Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Earlier today I concluded the first part of my speech on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 [No. 2] and related bills by outlining my concerns with these bills creating a personal property right and the implications that would have to future amendment or repeal of the bills because of the constitutionally entrenched protection of private property. We should give much more serious consideration to the prospect of binding future generations to such a degree. Our knowledge is not perfect. This scheme does not promise to address the problem it claims to, and future generations should not be weighed down with the threat of potentially billions of dollars of compensation claims if they need to amend or repeal this scheme.

This scheme represents the single most significant change to our economy in decades. It is a hidden, embedded tax that all Australians will pay but about which none will know the details or the true costs. Indeed, as Terry McCrann has pointed out, it is like a variable GST. It effectively reverses the tariff cuts we have seen in the last three decades but, perversely, it replaces them with a tariff on internal production, for which the government then seeks to pass on compensation to preferred companies and industries affected and to select individuals.

Indeed, it has specific effects in my own state. There are very serious concerns about the stability and future of electricity generation in Victoria. And, with our national electricity market, this will affect most Australians. Respected business commentator, Robert Gottliebsen, comprehensively outlined this when he stated only a week ago:

Within a week of the current proposed legislation being passed, the boards of each of the companies that own the Latrobe generators will meet with their auditors on whether the companies’ debt covenants have been broken. Almost certainly a majority, if not all the boards, will decide to appoint official administrators.

There is a real risk that that is what this legislation in its current form will do, with the associated risk to the security of our energy supplies. This parliament should not be contemplating such a result. The government will not even entrust the people or this parliament with all of the information regarding this. We are asked to take their commitments at face value. I mentioned earlier this afternoon the continued refusal to release the details of the Morgan Stanley report. If this legislation passes and electricity generation becomes unreliable, rather than something Australians—and particularly Victorians—can take for granted, it will rest on this government’s head.

One final issue I would like to raise is that of procedural fairness. This has been covered by a number of my colleagues but it is worth restating. These bills contain extraordinary powers for the government, in the guise of the Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority. It can require companies to keep and produce voluminous records and it can demand information and force questions to be answered—all without the traditional protections against self-incrimination and the right to silence. These are historical freedoms and liberties that this parliament should be loath to whittle away—and most definitely not without a much more substantial level of public security and debate about these specific issues.

I state again: this is not a debate about climate change; it is a debate about Labor’s proposed flawed ETS. The climate is undoubtedly changing, but this is a highly complex issue and the science will constantly evolve. I am not standing here saying that it is not happening, nor that people are not contributing to it, but that I do believe that firm conclusions about the degree of change or our contribution cannot be settled here today or this week.

I am in favour of risk management, both on economic and environmental grounds. Acting to ensure we limit and ameliorate the risk of climate change—anthropogenic and otherwise—and reduce the amount of pollution in our sky and local environment is common sense. I am in favour of good policy to achieve these goals, but these bills will not achieve that. Any such action has to be affordable in order for it to be sustainable, and it has to be a burden fairly shared. I do not believe we should act unilaterally and in a way that hurts our economy. It is important to note that we do not have all of the information required to make these assessments. The Treasury modelling is flawed in its assumptions about international measures and other information has been concealed.

While ‘the economy’ is an abstract term to some, it represents the jobs, businesses, livelihoods and homes of our fellow Australians. And some are hit a lot harder than others—the dairy farmers across Victoria who will pay substantially higher costs despite the government’s claim that some agriculture will be exempt; the workers in the Latrobe Valley; those who work in energy-intensive industries, particularly those who are export exposed; and the thousands of small- and medium-size businesses and their employees who will see costs skyrocket. None of these qualify for taxpayer funded largesse and patronage. This package simply fails the fairness test.

When I buy an insurance policy for my home, I ask myself two questions. Firstly, I ask: does the policy protect me? Secondly, I ask: how much does it cost? This ETS fails on both counts. Firstly, it does not protect us. These bills will achieve virtually nothing in environmental terms. Indeed, the way these bills and the ETS are structured, they could well worsen the problem they aspire to address, by exporting emissions to other nations without our already high environmental standards and safeguards—along with the jobs of fellow Australians. The forecast events that the government claims justify this massive intrusion into every business and home will still occur. Secondly, it costs too much. Put simply, I pay hundreds to insure my home, but not tens of thousands of dollars. But thousands of Australians will lose their jobs on the altar of Australia acting first and millions of Australians will face higher costs and bills—and all for nought, as this legislation does not address the problem it claims to address and has no effect on the other 98 per cent of emissions around the world.

I have not been here long but, while all the decisions we take in this place are important, these bills are likely to be among the most significant in my time in this place—bigger than the GST, which was a once-off transition and transparent in its costs to the Australian people. These bills should not be rushed. They should not be determined on the basis of a deadline set by a government that has constantly shown that politics is more important than policy. We have the time to consider our position further. We have the time to better inform the Australian people of the real costs involved—as opposed to concealing them. We have the time to ensure the burden is fairly shared. The false deadline of Copenhagen has now been blown. We do not need to act now, in the rush of the last sitting hours of this year.

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My first question to this chamber on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 [No. 2] and related bills is: why on earth are we debating these bills at this time? We have a Copenhagen conference, which is going to take place very shortly, in which not one other country is committing to the same sorts of proposals that this government is putting to this parliament—not one other country. In my almost-18 years in this parliament—and I heard Senator Carr talking about his 16 years earlier today—I have not seen more important legislation come before this parliament. We spent some 28 hours debating a regional forest agreement. We spent some 50 hours debating the Wik amendments to the native title legislation. And yet this government would have us debate these most important bills in what is just a matter of a few hours at the end of a session. I cannot believe that this government, or even my own party for that matter, would even consider debating these bills in such a short time. What is their aim? What do they really want to achieve? Do they want to truncate the debate? Do they want the Greens not to be able to put forward their 24 packages of amendments? Do they want there not to be a full debate from the crossbench senators? We are talking about the Senate, where all bills are looked at in far greater depth than they ever are in the House of Representatives.

We are talking about bills that would put into place a scheme that would have absolutely no effect on the world’s environment whatsoever—no effect whatsoever. We are responsible for less than 1½ per cent of the world’s emissions, and yet we would go out there and put into place bills which will say that we are committing Australians in the future to pay in excess, by way of taxes, through a new tax regime—which is what the general population of Australia does not understand—which will affect them forever. Once we put these bills into place, there is no chance they will be repealed—no chance whatsoever, because the compensation that would be liable to be repaid should we repeal these bills would be far greater than this country could afford.

We have a situation where deals are apparently being negotiated, between the climate change minister and the representative of the Liberal Party, which in fact exclude everybody else. There are only a couple of people involved in the deals. And we are expected to fall into line with whatever might be decided. I have not come into this place for the last 18 years to allow such a thing to take place without protesting at both the process and the outcome. As I move around my rural district in South Australia, I cannot find anybody who thinks we should pass these bills—well, that’s not true; there is one person who has approached me who believes we should be passing these bills, because they feel that climate change is a fact and that it is affecting all the things we do in Australia and that, if we don’t show the way, we are letting down ourselves and the rest of the world. But on Saturday afternoon I was at a function where there was a group of rural people and a group of townspeople from rural South Australia. Every single person I spoke to urged me not to support these bills. And, Madam Acting Deputy President, can I tell you: I will not ignore the pleas of those people. I will not ignore the pleas of those people who say, ‘You should not pass these bills.’

I am not sure that, if we decided to debate these bills after the Copenhagen conference, I would have the same view. I will tell you why. I may be wrong—in my 18 years in this parliament, I have been wrong once or twice; I am quite prepared to admit it—but if the rest of the world, if the United States, Canada and all those other countries in the world who have deferred their decisions until after Copenhagen, were to come to an agreement that we should have an emissions trading scheme that affects everybody in the world, then I would probably say, ‘Well, if it’s not going to affect our exporters, if it’s not going to affect our primary producers, if it’s not going to affect all the people I am very close to in Australia, I may consider taking out some insurance.’ But I will only do so on the understanding that the rest of the world, the other countries in the world, are prepared to do the same—and, until they are prepared to do the same, I simply am not prepared to support these bills. And I will not, regardless of what my party might decide or despite whatever other advice I may get.

Debate interrupted.