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

I am in a rather unique position, having started to make this speech last night prior to any knowledge of proposed amendments and, now, having seen those amendments, I can move on. Can I say first of all that seeing those amendments has not made me any happier. Having had last-minute notice of them, having seen them at 10 o’clock and having tried to decide what was in them, the only people I feel really sorry for, apart from ourselves, are senators opposite, particularly the climate sceptics opposite, of which there are many. I will not name any but there are plenty. They have not had the opportunity to see what these amendments mean either, yet after five or six weeks of protracted negotiations we are expected to understand in five minutes what these negotiations have brought forward. My opposition to these bills remains the same as it was. My position has not changed from last night now that I have actually seen the amendments.

The bullying by the Rudd government to have this legislation in place before going to Copenhagen, before knowing what the rest of the world is doing, cannot lead to well-informed and well thought out legislation. There are only a couple of people who have spent a lot of time on this legislation trying to nut out amendments. The one thing I will say about the proposed amendments is that if it were not for the insistence of the coalition we would still be debating a bill that was totally unacceptable. It was only on the insistence of the coalition and through Ian Macfarlane that we were able to get some agreement and some changes which make an impossible bill slightly more palatable—but, I am sorry to say, still not palatable enough for me.

I have only just heard of the Prime Minister’s press conference where he said this is a deal for just this week. What is so bad about the deal that it would not still be on the table if it were next week? What is so bad about the deal that it would not still be on the table if it were next February? Either the government is not genuine in committing itself to the changes that have been made to the initial legislation and is just trying to buy and bribe some support from the opposition or else the government is not genuine in its offers. To say it is this week or never is one of the worst examples of blackmail I have ever heard.

The Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Penny Wong, has falsely claimed that Australia cannot go to Copenhagen without this legislation in place; that she cannot go to Copenhagen, together with the Prime Minister, without having this legislation in place. What on earth are all the other countries of the world doing in going to Copenhagen without legislation in place? None of them has legislation in place, except some European countries. America has not, China has not, India has not and Canada has not, yet Senator Wong says we cannot go to Copenhagen without having legislation in place. The head of the United Nations climate change agency, Mr Yvo de Boer, stated clearly that there is no expectation or requirement that Australia have legislation in place to participate in discussion at Copenhagen.

I mentioned last night that I tend to speak more with the people in my own community than with those in other communities, and all of the people in that community have urged me not to support this legislation. It may be different in other areas. It may be different in some urban areas. I happen to live in a rural town in a rural area where in fact there is uniform opposition to this legislation being passed prior to Copenhagen and the decision of the rest of the countries of the world as to what they will do in relation to climate change—if in fact they do anything in relation to climate change, because I am quite sure that some of them will not.

This government is interested more in image than in effective and responsible legislation. The treaty that is being presented in Copenhagen includes a requirement for industrialised nations to commit 0.7 per cent of their national economic output to a UN controlled fund to compensate for less developed nations. Having spent some time at the UN and seen how they handle money and what they do through some of their aid programs, I cannot think of a worse place for us to contribute 0.7 per cent of our economic output than to a UN controlled fund.

The mood in the Australian community is changing. It is changing in a way that we did not expect two years ago, when in fact there was almost universal support for action against climate change. Two years ago, before the 2007 election, people were saying, ‘You must do something about climate change.’ They believed wholeheartedly that any changes in our climate were directly related to human activity. I was very interested to read the poll from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry last weekend in which public views echoed business concerns. The survey was commissioned by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland and released by ACCI, and was undertaken by Galaxy Research over the weekend. We find there is a change taking place in the Australian community. For a start, people are realising that the imposition of this CPRS is the introduction of a new tax—nothing more, nothing less. It is a question of who will pay. This poll found that 71 per cent of the 1,000-odd people polled believe that the CPRS will raise their electricity prices and that 49 per cent believe there will be job losses. If we move in isolation when the rest of the world is not moving at all, 49 per cent of Australia’s population now believe there will be job losses. An even more staggering figure is that 82 per cent of those surveyed do not believe enough information has been provided about the CPRS and 54 per cent now, more than half the population, believe Australia should delay the introduction of a CPRS until after Copenhagen. This is a distinct change from the views held by people a couple of years ago. The results of this Galaxy poll parallel ACCI’s survey of investor confidence in October which found that 47½ per cent of businesses considered that the CPRS will have negative impacts.

We need to take into account the changing views of the Australian population, as they find out more and more about these proposals being put forward by the government. It is fair to say that, until people start to get some information, they will say, ‘Of course, we have to do something about climate change; it is terrible.’ In fact, we have had climate change for 50 million years. It has not all been human induced, I am sure. Suggestions of recent times that the world is actually cooling and not getting hotter is something that most of our media and certainly the climate change alarmists do not want to see put into the public arena. We have a Prime Minister who says that climate change is the biggest moral challenge of our time and anyone who questions this Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme he calls heretics or deniers. Yet he is not willing to take on the advice or the concerns of interested groups and those whom the scheme will affect most.

According to this government, if you are not in support of their legislation, you do not care about the environment at all and are in favour of environmental destruction and are morally lacking. I spent a big percentage of my life farming. Farmers are the original environmentalists. Of course there were some who did not look after their properties and some who were careless. But in every walk of life there are some who will not do the right thing in relation to the environment. We have been environmentally conscious for the past 50 years. We now have no-tillage and are trying to preserve topsoil. Yields are increasing. Throughout my lifetime the original environmentalists have been farmers. They are the ones who rushed to join Landcare programs. They are the ones who spent voluntarily when there was no incentive to plant more trees and do other things on their properties. They are the environmentalists. They are among the strongest opponents of this CPRS.

The other flaw in this scheme is that it effectively ignores voluntary action and energy efficiency. I believe that the actions of individuals, businesses and community groups who develop their own initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions provide significant benefit to our community. They are worthy of recognition and encouragement.

I have not had a chance to look in detail at the amendments that have been agreed to. We just simply have not had time to read them. I have been contacted by a number of businesses, such as the National Lime Association and Adelaide Brighton Cement, which operates a lime plant in Angaston and supplies industries such as mining, steel, paper, agriculture and water treatment in the region. I just do not know whether these new amendments have satisfied these people because we simply have not had time to find out. Yet we are expected to come into this chamber and debate these amendments without discussion with all of these people. It is absolutely impossible in the time frame that has been suggested to debate these bills and get through the committee stage. The time frame includes sitting late hours—maybe up to Saturday, we have heard.

This is no way to run a parliament. This is no way to look at what is possibly the most life-changing bill that has been presented to this parliament, certainly since the introduction of the GST and probably even further back than that since such an important bill has come before this chamber. I do not believe that it should be given the cursory treatment that this government expect us to give it. They have had five or six weeks to negotiate amendments between the major ministers and shadow ministers concerned and we have two or three days for senators to put forward their amendments.

I know the Greens have an enormous package of amendments and they have every right to make sure that those amendments are debated at length, in the same way that Senator Xenophon and others have a right to question and debate the amendments at length. I do not share the Greens’ views. I share their concerns, but I do not share their views. They have a right, however, to put their amendments in this place and to have time to debate them at length. That is the role of this house. That is why we have such a proud record in the Senate of making sure that we look minutely at legislation which, in many cases, has gone through the lower house either by guillotine or with a very short debate.

I will not be supporting these bills, as I said last night, because I do not believe that we should be discussing them before Copenhagen. Had these bills been presented in February, after Copenhagen, I might well have voted for them, but I will not vote for them when we do not know what the rest of the world is doing and we do not know whether we are going to disadvantage Australian industries and exporters.

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the reintroduced CPRS package of bills. In a previous contribution, in speaking on the bills which were rejected by the Senate, I concentrated my comments on the particular impact of the legislation on the Illawarra. It is clear that the bills in their current form are deeply flawed. As Senator Humphries indicated earlier in the debate, very few of us in this place have a detailed understanding of climate issues. In the context of this debate, some have made it a point to broaden their understanding.

Instead, I have chosen to come at this from the simpler proposition that our constituents expect their governments to ensure that the air they breathe is clean, the water they drink is clean and the food they eat is clean and uncontaminated. It is probable that many of our constituents have not read the legislation. They are not familiar with the contents of the draft Copenhagen treaty, but they think we should do something about the environment. With the Kyoto treaty, we signed the treaty and met our emissions obligations, but did not ratify it. Rightly or wrongly, the Howard government was pilloried for not ratifying the treaty but was not recognised for meeting the obligations in any case.

All Australians want a cleaner environment. This is how I see the debate. I want to take us back to the early days of recycling. When it was first mooted, there was scepticism about how it would work. The appearance of coloured containers in the street was welcomed by some and frowned on by others. Some believed it would not work. Today, nobody bats an eyelid about recycling containers. Indeed, many of us are quite accustomed to making sure we sort out our garbage and do our bit. For me, one of the critical missing elements in the current bills is a framework to encourage households and individuals to be more environmentally conscious. As with recycling, our respective contributions to a better environment must start in our daily lives—in our homes and in our workplaces.

One of the focal issues of this debate has been the price of electricity. This is indeed an important issue and one that goes to the heart of our daily lives and the family budget. Electricity use and costs are not the only things that should be important components of the ETS framework; that framework ought to be about how we can all use energy better and more wisely. It ought to encourage us to do so. I recently extracted a pamphlet that came with my electricity account. It had 10 energy efficiency tips, including switching off home appliances; using energy efficient compact fluorescent lamps; remembering to turn off lights in unoccupied rooms; installing more efficient hot water systems and shower heads; taking shorter showers; using cold water in the laundry and hanging clothes out to dry on sunny days to give the dryer a break; buying energy efficient fridges and thinking twice about needing to have that beer fridge on all the time; using more energy efficient appliances; not overheating our homes and therefore saving energy; installing insulation; draught-proofing doors and windows; closing blinds and windows and pulling the curtains and doors closed in rooms that are not in use; and, of course, monitoring pool pump usage. I wonder how many of us do any of these things in our daily lives.

The average Australian wants to do his or her bit to contribute to a better environment and, to some extent, that is what I think is driving the debate rather than a detailed understanding of the science. For the average person, as I read the correspondence and in the discussions I have had, climate change has become a byword for greater environmental responsibility. Perhaps if more of us were more energy conscious in our own homes, it would greatly contribute to a better environment. If in our everyday lives we made the small efforts, then we would be making a constructive contribution to reducing CO2 emissions. As with recycling, we need to take the small steps so we can collectively make a broader contribution.

This is what I think the debate is about—doing our bit. Some may have been convinced that ‘doing our bit’ means embarking on a complex emissions trading scheme, as the Labor government has devised. Others have proffered the suggestion that a carbon tax would have been easier. Some just view this as a tax on just about everything. Others simply think the whole thing is the biggest con since the Y2K bug.

But what has troubled me about the current debate is the language and tone of the public utterances. On the one hand, there has been a fervent, almost evangelical, adherence to a view that the sky will fall in if the world does not act on climate change now. Advocates of this position have pilloried those who have dared oppose their view. They have dubbed them ‘climate change sceptics’ in tones reminiscent of the Inquisition and burning people at the stake. Some have stridently and appallingly equated them to Holocaust deniers. Yesterday’s front page article in the Australian, entitled ‘Hackers expose climate brawl’, and the release of emails only strengthen the views of those who have questioned the science. The apparent glee at the death of one such scientist by those holding opposing views is both sickening and appalling.

On the other hand, people have questioned the science. We have seen scientists, such as Professor Plimer, offering alternative viewpoints. In a talk to MPs earlier this year, Professor Plimer posed questions about the Romans. Given my heritage, I was interested to hear him say that grapes and olives grew around Berlin and that Roman garb gave an indication of the warmth of the weather in Roman times. Banal, you may say, but nevertheless it makes you wonder.

Some argue that we are seeing evidence of climate change whilst others say that this has been a feature of the world’s history. Some say that the world is getting warmer; others show that it is in fact getting cooler. Some question whether the change is man-made. Again there is certainly a divergence of views. Regrettably, the Prime Minister’s language in this debate has not assisted. In a speech to the Lowy Institute earlier this month, he used the opportunity to launch a scathing and vicious attack on those who have dared to question his stance on climate change. This is irresponsible and demonstrates yet again the obsessive, egocentric and cynical political agenda that is driving him in this debate. Instead of affording respect for different positions, the Prime Minister has chosen to characterise his forays into the public debate with venom and vitriol—hardly conducive to rational and balanced debating.

The Senate overwhelmingly rejected these bills three months ago, and the government has chosen to bring them back in their current form. The coalition should not support this legislation as it currently stands. Another major concern is that this Senate has been pushed into considering this legislation before Copenhagen. This has been part of Labor’s political agenda all along. There was absolutely no valid reason that we should be doing so; we would only be pandering to the Prime Minister’s vanity in wanting to strut the world stage and to say, ‘Look what we are doing here in Australia.’ Really, Prime Minister, who really cares?

Australia emits only 1.4 per cent of world emissions. Do we really think that what we do here in Australia will make a difference to the world’s outputs? Some argue that the answer to this is no but that we should start somewhere and, as this is a global issue, we should take a precautionary approach and give the planet the benefit of the doubt. But of course this is outweighed if we end up reducing emissions in Australia but, in so doing, act to the detriment of the Australian economy so that activities which are reduced in Australia result in increased emissions in some overseas location. Then there would be no net benefit to the environment. This is the nub of the issue for many in this debate: finding the right balance between the economy and the environment and doing so in sync with the rest of the world.

Some actually question the need for an emission trading scheme. Others say we should not be locking ourselves into a position until we know what the United States and other countries are doing and until we know the outcome of Copenhagen. Still others are pressing for action now. There is definitely a divergence of sentiment in the electorate. There is major concern in the electorate that the current package of bills does very little for the environment but will have a grave impact on jobs and on Australian families. It is clear from the commentary that it will have a major effect on small and medium businesses and, as a consequence, that it will affect the international competitiveness of Australian business. There is a real fear that the impost on business will have the adverse effect of businesses shifting their operations overseas to countries which have no corresponding ETS framework. This has been evident through the various committee considerations of the bills.

As a senator based in the Illawarra region of New South Wales, I am consistently reminded of the important role that export industries play in our economy. The Illawarra region is built around an industrial port which supports tens of thousands of jobs. The Illawarra Mercury has been prominent in focusing attention on this debate and on the deeply held concerns over prospective job losses in the region. In the Senate Standing Committee on Economics inquiry into these bills earlier this year, BlueScope Steel, the main employer in the Illawarra, identified that the scheme threatens to erode tens of millions of dollars from the company’s books within the first year and has the potential to threaten the viability of the 12,000 jobs that their operations support.

Many in the Illawarra have expressed concerns about the effect on their livelihoods, which are so reliant upon these crucial trade-exposed industries. A closure of the steelworks would mean the loss of 4,700 jobs at Port Kembla amid the loss of 12,000 jobs supported by steelmaking activities within the region. This is reflected in the Illawarra Mercury editorial of 2 April 2009, which stated:

The question now for the Federal Government is whether throwing 12,000 people in the Illawarra onto the unemployment scrap heap is worth the price of what is likely to be only a notional gain for the environment.

The problem is compounded by the fact that this scheme is being proposed amid a global financial crisis and rising unemployment where there are few employment opportunities for Illawarra workers to transition into. Accordingly, the coalition unveiled a plan to save thousands of Australian jobs and to limit increases in electricity prices for small business through common-sense suggestions for changes to Labor’s flawed and rushed emissions trading scheme. The coalition put forward a package of suggested changes that have formed the basis of good-faith negotiations with the Rudd Labor government. The package demonstrated that Labor’s CPRS can be made cheaper and smarter whilst at the same time protecting vital jobs in our economy.

The coalition’s approach has been to ensure that key export industries, including coalmining, food processing, natural gas and aluminium, will be better protected and thus make sure thousands of Australian jobs are saved from the threat that comes from Labor’s flawed scheme. The coalition wanted to protect farmers from the scheme by exempting agriculture altogether. By allowing agricultural offsets, which include carbon sequestration in soils and vegetation, there is the opportunity for financial and land management benefits in the rural sector. By including voluntary measures, the environment will also benefit from individuals, businesses and community groups developing their own initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The coalition has continued to advocate an intensity based cap-and-trade approach to the electricity sector, as this more than halves the initial increase in electricity prices, reducing the economic costs of achieving emissions cuts. If the Labor government refuses to consider the intensity based approach, it must clearly explain why. The coalition has pushed for an alternative strategy for cushioning the initial impact of higher electricity prices on small businesses.

I would now like to focus on the key changes suggested by the coalition to Labor’s flawed CPRS. Firstly, in relation to trade-exposed industries, the coalition has suggested that the CPRS be amended to provide a single level of assistance for emissions-intensive trade-exposed—EITE—industries, that the thresholds for assistance be lowered and that they retain their international competitiveness. The coalition has advocated including primary food processing in the EITE scheme and allowing industries that include a series of sequential or parallel production processes to have these assessed as a single activity in determining assistance.

Agriculture has been an important issue for the coalition. We have advocated permanently excluding agricultural emissions from the CPRS. We have also sought the government’s agreement to the introduction of an agricultural offset scheme in line with similar offset schemes to be introduced in comparable economies, such as the United States and the European Union. For example, I recently completed a major study-leave report on the Australian wool industry—an industry worth about $2.6 billion per annum—and I saw the impact that Labor’s flawed scheme would have on this industry alone. There are many agricultural industries that would be affected. Another area of concern for the coalition has been coalmine emissions, which is particularly of interest for the Illawarra. The coalition has advocated for the exclusion of coalmine fugitive emissions from the CPRS and for the relevant minister to be provided with authority to use regulation to control fugitive emissions.

Lower electricity prices have also been of great concern for the coalition, and we have continued to advocate an intensity-based cap-and-trade model for generators to deliver the same emissions cuts as the CPRS but with a much smaller increase in electricity prices. This would greatly reduce the burden on small and medium businesses, which receive no compensation for higher power bills under Labor’s proposals. Under the CPRS, retail electricity prices will rise by close to 20 per cent in the first two years. Under an intensity approach, retail electricity prices would rise by less than five per cent in the first two years. Our concern is to cushion electricity price increases for households, small businesses and business in general.

Compensation for electricity generators is another area where the coalition has proposed changes. Coal fired generators need to be better compensated for loss of value they experience from the CPRS, to ensure security of electricity supply and enable them to transition to lower emission energy sources. Energy efficiency and voluntary action are important factors for the coalition. We have suggested a national ‘white certificate’ energy efficiency scheme so households and businesses earn credits for efficiency measures and contribute to reducing national emissions. If households do their bit—or more than their bit—they should be recognised for it. This goes back to the comments I made earlier about all of us, at the grassroots, making our contribution toward a cleaner environment. Likewise, the coalition supports creation of a voluntary offset market in advance of the introduction of the CPRS and amending the CPRS to ensure voluntary abatement leads to a lower national level of emissions.

The coalition’s intention has been to negotiate the above matters with the government in good faith to deliver environmental benefits with less severe economic costs. The current bills and the manner and timing in which they are being introduced will export jobs overseas. The fears and apprehensions felt by the people of the Illawarra and other constituents around New South Wales are justified, as they know full well that they stand at the forefront and will face the full brunt of this job-destroying scheme. Unless Labor is prepared to fix the flaws in its proposed emissions trading scheme, to save jobs, reduce costs and act in the interests of all Australians, then the bills in their current form should be rejected.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to contribute to this debate on Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 [No. 2] and related legislation. I note that this is the second time I have spoken on this legislation—as it is for many others in this chamber. Despite the amendments and the dirty deal announced by the Prime Minister earlier today, the legislation in front of us is no different to the legislation that we debated some months ago.

The government’s CPRS legislation, the ‘continue polluting regardless scheme’, has been flawed from day one. It has simply become worse with each passing deal struck with big polluters, and now with the climate change sceptics. The Prime Minister has been first class in spinning this issue from day one—calling for a need for action on climate change, while delivering virtually nothing. His doublespeak for action, coupled with the government’s pathetic pollution reduction targets, will mean nothing for tackling carbon emissions for the future or for saving the environment. It is simply locking us in to failure when combating dangerous climate change. The lacklustre approach in this legislation has done nothing but give a cash splash to the big polluters. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has again proven himself to be the half-baked Prime Minister—all spin and no substance.

The Greens cannot and will not support this legislation. It is environmentally flawed, environmentally ineffective and economically inefficient. Just now, the Prime Minister had his press conference and announced that there is no real change in his deal with the coalition that makes this any more environmentally effective or economically efficient. It is still as useless as ever, but of course we are giving an extra $5 billion to $6 billion to the big polluters. We are not able to support this legislation and I must say, as a member of the party that has championed action on climate change in this place for years and years, it is very sad to not see a piece of legislation before us that actually takes seriously the challenges of climate change. We cannot accept a target of five per cent. We know that a minimum of 25 per cent is what is needed in order to even start the action needed to tackle climate change. That is the minimum that is required by the global community and by scientists, and it would go some way to repairing the years of dangerous inaction that have taken place before us—years of ignorance and cynicism that have left our planet screaming and crying for help.

Sadly, the government are not listening to the science or the community and are continuing to promote their five per cent target as the most ideal and economically responsible model to combat climate change. We know that this is simply not true. They are not listening to the community and they are not listening to the science; they are listening instead to the big polluters and now to the climate change sceptics. As my colleague Senator Christine Milne has highlighted on a number of occasions in this place, committing to a minimum five per cent target is worse than useless. In fact, 25 per cent is the bare minimum required by the science and the global community. Without committing to at least 25 per cent, we are locking ourselves into failure—failure to clean up the mess that has been created from years and years of inaction and ignorance.

The government’s original bill was so flawed in its design that not only were the targets pathetically low but the scheme also actually ensured that it was impossible for motivated individuals to take the action they wanted to take to contribute to reducing climate change. We know that the original bill not only set a cap beyond which the emissions could not rise; it also set a floor below which they could not fall—a simply foolish approach from a government who say they want to take action on climate change. The harder individuals or state governments work to reduce their fossil fuel use, the more pollution permits can be issued to those who simply do not care at the expense of the actions taken by individuals and the expansion of emissions by the big polluters. The minister has spent months concealing this flaw within the legislation and, while we have finally seen some recognition, I am fearful that today’s announcement of a deal with the coalition has simply given a veneer of interest in voluntary action rather than a true motivation for individuals, state governments and local governments to take a full role in order to reduce climate change. It is simply ripping money out of householders and giving it to the polluters.

Mr Rudd says that failing to act today is rolling the dice with our children’s future, but failing to be honest about the challenges that face us with climate change, playing politics instead of being practical and instead of promoting true action on climate change, is playing russian roulette. The government has announced today that $5 billion dollars extra will be taken out of households and put into the hands of the big polluters so they can continue business as usual. I said in my first speech in this place over a year ago that we need to end the mantra of business as usual. We need more decisive and immediate action to alleviate greenhouse gas emissions. We need to face the realities of the big challenge before us, not gloss over it with spin and no substance. What we have seen from the Prime Minister today is more spin, more spin, more spin. We have not seen true commitment to tackling climate change. A five per cent reduction target goes nowhere near what we need to do. He is, despite his own spin, leaving it to future generations to clean up his mess.

Surely we are all of the same opinion in this place that the way we are currently living in this world is simply not sustainable. We need a transformation and a willingness to do things differently. We must listen to the concerns and views of our younger generations, those people who will have to carry these burdens into the future. In 2050 I will be 69 and my daughter will be in her 30s. I shudder to think about what our world will look like then if we continue to defer the tough action needed and simply put it onto the shoulders of future generations. It has always been of great interest to me that those who are the biggest sceptics of taking action on climate change and those who want to spin the relevance of the tough decisions that we have to make are not the people who will be around in 2050 or 2060 or 2080. They are not the people who will be living through the nightmare that will be left simply because we had a Prime Minister and a government who today did a dirty deal with dirty polluters because the coalition would not get their act together.

It is absolutely astounding that a government that was elected on the mantra of tackling climate change has simply been able to spin itself into a web of inaction and falsities. We need a government that actually understands the challenges before us and that will be prepared to reduce our carbon emissions, not just talk about it, and a Prime Minister who, when he talks about the future of our younger generation and about our children and our grand children, understands that he must match words with action. To date, we have not seen any of this. To date, we have seen billions and billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money going towards big dirty polluters to continue business as usual, while householders and young people who are desperate to do their part in tackling climate change will not be supported, state governments that are trying to do things will not be supported and local governments who are actively representing the concern of their local community that something above spin and talk be done will not be supported.

This legislation locks us into failure. We hear stories of women, and young people in particular, working right around the world in their individual communities—whether they are in Australia, the Americas or in the low-lying islands of Kiribati or Tuvalu—to alleviate the effects of climate change. These people are taking action on climate change that really matters, because they are faced with the realities of the dangerous climate change that awaits us.

Unfortunately, we have a government that continues to spin and talk without any action. It is already giving $16 billion in compensation to Australia’s biggest polluters and now we hear today that Prime Minister Rudd wants to give them even more. He is buying friends on this issue and not buying moral credibility. He talks a lot about the moral courage needed to take action on climate change, yet nothing he has done today actually proves that. Every dollar that compensates the big polluters is a dollar less for individuals and householders to take on the challenge of climate change. Every dollar spent—every extra dollar spent—and given to polluters is a dollar less that is put into tackling climate change and making a real difference. Today we have seen an extra $5 billion to $6 billion given to polluters and not to really tackling climate change.

The Rudd Labor government was elected in 2007 on the back of a mantra to tackle climate change. Today’s announcement of the dirty deal to continue dirty polluting simply locks us in to failure and makes their promise to reduce carbon emissions even worse. The CRPS legislation continues to be today the ‘continuing pollution regardless scheme’.

Australia cannot actually afford to be playing these games of politics with the environment any longer. We know that the rest of the world cannot either and Australia must be playing its part in ensuring that we step aside from the politics and talk about the realities that face us. We know that we need to be taking real action on climate change. Mr Rudd has the rhetoric down pat—there is no doubt about that—but he does not have the substance to follow through. The future of our children, our grandchildren and their children is at stake. This is serious business and committing to a half-hearted attempt at reducing the effects of climate change is simply not good enough. Kevin Rudd said today that not supporting this legislation would be a roll of the dice for our children. That is what he said today. Well, all spin and no substance is playing Russian roulette.

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to add my remarks on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 [No. 2] and related bills with a sense of deja vu, because we were here a couple of months ago debating the same bill. We are now confronted with, evidently, debating a bill that has been made substantially worse as a consequence of the horse-trading and deals that have been going on behind the scenes.

I would like to acknowledge that we have been joined by a couple of school groups, who have come up into the public gallery while we have been speaking on both sides. This debate is about you, and it is for you. I apologise for how poorly it is going. A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak to a class of high school kids at Ocean Reef Senior High School in the northern suburbs of Perth. They were a very bright and engaged bunch of young people. It occurred to me that I was in the company of people who had almost all been born around 1992. That was the year that Australia signed on to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UNFCCC. For their entire lives these kids have lived in a country that had signed up to a global acknowledgement that climate change is real, demands urgent action and is within our collective power to address if we should demonstrate the will. Seventeen years ago we signed on to that agreement, and this is as far as we have come.

The government introduced the CPRS package we are debating today, with a choice. Without the numbers in the Senate, the government’s choice was to go into negotiations either with the people who wanted the package to succeed or with the people who wanted it to fail. We know which path the government chose of course. We saw the outcome this morning. They went straight into negotiations with the parties who have had absolutely no inhibition—taking the last week—describing exactly why they want this package to fail. So the parliament this week has to choose between two courses of failure: either to vote down this corrupted attempt at introducing a carbon price or to have the major parties collude in perpetuating a monumentally expensive fraud. We have just seen the Prime Minister and the climate change minister stand up at a press conference with straight faces and announce that their scheme retains environmental and economic integrity. At that point it became clear that this debate has completely taken leave of reality.

I spent a bit of time last week trying to get a sense of the opposition’s line. Some on the opposition benches are not yet convinced that global warming is occurring at all and think that we are being mean-spirited to describe the billions of tonnes of CO2 we tipped into the atmosphere in 2008 as pollution. Others will admit that there is warming but that it is nothing to do with anthropogenic emissions—the planet has warmed sharply over the last century entirely of its own accord and the striking correlation with deforestation and industrial emissions is either a coincidence or a carefully orchestrated vegan conspiracy. Others have conceded that humankind is playing a part but that Australia produces such a small fraction of global emissions that there is really just no point in us doing anything at all until China and the United States have decided to act. In other words—and we heard this point of view expressed by the speaker before, Senator Hanson-Young—the world’s highest per capita emitters—that is, us—should just keep shovelling the coal as fast as possible until further notice. Lastly, there are those on the opposition side who do understand that we will have to do something in Australia and, inevitably—and I do not understand why—these are the same people who have nothing to offer the country but a fleet of unaffordable and obsolete nuclear power stations. The opposition presents this awkward mash-up of contradiction and denial as though it were a policy on climate change. It is an important part of the reason that they are in opposition, and long may they remain there.

A lot of the reporting on climate change over the last six months or so has framed the debate as a political contest within the coalition and almost entirely ignored the colossal deception being perpetuated by the government. On 21 November, the Australian newspaper editorialised ‘Never mind the science, just watch the politics’. For me, that summed up everything that has been wrong with this debate so far. I am really sick of hearing the government reading in speeches and using lines that might as well have been written by the Greens while their actions are entirely geared to fracturing the coalition party room and winning support in the coal industry. The government has the language down beautifully. As much as Minister Wong’s speeches sometimes read as though they were ghost written by Al Gore, if you lift the bonnet on this legislation you see that it is designed to leave the Australian economy in 2030 exactly as it is today. It is a vision of Australia the quarry, hugely energy intensive and the world’s largest coal exporter—a 20th century economy with eyes closed and hands over its ears, flirting with nuclear power or desperately hoping that the crippled horse of clean coal will one day ride over the horizon.

It is legislation that introduces a feeble carbon price and then obliterates it under an avalanche of $16 billion or more in subsidies to the country’s largest polluters over the next five years. That took a turn for the worse this morning. You look for the detail to see if any of these subsidies are conditional on these same industries cleaning up their production processes or installing renewable capacity. But they are not. Kevin Rudd has signed this cheque to buy political acquiescence to the scheme—keep shovelling the coal and nail the Australian economy into the corner that it has been backing into since the 1950s.

Over the weekend the Australian Greens released legal advice to the effect that passing the CPRS package will expose any future government to a massive compensation liability in the event that it shows the backbone to adopt scientifically defensible emissions targets. The reading of the Constitution is fairly clear. This legislation that we are debating ties the hands of future governments. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd knows it, and the country’s largest polluters know it. Passage of this legislation is not just a failure for now or a deal for this week, as the minister put it this morning; it locks in bloody-minded failure out to 2020, which we know is the crucial decade during which we in this country and around the world have no choice but to act.

In Western Australia, this dismal political race to the bottom is being correctly read as a green light for the Barnett government to abandon any pretence of climate responsibility. This is Western Australia, Australia’s boom state, where thousands of resource based jobs depend on an intelligent and well-crafted transition strategy to a low-carbon economy. The Barnett government plans instead to lock in fossil vulnerability for another generation, because they are reading loud and clear the signs that are coming from Canberra that nothing in this bill will prevent a new generation of dirty, 1960s era subcritical coal-fired power stations from being built. The proposal there is to at least double the coal-fired generation in the Collie Basin and massively expand the footprint of coal mining operations there. When some future government comes to its senses and initiates an emergency program of emissions reductions, these corporations are going to be lining up with their hands out claiming that they did not see it coming and demanding more compensation for their obsolete generation assets.

By then of course the public mood is going to be a lot darker than it is today. Whatever green wash the Rudd government takes cover behind this week in late November 2009, let us be really clear about what this bill locks us into. Coral reefs will not survive the hothouse future that this bill locks in. Ningaloo Reef, the jewel of the north-west, will not survive the warm acidic oceans that that this bill locks in. The magnificent forests of the south-west will not survive the changing rainfall regime that has already done so much damage to this wonderfully biodiverse part of our country. CSIRO have been telling us for 10 years or more that, as much as we might fear the ruination of low-lying coastal ecosystems from sea level rise, the impacts of putting the blowtorch onto the inland Pilbara and northern goldfields could well make large parts of central and western Australia simply uninhabitable. So, in choosing to set his compass by political circumstance rather than three decades of peer reviewed science, this is the future that the Prime Minister will lock in with his tragically named Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. No wonder so many people have recoiled from this vision of calculated failure.

A number of senators in the debates over the last fortnight appear to have noticed the work being done by climate action groups around the country, and pointed out with suspicion how similar they look to the campaign groups who took up the fair trade and global justice causes in the 1990s and before. I have had the very good fortune to spend some time at a few of these climate convergences last August in Newcastle and earlier this year at the Hazelwood power station in Victoria. These are people from all over the country—ordinary people and some pretty extraordinary people—who have assessed the comprehensive ongoing failure of anything sensible to emerge from this place and who have decided to act on their own consciences. They are organising, as they did yesterday, creative and respectful non-violent demonstrations and taking responsibility precisely because of the profound failure of this parliament to do so.

That is the reason why in December I will be joining the first camp for climate action to take place in Western Australia, in Collie. I am very much looking forward to joining people there. What is happening in parliament over this November justifies every hour of your work—every spokes council, every public meeting and every tripod that goes up. It is time at last to link arms and push back. Your defiance and your creativity gives all of us hope that one day Australians will be able to take their place in the global community with a sense of pride that we played our part to avert the greatest crisis of our age.

It is very important to remember on days like today at least that you are not alone. I want to take this opportunity to pay my respects to some of the people around the country who are leading by example. These include people like Kelly Howlett and all her supporters in Port Hedland and South Hedland, who did the seemingly impossible earlier this year and was elected as mayor on a very clear platform of greening the town and demonstrating practical sustainability and conservation initiatives. On the same day, my hometown of Fremantle also got its very first Greens mayor, Brad Pettit, after a highly effective grassroots campaign that again emphasised working collaboratively with business, community groups, industry and all political sides to green the city.

Further afield, one of the highlights for me this year was meeting the representatives of farming communities around Gunnedah and Oakey who are standing up against proposals for massive coalmines in some of Australia’s most important farming areas. They have made themselves an inspiration for the defence of precious farming land right across the country. In the course of conducting the public transport inquiry this year, I was privileged to meet some of the virtual army of sustainable cities practitioners and theorists and remember what it was that got me into this job in the first place: the extraordinary sense of optimism and the can-do spirit that these advocates bring to their work.

There is also a group of people very close to my heart, the representatives of communities all over the country who are leading the defence against the nuclear nightmare and its delusional promises of climate salvation, from the elders in Central Australia who are defending their land against the radioactive waste dump to the ASAP mob in Alice Springs who have led the charge against a new uranium mine 20 kilometres from their town and who are back on the case today. We are all indebted to the three generations of antinuclear campaigners who have stood up to this destructive industry and who are still organising against it, most fiercely now in my home state of Western Australia where this industry has never been and must never be allowed to take hold.

I also acknowledge all of those in the renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors who have hung on for so long while renewable energy policy in this country veers between indifference and hostility. I share your frustration that all of the incentives in this deal before parliament today are aimed at keeping the clean energy sector at the margins while rewarding the largest polluters in the land. So many people around the country are making these contributions every day and are waiting for the people up here, on Capital Hill, to get behind these efforts and if not lead then at least get the hell out of the way.

What we saw this morning at the Prime Minister’s press conference underlines just how badly the major parties have gone off the rails—a transfer of, say, $5 billion or $6 billion from households to polluters on top of the enormous damage this deal would have done if the bill had passed unamended. It has been browned down substantially from its original brown state. We have seen a history in Australia and around the world of calculated underinvestment in a climate response but, of course, no limit to the resources that can be thrown at rescuing failing banks or sharpening the teeth of militarism in our region. The climate change crisis puts us at a crossroads: either we choose to further entrench the wasteful mistakes of the past, the existing inequalities and reliance on military ‘solutions’ or we choose to make our lives and make our way on this planet more ecologically, economically and socially sustainable.

When we read parliamentary debates about the trans-Atlantic slave trade in history books we shake our heads at the moral bankruptcy and the appalling arguments that were shamelessly peddled by the profiteers, the investors or those who had been successfully lobbied by them—those men who extended the slave trade because of how important it was to the economy. The ideas of Wilberforce and his allies were treasonous; it cost some of them their lives. They were accused of attacking the foundations of the economy and threatening some of the most powerful economic interests of the day.

I wonder whether our descendants or some of the folk in the gallery today will experience the same shame when they look back at this debate, and the debates over the last couple of years, and wonder what on earth we were doing. The moral abomination of cooking this planet, or in fact denying that it is even occurring, I think will arouse a similar disdain from future generations who will not thank us for not being capable of reining in the basic excesses of our economy or the gluttony of the coal industry.

Senators here would have heard me speak before about narrow military notions of security and the extraordinary theft of resources from genuine tools of security. Military notions of security can do nothing to alleviate the greatest security challenge of our age, which is climate change. Traditional tools of warfare are of absolutely no help at all when confronted by a tsunami, a hurricane, a flood, a virus or a water shortage. The acquisition of arms and the current global military expenditure of $1.2 trillion a year still diverts enormous financial, technical and human resources from where they are really needed. We saw a local expression of this earlier this year and in the run-up to the production and tabling of the Defence white paper, which commits Australia to enormous and expanding military spending in an age where this must be seen as nothing more than an incredible misallocation of resources. These kinds of weapons are useless in facing the challenge of a hungry humanity on a warming and finite planet. Rather than simply being the backdrop for human actions, the theatre for war is a finite and fragile planet that cannot bear the weight of more carbon intensive war or preparation for war.

There are many people who will not be in this chamber when this appalling piece of legislation is put to the vote. When we do vote I would like their voices to be heard and recorded. The people whom Senator Hanson-Young and I met in Dharamsala, who work on what is known as the Third Pole Initiative, cannot believe or comprehend how rapidly the glaciers on the Tibetan plateau are receding. Billions of people are dependent on melt water from these Himalayan glaciers. I would like their voices to be lined up and recorded when we vote.

The voices of women in the non-industrialised world who are disproportionately affected by climate change must be heard as well. In many parts of the world, they collect the firewood, they draw the water, they plant the seeds and they harvest the crops. They have seen the disappearance of forests, the drying of wells and the polluting and silting of rivers. They have watched in despair as children go without food or clean water and sicken with disease. We know women often lead the way in their communities in conserving precious natural resources, adapting their food crops to changing soil and climatic conditions, and rebuilding following floods, earthquakes and other natural disasters. But women’s voices are largely absent from policy discussions and negotiations over global warming. Their voices, I also submit, must be heard in the global warming debate overwhelmingly dominated by men and they should be recorded in the vote.

My nephew Riley James, whose first birthday I just missed because I was over here and whose whole life will be shaped by the decisions that we make—or fail to make—in here and in parliaments elsewhere around the world gets no vote in here this week and yet his stake in this matter is greater than any of the people who will file in here when we finally vote on these bills. Today we are compelled to vote against this failure—a failure of government, a failure of opposition and a failure of our representative democracy to represent anything but the most abject, short-term self interests of a small but powerful sect of fossil capitalists. There is no point in denying that the greenhouse mafia have won this round, but it will not be the last. Eventually, the pointlessly self-interested rearguard action will fail and Australia will take its place in the 21st century, the renewable century.

I want to quickly acknowledge Senator Christine Milne and her staff who have carried this debate for the Australian Greens with enormous integrity through some pretty dark times, most recently through the introduction of the comprehensive safe climate bills which spell out for anybody who would like to know what a genuine safe climate response would look like when it finally comes from parliament. I still have enormous faith in this country and in our ability to seize leadership from the grassroots all the way up to Capital Hill That day is not here yet, but it will come.

Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This package of Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme bills is the most important this parliament has dealt with in its potential economic and environmental impact on the nation. Make no mistake about that. This is the second time these bills have come before the Senate and my position remains unchanged from when it was debated earlier this year. I cannot support these bills without substantial amendment because I believe they are fundamentally flawed both in the design of the scheme and in the targets that are being sought.

Senator Ludlam, in his contribution, just referred to the fears of the Himalayan ice caps melting. I was with Senator Ludlam and Senator Hanson-Young just a few months ago in northern India. The fear there among scientists is that, if the Himalayan ice caps melt, as Senator Ludlam has pointed out, we could have a situation where literally hundreds of millions of people in China and India will not have a steady source of water for agriculture or for living. We are looking at a monumental social disaster as well as an environmental one. That is why it is important that we do everything possible to mitigate the risk.

I do not have any doubt that anthropogenic climate change presents us with the most pressing and complex policy problem that we have ever faced. I think it is more complex because of what has been named the ‘Giddens paradox’ after Lord Anthony Giddens, who says that often politicians will not take action on a problem when the impact is many years away, but that when the impact of the problem becomes apparent it is too late to do anything about it. And that is the policy paradox we have here and which has so bedevilled the debate in relation to this.

This crisis is pressing, because the window of opportunity we have, in which to take abatement action and avoid irreversible climate change, is small. My plea to the climate change sceptics is to consider this as an issue of risk management. If thousands of scientists around the world are wrong—and I do not believe they are—then what would the ultimate harm be if we reduced carbon in the atmosphere? How can cleaner air, safer food production and a more environmentally sustainable world possibly be seen as a bad outcome, especially if the scheme that is adopted minimises the economic costs and harnesses the economic opportunities?

However, if the climate change sceptics are wrong then the result will be disastrous. There is no plan B; there is no planet B. I say to the sceptics: ‘Are you so sure of your position that you are willing to bet the world, literally, that you are right and thousands of scientific experts are wrong?’ My plea to them again is: at least think about this from a risk management point of view. You would not hop on a plane if there was a one-in-a-thousand chance that the plane would fall out of the sky. You would do everything to minimise the risk; you would not take unnecessary risks when the results could be catastrophic.

That said, I would argue that in taking action Australia needs to adopt a scheme that is credible internationally and sustainable domestically. If we choose the wrong scheme and irrevocably damage the economy or the environment or both that will serve as an excuse for other nations not to act, particularly in our region. That is why we must get this right. The rationale behind the government’s CPRS is to increase the cost of goods and services to reflect the damage done to the environment by greenhouse gas emissions. While I support this theory I cannot support the government’s approach. The government’s approach will result in too much economic churn through government coffers with marginal environmental return. The government’s plan is a bit like recognising that a dying patient needs 500 milligrams of penicillin but only giving them 50 milligrams and then charging them double the amount. It is all economic pain with little environmental gain.

The five to 15 per cent target of this plan is simply not enough, given the potential disaster we face. The model proposed by Frontier Economics strikes a better balance between our environmental and economic responsibilities. My colleagues are aware that I, along with the coalition, commissioned the Frontier Economics report into the CPRS model and possible modifications to it. I was proud to be a part of that process because it was all about showing that there is another way—a better way—to a springboard for deeper cuts in emissions at a much lower economic cost. This report found that it was relatively simple to amend the government’s CPRS so that it is twice as green and 40 per cent cheaper—a difference of $50 million of GNP over a 20-year period. That estimate is conservative because the Frontier Economics modelling made the same assumptions as the government modelling—namely, that the rest of the world would fall into line with an ETS by 2011.

At the release of this report the opposition leader, Malcolm Turnbull, described this plan as greener, cheaper and smarter—and he was right. I call on those in the Liberal Party who are not climate change sceptics to keep advocating for what your leader has described as a better model. I will put one caveat on that: it has always been my position that we should go for deeper cuts. But the Frontier Economics model, with its intensity based approach, gives a springboard for achieving those deeper cuts that we need as an effective solution.

Malcolm Turnbull was right to praise the plan, and he would be right to keep pushing for the plan. But that does not appear to have been the case, from what I have seen of the deal that was done with the government today—which I understand is still subject to debate in the Liberal Party room. I do not know whether any of my colleagues from the coalition can tell me if they are still debating it. Senator Scullion is nodding.

I think it is very important that we put this into perspective. We cannot abandon every small and medium business in this country and condemn them to a massive spike in electricity prices in the first three years of the scheme. It is essential that we have a better approach—and the Frontier model has one—which keeps the vast majority of revenue of businesses where it belongs, on their balance sheets, but still achieves a better environmental outcome.

Senator Birmingham, in his speech during the second reading debate, advocated the coalition’s Frontier based proposals, which would ensure that the churn of money through the ETS is minimised; that agriculture is excluded and offsets like soil carbon are allowed; and that voluntary action is recognised, encouraged and facilitated within the scheme. I call on senators like Senator Birmingham to keep advocating for the best outcome. Do not let your party settle for a set of inadequate amendments. Please do not cave in to the government and destroy the economy for little environmental gain. No matter how you tinker with it, a flawed plan is still a flawed plan. When someone hands you an inedible, rancid sandwich there really is no point in asking for the salt.

The government’s CPRS requires substantial amendment, as outlined in the Frontier Economics modelling. The Frontier model is a better way; it allows us to go greener. In fact, further advice I have received from Frontier Economics indicates that their approach could allow for a minimum 20 per cent reduction by 2020, and still be affordable. That is close to what the Greens are proposing, which is a minimum 25 per cent cut. Obviously, if I had a choice between the Greens proposal of a 25 per cent minimum mandatory cut, the government’s approach and the coalition’s approach, then I would support the Greens, because it is the responsible thing to do. If scientists are saying that we need to get to at least 450 parts per million and other scientists are saying it should be 350 parts per million then this approach of the government’s, with these very low targets, will not cut it.

In contrast to the government’s scheme the Frontier model does not reach as deeply into the pockets of business to create a kind of giant government pork barrel. This CPRS would see the government having complete control over who gets some of those funds and how much they get. I think Senator Ryan made a good point by saying that it will almost be a state of patronage. It would be like the days of the old tariff board, where you have to roll up and hope that you can get some government support in order to keep going. And I do not think that that is good for the economy.

If the compensation arrangements revealed so far by the government are anything to go by, it seems that rewards are more random than earned. I think that has been confirmed in what has occurred today. It seems that those who are best looked after are the largest and the loudest. To me that seems fundamentally unfair. For any scheme to work we need to reward good environmental and economic behaviour and punish bad behaviour so that there is a constructive change in behaviour. That is the beauty of the Frontier scheme: it is not all punishment, like the government’s scheme; it is a combination of carrots and sticks. By making the heavier polluters pay, it punishes those who should be punished, and does so more efficiently. For those doing the right thing, by keeping their emissions below the benchmark in their industry, there is no need to pay for the permits—in fact, they get credits. And for those who excel there is the potential to sell the permits they do not use to increase their business bottom lines. There is less churn and you switch the merit order in terms of pricing much more efficiently—these are important things.

I foreshadow that I will be introducing a number of amendments that will adapt the government’s proposed CPRS to a model that is in line with that recommended by the Frontier Economics study into possible modifications to the CPRS and to make it clear that I believe we need to go for a much deeper target. While these changes will not result in a ‘baseline and credit’ model in the purest sense, they will adapt the CPRS to work with the same effect, based on energy intensity. I believe the government’s model results in far too much churn, will impose too big an impost on the Australian economy and will not deliver enough for the environment.

This leads to my second amendment, which will lift the target for cuts to a minimum 20 per cent on 2000 levels by 2020. Again, Frontier Economics modelling has demonstrated that this target is not only possible, but possible to exceed. Surely this is an outcome that all Australians would want. Who wouldn’t want a scheme that has less impost on business and which produces better outcomes for the environment? If that amendment is unsuccessful I will be moving an amendment that would lock in 10 per cent cuts under the Frontier scheme. This is the ‘greener, cheaper, smarter scheme’, in the words of the Leader of the Opposition, which he praised just three months ago. I call on the coalition to vote for what your leader said not so long ago.

Another of my amendments sets the baseline for the model and provides for how businesses can receive assistance. Importantly, it also provides criteria by which business plans must be used to demonstrate that they are working to reduce emissions while not putting jobs at risk. I have no problem with compensation and transitional funding going to businesses that are doing the right thing, but we need to be sure they are delivering. In short, businesses that do not produce a plan or perform against these plans will be liable to relinquish their assistance either in full or in part. If you take the cash, you have to change—it is that simple.

Fourthly, my amendments introduce a voluntary action plan. I know that the government has gone some way in relation to that with these amendments, but I am concerned that it is not robust enough. I believe it is important to both recognise domestic action and protect domestic savings. My amendments protect domestic savings from being taken up by polluters to reduce their requirement for action, which is completely undesirable. I am keenly aware of concerns in the community that people do not want their environmental action to go to waste. What this amendment will do is ensure that every Australian who makes a choice to reduce their emissions through voluntary action can do so knowing that they are contributing to a reduction in the emissions cap. The difficult aspect of this is how one measures voluntary action. Hence, my amendments would introduce an independent body to investigate and take submissions to quantify voluntary contributions. Let us have a robust process to deal with it. This will provide an important opportunity for community groups to develop environmental campaigns to document people’s reduction in domestic emissions and, through submissions to this body, see their efforts making a difference. It also means businesses will be able to pollute more because households are polluting less.

Fifthly, my amendments enable agriculture and any emerging green technologies to be eligible for offsets. It is so vital that we encourage those emerging green technologies. I agree with Senator Milne and her colleagues that we have so much potential to really lead the world in terms of renewables and new technologies—and that is what we must do; that is what we must encourage. It is important we encourage every measure to reduce our emissions and value-add to the carbon pollution reduction model that is adopted. To do this into the future we will need flexibility, and these amendments will provide for that. I am worried that we will lock ourselves into failure with this scheme.

Finally, my amendments provide for extensive consultation as part of the development of a national white certificates scheme. I pay tribute to the work that Senator Milne and her party have done in relation to this. We need a white certificate scheme. This is something that is already operating in New South Wales, Victoria and my home state of South Australia. It can be expanded on and developed. It is a smart way of reducing emissions. It is a smart way of having a scheme in place that will actually make a substantial difference to reducing emissions in this country. Significant expertise has emerged from developing those schemes, and there are others in the community who have useful ideas on how such a scheme might work. This amendment provides for extensive consultation over a 12-month period for the minister to come up with the regulations, but it provides a framework for a comprehensive national white certificate scheme that will make a significant difference in emissions—in the millions and millions of tonnes. I will elaborate further on these amendments during the committee stage.

Finally, I wish to foreshadow that I will be introducing a second reading amendment in the terms circulated in the chamber. This amendment would halt the progress of the bill until such time as the government releases adequate documentation in relation to the advice it has received on the Frontier Economics report. The Frontier report was released publicly on 10 August. Nine weeks later, on 12 October, the Treasurer launched an attack on the Frontier scheme, claiming Treasury had found a $3.2 billion hole in the Frontier modelling—although he was not willing to release the Treasury modelling that might prove this claim. The Treasurer asserted that there was a black hole, but I have to say I think the real black hole was in the Treasurer’s credibility in not even releasing the modelling in relation to that. It was a bit like being tried in some kind of kangaroo court, where they find you guilty but they will not tell you the evidence against you.

I believe the government has not come clean with the Australian people, by withholding key information that would provide a fuller picture of the options before us. Again, I agree with Senator Milne that there should have been modelling done on much higher targets. It would not have been difficult to do. It would not have been expensive to model the costs on a 25, 30 or 40 per cent target, but the government has not done that. Last week in the Senate, after a Senate order for production of documents, Senator Sherry provided a short summary of Treasury concerns, which raised more questions than answers. While willing to criticise the Frontier modelling, the government once again has proven less willing to provide evidence for its claims. I seek leave to table a report entitled ‘Response to Commonwealth Treasury’s critique of Frontier Economics’ provided by Frontier Economics.

Leave granted.

Thank you. I have here just some of the mistakes made by Treasury in its critique on Frontier. On the first page the Treasury note claims the Frontier electricity intensity based scheme is not a fully fledged policy proposal. This is demonstrably wrong. The reality is that more effort was made to flesh out the fiscal effects of the Frontier model than the government’s scheme and that the Frontier scheme is fully accounted over a 20-year period.

Let us go back a few steps. There is a real concern here that there has never been a good look at alternative emissions trading scheme approaches. The Garnaut report, the green paper and the white paper looked only cursorily at a baseline credit approach, which is not what the scheme is all about. That is very disappointing. I do not think government has been served well by the lack of adequate economic modelling on alternative scheme designs that could still fit within a cap-and-trade model.

The Treasury approach also involves some creative reading of Frontier’s work. For example, Treasury claims that Frontier’s modelling confirms that under the CPRS Australia would continue to prosper. My response to that is yes and no. Frontier did conclude that we would experience growth, but that growth would be $50 billion dollars less over 20 years than under the Frontier model and some regions would not experience growth but decline. So the growth would be uneven and inequitable and it would be patchy in some parts of the economy, particularly in the regions.

Treasury claimed that the Frontier scheme would do little to encourage energy efficiency, completely ignoring the white certificate plan which forms a key part of the Frontier scheme and which would lead to significant advantages in energy efficiency. Frontier also argues that some of the Treasury conclusions arise from simple arithmetical errors in the MMA modelling. Specifically, when it comes to claims that abatement in the electricity sector in 2020 would come from improved electricity conservation by users and lower growth in energy demand, it is important to note this is what is known as a simple accounting estimation—it is a guess which does not take into account the relative inelasticity of demand for electricity and therefore the likelihood of price rises. Effectively, it is a guess, and I think we deserve better.

Perhaps most astonishingly, the Treasury critique claimed that, unlike the CPRS, the Frontier proposal would not provide any compensation to households. As a result, most households would be worse off under the Frontier model, the Treasury paper says. This completely ignores the fact that compensation is not needed under the Frontier scheme because wages would be higher by $800 a year and, what is more, under the Frontier plan there would be more jobs. Moreover, Frontier’s price rises would be slow and moderate, not sharp and radical as they would be under the CPRS.

Treasury also claims that the Frontier scheme is untested internationally. But guess what? Being internationally tested is hardly the be all and end all; we have seen the problems with the European scheme. Treasury also argues that its scheme would provide economic certainty for businesses. This is what I take the greatest issue with. For hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses in Australia, the only certainty is that things would get a lot harder as they faced a sharp significant rise in energy prices with no assistance from the government under the CPRS. Today, the government announced that it would give $1 billion. That would not be anywhere near enough to assist small businesses who would face price rises.

In the Frontier scheme models, based on the government’s own modelling, price rises would be five per cent for the first three years under the Frontier scheme compared to 25 per cent under the government’s scheme. That is based on the assumption that every other country—the rest of the world—will come on board by 2011. I just do not see that and I predict here and now that the price rises could be in the order of 40 to 50 per cent or even more in the next three years. That would be a shock to small businesses, again for little environmental benefit.

My plea to Liberal Party senators is this: if you lock in a fundamentally flawed scheme, there will be no going back. We will lock ourselves into low targets, we will lock ourselves into higher electricity prices and you will simply not be able to change it, because, in the electricity sector, hedging contracts worth billions of dollars will be signed by generators and retailers on the day of royal assent. That is the sort of thing that needs to be considered. I urge the Senate not to support this bill unless there are significantly higher targets and unless its design is fundamentally improved.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I rise to speak today, the earth, its people and its ecosystems are facing a planetary emergency driven by global warming and the Rudd government has demonstrated not only that is it not up to the task of addressing a global emergency but also that it has deliberately, willingly and knowingly turned its back on this generation, future generations and in particular all of those people in developing countries who are already suffering from climate change.

It is extraordinary that in human history one generation of humans has the power to impact overwhelmingly on all generations to come after. What we have seen here in this parliament today is a government thinking that a superficial political deal will suffice as a response to climate change. Taking $6 billion away from Australia’s households and handing it across to the coal industry—to coal-fired generators—is not an appropriate response to climate change.

Let us forget any notional view that this Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme which we are going to be debating for the next few days has anything to do with the climate. It has nothing to do with the climate. It is a political deal to try to cover the back of the Rudd government and it will absolutely fail to do that.

In particular, it is a prescription for the death knell of the Great Barrier Reef. We have heard the Prime Minister and the Minister for Climate Change and Water talk about the Great Barrier Reef, and now they should admit that the pathetically weak targets that they are adopting will roll the dice against future generations and against the Great Barrier Reef. There is less than a 50 per cent chance of the Great Barrier Reef surviving. There is less than a 50 per cent chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. And that is the basis on which the Prime Minister looks to the Australian people and tries to suggest that the action he is taking is some kind of appropriate response to climate change. It is simply payday for polluters here in Parliament House. It is a slight on future generations and it is the doublethink that George Orwell warned about in his novel 1984 when people hold two contradictory ideas in their head at the same time and believe them both to be true.

How can the Prime Minister say that there is a moral imperative to address climate change and then pay the polluters and lock in failure to achieve the kind of climate that will be safe for future generations? Where is the commitment to 350 parts per million? Where is that commitment from our science minister and from our climate change minister? There is no commitment to 350 parts per million. There is no commitment to getting rid of coal-fired generation. There is none. What is more, there is a determination to lock in coal out to 2020, and that is what this does. (Time expired)

Debate interrupted.