Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to speak in the adjournment tonight. In the debate on climate change policy the government has not shown itself to be above the rhetoric of personal demonisation and straw-man argument. The government has not shown itself to be above casting aspersions on the character and motives of anyone who might raise an eyebrow at its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Anyone who dares question the gospel according to Penny Wong is tarred with the brush of being a climate change denier. Anyone who questions not the essence of the climate challenge but the manner in which the Rudd government addresses it is derided as a ‘flat-earther’. I do not endorse the ‘Chicken Little’ view of climate change—I don’t believe the sky is falling—but I do care about the environment. And I resent the imputations coming from the other side of this chamber that anyone who does not slavishly endorse Labor’s view of climate change is a soulless despoiler of the earth.

The government is engaged in a bit of its own denial by turning a blind eye to the potentially devastating impact of its flawed emissions trading scheme. In her high-minded focus on the politics of perceived action, Senator Wong has lost sight of places like Geelong and Gippsland where thousands of livelihoods are at stake. The coalition believes that a well-designed emissions trading scheme is an essential element of responsible environmental policy, and I use the adjective ‘well-designed’ very carefully. But the devil is always in the detail. A national ETS is such a sensitive issue that a flawed scheme could have a catastrophic effect on the Australian economy.

In that regard I would like to talk tonight about the emissions trading scheme related concerns of many of my constituents. The people of Geelong and district stand to be the most affected of any Australian community by the adoption of an emissions trading scheme. A number of Geelong area business leaders have felt a growing and a real concern about their city’s vulnerability to the Rudd government’s ETS plan, which is ill conceived and ill considered. Last month these leaders kindly attended a meeting with me and my colleague from the other place the member for Goldstein and shadow minister for emissions trading design, Andrew Robb. In attendance were representatives from the Geelong Chamber of Commerce, the Geelong Manufacturing Council, the Committee for Geelong, Ford and Alcoa. They are worried, and deservedly so. The stakes for them are exceedingly high, and my understanding is that today Alcoa has put off some 38 workers.

A recent study by the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research found that 51 per cent of the Geelong region’s GDP and 41 per cent of its employment is dependent, either directly or indirectly, on the manufacturing sector. And as Mr Robb, from the other place, remarked:

The thing that struck me in my meeting with major industries and Geelong community organisations was the fact that Geelong is the region in Australia most exposed to an emissions trading scheme. Geelong has the biggest carbon footprint in Australia with aluminium smelters, the Ford production plant, oil refineries, cement works and other energy intensive industries.

In the words of the Committee for Geelong:

The inherent complexity of the proposed scheme presents few “knowns” in terms of how Geelong will be affected, which of our industries will be involved directly or indirectly and how expected flow-on costs burdens will eventuate.

The committee therefore encourages the government to proceed with framing and implementing the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme with great caution.

The Geelong Chamber of Commerce expressed similar sentiments in its submission to the Rudd government’s ETS green paper:

The Chamber is seriously concerned at the extreme vulnerability of the Geelong region with the introduction of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme because of the make-up of its main industries and the major effect that the Scheme will have on them.

…            …            …

So if the Rudd Government gets it wrong, there will quite literally be hell to pay for thousands of Australian working families.

According to Per Capita, a self-described independent, progressive think tank, the Rudd government’s proposed emissions trading plan will cost 650 jobs in Geelong alone. And the Australian Workers Union warned that Labor’s ETS could put at risk ‘the future of the whole aluminium industry’. Even some of the Prime Minister’s own backbenchers have been feeling a little mutinous because they see the economic writing on the wall and they recognise its political implications.

The Sydney Morning Herald,reported earlier today that my colleague ALP Senator Hutchins warned about the economic hazard posed by the unilateral adoption of an ETS during an economic downturn. And Labor’s Senator Sterle was featured in the same article complaining that Western Australia’s liquefied natural gas industry would lose billions in investment capital under the Prime Minister’s emissions trading scheme. So ‘hasten slowly’ should be our watchword where an ETS is involved. It is said that only fools rush in where angels fear to tread. While there is no doubt that we need to act, we must be certain that the something we do will make matters better and not worse. The experience of our neighbours across the Tasman should serve as a cautionary tale of environmental misjudgement and miscalculation.

During the debate on the ratification of the Kyoto protocol in 2002, New Zealand’s Labour government contended that it would actually make money from the deal. The government argued that New Zealand had so much hydroelectric power and so much forest acreage to serve as a carbon sink that the Kiwis would set up the country for the future by selling emissions credits to other nations. ‘Would you burn a cheque for $500 million?’ asked the then New Zealand Minister Responsible for Climate Change Issues, Peter Hodgson. But after the rhetoric came reality and the reality hit with the impact of a multibillion-dollar body blow to Wellington’s bottom line. ‘Kyoto bill creates $1 billion deficit’ blared the front-page headline of the 17 June 2005 edition of the New Zealand Herald and the article’s leading paragraph declared, ‘Taxpayers will be at least $1 billion worse off under revised government estimates of the costs of the Kyoto treaty to combat global warming.’ Since that time, New Zealand’s Kyoto emissions balance sheet has remained consistently in the red.

The example of New Zealand demonstrates the pitfalls of pratfalls that come from a faulty emissions trading strategy. As the waggish 19th century British Prime Minister Lord Melbourne famously quipped: ‘Nobody ever did anything very foolish except from some strong principle.’ And it is worth reminding the Australian people that the first Australian Prime Minister to propose an ETS was named John Howard. The coalition are in agreement with Labor that climate change is a serious problem, and we are well aware that Australia’s energy production should be largely emissions free by 2050. This is a daunting task, but a task where close international coordination and cooperation are indispensable. In the words of the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Turnbull:

The most heroic efforts in Australia will be of no effect if they are not matched by similar action everywhere including the rapidly industrialising developing economies such as China and India—

Andrew Robb, from the other place, made similar comments, but with a more Victorian focus:

… it is critical to get any emissions trading scheme right or thousands of jobs in Geelong are threatened … and the Rudd Government must not rush this process.

It should find out whether the rest of world is part of the scheme because there is no Australian solution to climate change, only a global solution.

The coalition are not of the view that being business friendly and environmentally friendly are mutually contradictory propositions. We believe that trade-exposed, emissions-intensive manufacturers must be protected until an international climate change agreement will ensure that carbon is priced comparably throughout the world. Without such protection, our heavy industries would simply move offshore to more economically hospitable climes. Without such protection, tens of thousands of Australian jobs would be lost.

But, in our focus on the here and now, we must not forget the technologies of next year and next decade. We believe that renewable energy should be a focal point of our national research effort. In the words of our own national anthem:

Our land abounds in nature’s gifts …

We have a surfeit of sunlight, wind and wave power just waiting to be harnessed for our use. We should have neither illusions nor delusions that the transition to a low-emission economy will be easy; it will not be. But it is a necessity. Our generation is tasked with a unique responsibility and a unique opportunity—the opportunity to make the future better without making the present worse. Let us proceed wisely, ensuring that the generations to come will want not because we have wasted not.