Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Finance and Administration, Senator Minchin, representing the Prime Minister. What is the government doing to address climate change in a way that does not threaten Australian jobs? Will the minister advise the Senate of any alternative policies?

Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Fifield for that question. Indeed, despite the misrepresentations of those opposite, this government has a very strong record in implementing practical policies to address climate change—without costing Australians their jobs. We have invested over $2 billion since 1996 in measures to address climate change, such as the $500 million Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund. We are funding practical measures to reduce emissions, such as clean coal technology and renewables, including most recently $75 million to the solar tower in Senator Fifield’s state of Victoria. We have implemented the mandatory renewable energy target, which is stimulating around $3 billion in renewable energy investment.

Yesterday, we launched a discussion paper on how we could implement emissions trading as part of an international scheme, because we do not want—unlike those opposite—to cost Australians their jobs. As Senator Abetz just outlined, creating jobs is what this government is about. We have created over two million jobs since 1996 and achieved a record unemployment rate of 4.5 per cent. We would have thought that the Labor Party, as the so-called friends of the workers, would support pro-jobs policies, but of course that is not the case. They have been captured once again by the environmental movement.

As I set out yesterday, the car industry association of this country, the FCAI, told the Labor state governments’ National Emissions Trading Taskforce that a domestic emissions trading scheme unilaterally introduced in this country would do enormous damage to Australia’s car industry and the people who work in it. ABARE, one of the most respected research bodies in this country, has modelled and released data on the sort of greenhouse gas emission cuts that Labor has announced it wants to achieve unilaterally. The ABARE modelling shows that petrol prices would double, real wages would be 21 per cent lower and agriculture would decline by 44 per cent under the policies they want to introduce.

Yesterday, as Senator Abetz noted, Labor’s star recruit showed his true colours on the subject. First, as reported by today’s Advertiser, he put question marks on Labor support for the expansion of the Olympic Dam mine in the state of South Australia. That expansion is expected to create up to 23,000 jobs. Mr Garrett is now on record as apparently wanting to stop it, to make sure those jobs are not created. As Senator Abetz pointed out, we have the Australian quoting Mr Garrett today saying, when asked about the consequences of Labor’s policies on climate change and what jobs they would cost the coal sector, that was entirely ‘hypothetical’. So, when you ask a senior shadow minister from the Labor Party what the job consequences are of their policies, he dismisses that as an entirely hypothetical question.

Mr Garrett has form on this. As ACF president he made it clear that he was only focused on renewable and clean energy. He does not care about the coal industry and he does not care about jobs in the coal industry at all. For the last three months, his leader, Mr Rudd, has been making glib statements of good intentions pretending his is a new approach. We are starting to see the details of these policies. What they confirm is that, while Mr Rudd is new—very new and very inexperienced—the policies are not. What we have and what is certain is that the Rudd-Garrett grab for green votes is going to cost Australians their jobs.