April this year.

Paul Calvert (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Did you forewarn the minister of the question?

Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I did. I move:

That the Senate take note of the minister’s failure to provide either an answer or an explanation.

We have seen over the last few weeks a very intense debate generated by the Prime Minister about nuclear energy, but my questions go to the minister’s actions with regard to greenhouse emissions. I would have thought that this was a very topical issue at this point in time. To be precise, I asked the minister the following:

(1)           What environmental taxes on cars, petrol, wood and other products have recently been imposed by China.

(2)           Were these environmental taxes negotiated as part of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate; if not, how do they relate to the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.

(3)           To what extent is China using market-based mechanisms to address greenhouse abatement and/or avoidance.

(4)           To what extent is each of the other parties to the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, including Australia, using market-based mechanisms to address greenhouse abatement and/or avoidance.

(5)           To what extent is China using the expansion of nuclear power to address greenhouse abatement and/or avoidance by 2020.

(6)           Does, or will, nuclear power expansion form part of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate; if so, can details be provided.

(7)           Is it still the case that Australia’s greenhouse emissions are expected to increase by more than 20 per cent above 1990 levels by 2020; if not, what is the anticipated increase.

(8)           How does Australia’s increase above 1990 levels by 2020 compare with each of the other countries in the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.

There were several other questions along those lines but, of course, we have not heard very much about the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate in recent weeks. The debate has been totally overtaken by questions about whether Australia will move to a nuclear power future and whether we will enrich uranium in this country, ignoring totally what measures would be adopted in order for Australia to reach that massive reduction of 60 per cent on our 1990 greenhouse emission levels.

I also asked the minister a related question, following his answer to another question, which stated:

The Vision Statement for the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate explicitly includes wind power as one of the areas for collaboration by partner countries. However, no decisions have yet been made on specific implementation measures or arrangements. These issues will be discussed at the initial ministerial meeting of partner countries, which will be held in Australia in November 2005.

My questions were about that meeting. I asked:

What were the results of that meeting of partner countries with regard to renewable energy.

What we do know is that the minister has stopped two wind farms. He said today that he has given the okay to one, but two have been stopped—one in his home state, at Denmark, which I happen to know was three small turbines which were set up by a community group there. He stopped that development on the spurious grounds that it did not have community support. It was put up by the community itself as part of remote area renewable power generation, which was negotiated some time ago with the Democrats. I also wanted to know:

Have the industry development mechanisms to accelerate the generation of wind power, as proposed by the Global Wind Energy Council, been agreed to; if not, why.

We have heard nothing about that. The minister tells us all about water labelling, which again is a Democrat initiative, but we hear very little when it comes to the formal procedures which should lock Australia into heading towards these massive reductions in greenhouse energy. I asked:

Have Australia’s commitments to renewables been affected by the decision to invoke the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC) on the Bald Hills Wind Farm: if so, how.

We have heard nothing more about that, after an initial flurry in the papers. I also asked:

Can details be provided on progress with the states and territories through the Ministerial Council on Energy to reduce regulatory and technical impediments to renewable energy uptake, with a particular focus on wind energy.

The minister is so keen on wind, why have we not had answers to those questions? Why do we not have any discussion along these lines? I asked:

(a) What share of the renewable energy market does the Government consider will be captured by Australia’s renewable energy industry in: (i) 2010, (ii) 2015, and (iii) 2020; (b) what would this mean in terms of investment and export income and jobs in Australia; and (c) if no projection has been made, why not.

It is my understanding that no projection has been made. Maybe I should not have even bothered asking that question because it is very unlikely that the minister is at all interested in the wind power sector. He is much more interested, apparently, in taking Australia down the nuclear path. I asked:

What is the current estimate of greenhouse emission abatement and/or avoidance for each of the following Federal Government programs and by when will this be achieved:

(a)           $14 million Wind Energy Forecasting Capability;

(b)           $20 million Advanced Electricity Storage Technologies Program; and

(c)           $100 million Renewable Energy Development Initiative.

These are all reasonable questions. We get the usual diatribe from this minister but we never get any details on how the government programs are going that are supposed to be taking Australia in the right direction with regard to greenhouse and renewable energy. No, we do not hear anything of that sort, which is why we have to put questions like this on notice. The fact that it has taken eight weeks and still there is no sign of an answer to any of those questions suggests to me that this minister has no interest in the subject. The fact that he was not even here, knowing that I was going to ask this question, that he did not even bother to turn up, suggests there is an arrogant disregard for the parliament and its right to know when government money is being expended, what it is being expended on and how successful that is.

I think the government’s performance on this issue is really disappointing. Taking Australia down a path of a debate about nuclear energy is a diversion from all of those questions that I have asked and more that I have not read out. It is avoiding those critical debates about how Australia reaches a situation where it can reduce its greenhouse emissions by 60 per cent. The minister says this is necessary, the Prime Minister says it is necessary and even the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources now says that it is necessary. That is a really good step in the right direction. But, so far, all this government has done with that information, with that acknowledgment, is say, ‘Let us have a debate about nuclear.’

Let us go back to those questions of how we achieve this aim. It is not just a question of coal or nuclear; there is a range of other issues that need to be taken into account and a lot of other sources of energy supply that should be considered. My questions go to the core of this issue. I urge the minister not only to get those answers back to my office as soon as he can but also to answer them with some honesty, which we have not seen much of in this place, and as if they are serious questions—because they are; they are about the future of this country. I ask that they be treated with some seriousness because this minister is supposed to be about looking after the environment and heritage, and the environment is very much tied up with the amount of greenhouse emissions this country emits.

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was informed by my staff shortly after question time that someone from Senator Allison’s office did contact my office during question time—before question time.

Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. The minister is misleading the Senate. It was more than an hour ago—probably more like two to 2½ hours ago—that my office rang his office.

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order.

Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The point of order is that the minister is misleading this house, and I wish to make that point.

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order.

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I suggest that the senator is being quite churlish here. I was informed immediately after question time, as I walked back to my office, by one of my staff members that my office had been contacted. I thought it was during question time, but I then corrected myself and said ‘before question time’. We were contacted before question time by a staff member from Senator Allison’s office who said, as is the normal courtesy, that a question was overdue and that it would be raised. That staff member was given an explanation that the question was long and complex. I think if you had the patience to listen to Senator Allison’s immediate contribution you would understand that it was a long and complex question about one of the most important policies before this government—and that is our response to the greenhouse challenge that this country is faced with. We have around $2 billion worth of programs—probably dozens of programs, not to exaggerate—all aimed at addressing the challenge of providing a reliable energy supply to Australia and the world and to do so with significant reductions to greenhouse gases.

So we informed Senator Allison’s staff that we had received from the department the draft response but that it had only been received in my office some 10 days after the date for tabling. All of this information was given to Senator Allison’s staff. It may be that Senator Allison’s staff did not pass the message on to her. But it was very carefully relayed to Senator Allison’s staff that my office had just received those draft responses and that we obviously wanted to give them the sort of diligence that Senator Allison has called for here. All of that was explained to her office, and my staff thought that that was the end of the matter. They thought that we had given a legitimate, sensible and honest explanation and that that would be the end of the matter. As soon as I knew that Senator Allison was on her feet I returned to the chamber. So I think to make an allegation that I have some sort of contempt or arrogance not to address this issue in the parliament is very churlish, unfair and unjustified.

The accusation that we do not take this subject seriously really flies in the face of the facts. Under the leadership of John Howard and the initial leadership of former environment minister Robert Hill, this government has put in place a range of programs over the past decade that are unrivalled in most parts of the world. The government has put in place a comprehensive program to address how you supply energy and transportation to Australia and to the world in a way that brings down our greenhouse gas signature. I will make a couple of points that need to be made repeatedly in this debate. Firstly, Australia has been incredibly successful in meeting this challenge. We will by about 2011, depending on Australia’s economic growth over the next couple of years, have doubled the size of the Australian economy from its size in 1990, which is the year the UNFCCC, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, has chosen to make a benchmark year for emissions. So the Kyoto targets that around 35 per cent of the world, including Australia, have set for themselves use 1990 as a base year.

In that period of time, Mr Deputy President—and a Queenslander would understand this better than most people, and certainly more than a Victorian Democrat senator—Australia’s economy has roughly doubled, and Queensland and Western Australia have led that phenomenal growth which has underpinned so much of the living standard security that people have enjoyed during the nineties and this decade. We have doubled the size of the economy, yet we are on track to achieve a greenhouse signature that is only eight per cent above our 1990 level. Image that: we have doubled the size of the cake economically, doubled the size of industrial production, doubled the output from the economy and massively improved the number of jobs but increased our greenhouse signature by but eight per cent. Is that any sort of signal that we should be complacent? Of course it is not. What we do know is that in the next 10, 20 or 30 years, with good economic management, a good industrial sector, a good productive sector and all of the people of Australia working as hard as they do, we would like to see the economy expand again.

The International Energy Agency predicts that the use of energy in the world will roughly double by 2030, and we know that Australia will probably see a similar sort of expansion in its energy requirements. We also know, as Senator Allison has said, that the Australian government is making a magnificent contribution to the science that is building—a contribution that all Australians and all of the Australian science sector should be proud of. We are committing in excess of $30 million to building that science—to understanding the impacts of human induced climate change, what carbon and methane do when they accumulate in the atmosphere at the sorts of levels that we have seen over the last 100 or so years, what will happen if they keep accumulating at the rate they are accumulating at, what the impacts will be on the climate and what the impacts will be on Australia. We know from all of that science, to which Australian scientists make an extraordinary contribution, kicking way above their weight as a country and scientific community, that we will need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by around 50 to 60 per cent by 2060.

Senator Allison’s question goes to these vital issues. She asks that we respond in detail. Of course, that is exactly what my office will do. But she challenged me in her contribution to answer the question and she said that the government was not serious about renewables. We have hundreds and hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars going into direct investment in research and development of renewables, on wind, on solar, and on solar thermal. I recently opened for the CSIRO their solar centre in Newcastle. This is world-leading technology and development on solar thermal which could see a hybrid technology between solar thermal and gas, increasing the energy coefficient of the gas by around 30 per cent and therefore creating the sort of breakthrough the world needs to store renewable energy—one of the problems that the world needs to get to the nub of—by storing it in an existing fossil fuel. It is what I would call a hybrid technology. The government is pursuing world-leading energy efficiency measures. The energy efficiency legislation that passed through this parliament mandating efficiency measures for major companies and major emitters is world-leading legislation, and we have a range of other efficiency measures.

The questions that Senator Allison asks me to provide answers to her office on will in fact cover this, but we will make the point, when we answer the question with the detail and diligence and the honesty that she should expect from the government and from me on these issues, that the solution to the dual policy dilemma of stabilising and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and of providing reliable energy to Australians so that we can have job security is a multitrack and multifaceted approach. We also need to supply energy to the world so that those in developing countries who do not enjoy our living standards can at least aspire to them, and that too will be part of that multitrack, multifaceted approach.

People on the Left—and the Democrats I think could be accused of this—will tell you that you can do it all without addressing the coal issue; that you can get rid of coal, move away from fossil fuels and just go for renewables and energy efficiency. That is a very dangerous proposition because it is false and it will lead people down the wrong path. It cannot be done. All of the expert advice around the world coalesces around the fact that you need to use all of the available technologies, invest in all of them, and bring them all on as quickly as possible if you are to reach that dual goal: energy reliability and security and lower greenhouse gas emissions. I may seek to incorporate this graph in Hansard, if Hansard has got full colour, because I think that this one stabilisation triangle graph from Princeton University tells the picture better than any thousand words I can ever put down. It shows on the left-hand axis where you have got rising levels of—

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We do not think, from the picture you have shown us, that it will be able to be incorporated or in a way that will do justice to it.

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I might just table it for the edification of senators from all parties. As I said, people on the Left try to tell you that you can just do it with renewable energy and energy efficiency. People on the Right will say that you can do it with nuclear power. I put to the Senate that both of them are equally wrong. There is no silver bullet in nuclear power and there is equally no silver bullet in renewable energy or energy efficiency. The reality is that we need to invest and bring on technologies in all of these areas, in renewable energies and fuels. The Australian government are investing enormously in solar and in wind turbines, with $3 billion worth of cross-subsidies to wind energy. We approved one last week and another one today. We will build around 600 turbines under the existing program. Before 1996 there were 20; there will be 600 by the end of the current program, and we are investing more. We believe that we need to continue to build wind energy, so we are doing a wind-forecasting program to predict where wind turbines should be located so that they create the best efficiency and the best outcome. I will be taking to my ministerial counterparts at the Environment Protection and Heritage Ministers Council in Sydney on Friday week a proposal for a national wind farm code so that we can get a sensible planning approach to wind farming.

We know that we need to do carbon capture and storage. I welcome the Victorian and Queensland Labor governments coming on board and supporting the federal coalition’s Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, with $500 million being matched by the Queensland government and the Victorian government with lesser amounts and by the coal industry with $300 million, to see if we can get that breakthrough in capturing the carbon at the top of the smokestacks of coal-burning power stations and geosequestering it or in finding ways to make coal burn more cleanly.

We know that that is one of the technologies that you have to have. If you set that aside and say that you should not put money into cleaning up coal, you know that the problem cannot be solved. I refer to an eminent person on this issue, arguably one of the best informed in the world, and that is Eileen Claussen, the head of the Pugh Center’s climate change project which Australia participated in through Howard Bamsey and the dialogue at Pocantico, a two-year dialogue. She and a group of people from all around the world including Howard Bamsey, the head of the Australian Greenhouse Office, participated in this two-year project. Eileen Claussen, who was President Clinton’s climate change negotiator, said to me at a breakfast at the Montreal climate change function that she hosted that one of the immutable truths that she got out of the project was that if we do not get a breakthrough in carbon capture and storage of fossil fuels we will not solve the problem. She was not saying: don’t do all the other stuff. More than anyone else she would say that you have got to do all the other stuff. She would totally agree with this approach. But she said that one of the absolute do-or-die things for the planet is carbon capture and storage. So a member of the Clinton White House, a very well-informed person, says that you have got to do this. To those people from the Left or the Right who say it is wacky and you cannot do it and you cannot sequester carbon, firstly, I say: go to Norway and see where they have done it in Sleipner in huge quantities. Secondly, I say: go and look at the Gorgon proposal on the North-West Shelf where they intend the biggest sequestration ever anywhere in the world.

We also need a breakthrough in the efficiency of our vehicles. We need fuel efficiency, we need emissions efficiency and we need to transform our transport fleet in Australia and around the world, massively. We need fuel switching. We need to find a way to encourage people to move more to gas. The Queensland government has once again taken a lead in that area by creating a policy to move to gas. By switching to gas, you get a nearly 50 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases. We also need to globally—and this will be in the answer that Senator Allison is chasing—transform our landscape. We in Australia are leading in this area. We need to stop deforestation and to plant more trees not only for commercial reasons but also for environmental reasons.

As you would know, Mr Deputy President, we have revegetated something like 2.1 million hectares, we have invested $4 billion through our natural resource management programs, and Australia has a marvellous story to tell in relation to stopping deforestation and seeing more forests planted. Further, we need to transform our agricultural sector. We need to do all of these things. We need to move to low tillage to stop nitrogen and methane being released into the atmosphere. Senator Allison is absolutely correct about this: it is an incredibly serious issue.

We have got to get the economics of this right and we have got to get the environmental consequences of it right. That is why the Prime Minister has said that the security of the world’s energy supplies, Australia’s role in energy supplies and the greenhouse side of the equation are so serious and so important that you cannot leave one of these seven segments out of the equation. Anyone on the Left who says you have got to leave nuclear out of the equation is creating the same problem as anyone on the Right who says that renewables should be left out. They are both as bad as each other. You have to do nuclear as well. Imagine a world where we said no to nuclear. You would see France closing down 75 per cent of its power and reverting to coal or gas. That would be brilliant! Well done, Democrats—great idea! You would see the United States closing down the 20 per cent of its power that is coming from nuclear—as Senator John McCain told me on 2 January. How stupid it would be to say no to nuclear, which the Democrats would have you do, and to see the United States importing more coal, gas or oil to burn. It is the sort of idiocy that you expect from the Australian Democrats.

If this problem is going to be solved, you need to work in each one of these seven areas. You need to invest heavily in them, and the great thing about the Australian government—and all Australians should be proud of this—is that we are investing in renewables. We are investing in solar and we are investing in wind. We are investing in energy efficiency and we are investing in carbon capture and storage. We are putting massive investments into alternative energies and alternatives fuels, and we are putting massive investments into the biofuels industry, fuel switching, forests and soils. And now, because of the leadership of the Prime Minister, we are not shying from a debate that we have shied away from for too long, and that is: how do we use our uranium resources to help solve this global challenge of reliable energy, a clean future and a low greenhouse future?

I look forward to delivering to Senator Allison a comprehensive answer, diligently and honestly prepared, to all of those questions. I apologise for my office not advising me that she would get to her feet and raise this issue here today. There was clearly a breakdown in communications. My office thought that we had, through one phone call, given Senator Allison’s office a sensible and reasonable response to the query and that it would be entirely unnecessary for her to stand up here. But I do undertake to get that answer to her as quickly as I possibly can.

Question agreed to.