Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I was saying, this is another example of the coalition hacking away at another body that is vital to Australia's effort in combating climate change—that is, the Climate Change Authority. Last year, as I said, I spoke in this chamber about the scrapping of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and I also spoke about the fact that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation makes the Australian government four per cent profit above the government's bond rate, and that has leveraged $1.5 billion worth of private funding in a very short period of time. But those considerations obviously have not been taken into account by this government.

The abolition of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation makes no sense, and I am here today to say to you that the abolition of the Climate Change Authority does not make any sense either. The Climate Change Authority provides expert advice and information on carbon pollution and climate change issues not only to the government but also to business and to the public at large. I am far from convinced that this could be handled by the environment department within its existing resources. It is not that simple. The Climate Change Authority fulfils a distinct role and the government needs to recognise that. Just like the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, this body is comprised of highly respected individuals whose opinions and expertise should be afforded proper respect.

As the shadow environment minister pointed out, few seem to recognise that it is chaired by former Reserve Bank Governor Bernie Fraser and that the board is made up of highly esteemed business leaders, economists and scientists. Their advice is valuable, but I think many of us have given up on the coalition acting so sensibly in the nation's interest when it comes to climate change. If the coalition are to prove that they are not just a bunch of closet climate change deniers and that they have some interest in fighting climate change, then surely they should retain the Climate Change Authority. It was very audacious to lump the bill repealing this body along with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation in a package of 11 repeal bills. The coalition should really reconsider whether they are willing to dispense with such an important outfit, and one that will continue to assist Australia in acting responsibly to limit emissions. The government's determination to scrap the authority is part of a broader trend of shutting down debate, limiting transparency and treating the Australian electorate with nothing short of contempt.

The Prime Minister obviously does not want advice from the authority on emissions targets because he is afraid of just what that advice might be. Well, I have news for him: every day we see new advancements in renewable and cleaner energy technologies in this country, and it is because of the work that Labor did; it was what we did when we were in government. We have, of course, committed to move from a fixed price on carbon to a floating-price emissions trading scheme. This is sound policy, because an ETS will take advantage of market mechanisms to decarbonise our economy.

But I would also like to say that it is easy to forget what pricing carbon has already achieved. It has been widely reported that companies are clambering over each other to take advantage of the carbon price while it is still in place and to gain a greater share of the total electricity market. The result is that the renewable energy sector has its largest share of the eastern seaboard electricity market for many decades, and black coal fired power plants have lost market share. So, there we have it: greater use of renewable energy, fewer harmful carbon emissions. It is that simple.

As I have mentioned before in this chamber, my home state of Tasmania is going from strength to strength when it comes to hydro power. We have seen hydro take close to 10 per cent of the National Electricity Market. Wind technology, which is another form of renewable energy that Tasmania is particularly well placed to develop even further, has just under 4½ per cent of this market. This is a fantastic development for renewable energy and it is a clear sign that Labor's climate change policies are repositioning our economy to take advantage of new technologies that will reduce emissions.

In fact, a report from a leading multi-specialist consultancy, Pitt & Sherry, released recently clearly states that Labor's policies have had their intended effect. The principal consultant Hugh Saddler has clearly stated that:

Carbon emissions have dropped by 15 million tonnes, or 8.5 per cent, across the NEM since the carbon tax kicked in at the start of July last year…

'But what about the enormous cost to households in Western Sydney?' is the frequent refrain I hear. Well, again, the report numbers do not lie, and they do not support the sort of statements that we frequently hear from the coalition. The report provides that, whilst real average power prices rose 17 per cent from 2009-10 to last financial year, actual electricity spending rose by only 2.4 per cent—that is right: just 2.4 per cent achieved a drop in carbon emissions nationwide of 15 million tonnes. At the same time, research indicates that people are paying close attention to their electricity bills and reconsidering how they can use their energy more efficiently, something that should certainly be encouraged, right across the developed world in particular. But facts like these are ignored by the coalition. They refuse to challenge their mentality, to think critically and to heed the advice of experts.

In the mist that drives the coalition's stubbornness on this issue, that is so troubling. It goes without saying that this mentality is enormously frustrating for those of us who try to think through policy issues rationally and reasonably and with a reference to expert opinion and established scientific evidence. Let us take the example of the former Prime Minister John Howard, who recently told an audience in London that those who accept that climate change is real are a bunch of religious zealots and that he will trust his instinct rather than expert opinion. What I would say to Mr Howard is: imagine if each of us applied this same sort of thinking to our everyday lives. Just consider: a doctor informs you that your illness requires a particular prescription and you respond that your instinct says that another treatment would help better; a mechanic advises you that your car needs a new part, but you tell him that your instinct tells you differently and you do not heed his warnings. This is exactly the same as ignoring the expert opinion of climate scientists who inform us that climate change is not only real but also man made.

If you will allow me to adapt the six aspects of denial from Sean B Carroll's book The Making of the Fittest to present circumstances, I think we can understand the coalition's approach to climate change policy a little better. The first step is to doubt the science.

There is, of course, ample evidence here—but, just as alternative health practitioners claim the science that lacks the effectiveness of their treatments is at fault, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has rejected the very basics of climate change. He notoriously told a community gathering near Shepparton in 2009 that the science behind human-induced climate change was 'crap'. When introduced on the ABC's Four Cornersin August 2010 he was asked if he still questioned the science behind climate change and responded by saying, 'Sure, but that is not really relevant at the moment.'

Then there was Senator Bernardi, in June last year, providing us with the following:

… I have never bought the alarmist hysteria attached to carbon dioxide as driving climate change. And there is, you know, no consensus of scientists I'm afraid. There are literally tens of thousands of people - scientists who have a different view on this.

The next step questions the motives and integrity of the scientists. The evidence abounds here as well. Senior coalition figures have suggested on numerous occasions that expert scientists on climate change are part of an organised conspiracy and that their motives should be questioned.

The Prime Minister commented on the Today show in July 2011 that consensus on climate change was been driven by:

… a draconian, new police force chasing an invisible, odourless, weightless, tasteless substance.

Yes, you heard me correctly: the Prime Minister is frightened of an imaginary police force.

But, of course, the coalition go even further than that. After a United Nations assessment that the recent New South Wales fires were linked to climate change, the Prime Minister mustered all of his maturity and composure and accused the United Nations climate chief of 'talking through her hat'. How statesmanlike! Meanwhile, the Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt, used Wikipedia to contradict her opinion in a BBC interview. It is moments like this, when Greg Hunt speaks to the BBC, or the Prime Minister is interviewed by the Washington Post that I think we should have a moratorium on conservative politicians speaking to global media outlets—because every time they do, they embarrass themselves and, more importantly, they damage this fine nation's reputation overseas.

The third step is to magnify disagreements amongst scientists. It does not matter that the tiny percentage of actual scientists who express scepticism, such as Ian Plimer, are outnumbered by the thousands of experts who renounce their arguments. The Prime Minister has tried this on numerous occasions, telling Alan Jones in June 2010 that 'there are credible scientists who don't think the UN Climate Change Panel has got it entirely right.' But I note that he did not actually name any of them. He also said, in a speech back in 2009, that 'what is a scientific fact should not be determined by a majority vote, even of scientists. That just leads to experts shouting at each other.' 'Experts shouting at each other' is how the Prime Minister characterises the consensus of climate experts who warn that immediate action on climate change is needed.

The fourth step is to look at the potential harm of acting on climate change. In Australia we have seen this in spades, with the then opposition leader, now Prime Minister, having repeatedly questioned climate change wherever he has gone. As the Prime Minister we have not seen him act in any more responsible way.

The fifth step is to appeal to personal freedom and claim that acting on climate change is somehow an unnecessary and overblown government intrusion. The new member for New England said at a doorstop in late 2011:

We've had pious Penny Wong and gravitas Greg Combet coming out here telling [us] if we don't do this, the kiddies will drown in sea level rises or instantaneously combust or get eaten alive by spiders.

I think a few of these public statements have been totally ridiculous but, unfortunately, we have come to expect nothing less from those on the other side.

The final step is accepting that the science behind climate change repudiates key philosophies underpinning the party's direction. I guess this is what the coalition's stance is really all about. Even if some senior figures accept the science behind climate change, they are not willing to embrace market mechanisms because they just cannot adapt their thinking. For them, markets should be left to their own devices even if this means that urgent action on combating climate change cannot take place and even if it means spending billions and billions of dollars on grants and planting trees under the laughable, ineffective Direct Action Plan.

We need to act on climate change. It is a threat that looms larger every day. The evidence keeps mounting that we need to act urgently. I just want to give you one example, but in many respects I think it is most alarming. In the last six months in particular, research has emerged about the melting permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere and what this means for climate change. Permafrost covers the lands north of the Arctic Circle and can range from a few metres to over a kilometre deep. It is spread through Siberia, northern North America and northern Europe, including Scandinavia. What we are learning is that it is melting, with the elevation limits of the permafrost decreasing rapidly. This is of the highest concern, because the melting of the permafrost across the Arctic promises to radically speed up the greenhouse effect. The Arctic tundra basically acts as a giant carbon sink. When the permafrost melts because of high temperatures, micro-organisms begin to biologically break down matter stored in this sink, and methane and carbon dioxide are released. This not only disturbs the Arctic carbon balance but greatly accelerates global warming. Then it becomes self-perpetuating. As the temperatures continue to rise, the permafrost continues to thin, with more carbon dioxide and methane released, which causes the temperature to rise further, which leads to further thinning, and on and on it goes. The situation really is quite desperate.

What is particularly terrifying about all of this is just how difficult it is to predict what will happen, but in almost any scenario the results will be catastrophic. In short, if the tundra gets warmer and drier, it will likely release mostly carbon dioxide. On the other hand, if the region grows both warmer and wetter, more methane will be released instead of carbon dioxide. The latter scenario may actually prove far worse. Our focus in Australia on the climate change debate has almost always been exclusively on carbon dioxide, but methane does not linger in the atmosphere for anywhere near as long as carbon dioxide. That means that it traps energy more efficiently. It is actually 22 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. So, if action is not taken on climate change and the weather in the Arctic is warmer and wetter as some predict, the melting of the permafrost could accelerate climate change to an even worse situation than we are currently aware of. It is an environmental time bomb, and as I stand here today no-one can make any promises as to how dire the situation is.

Some may say that it is not Australia's concern and that it is the responsibility of Northern Hemisphere countries, but climate change is a global problem. We must recognise that and acknowledge it. We know that there are many on the other side who are still very sceptical, but we on this side, when we were in government, took action to show the leadership that Australians expected of us. As the member for Wentworth noted, how can we honestly lecture developing countries like China and India on reducing emissions when, per person, we have a significantly larger carbon footprint?

The reality is that we need to act on climate change because we are running out of time. Scrapping bodies like the Climate Change Authority is a backward step that shows just how out of touch the coalition is on climate change. I certainly hope the moderates within the coalition who understand the science behind climate change and realise the need for action will stand up, do something and speak out, because we are running out of time.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Climate Change Authority (Abolition) Bill 2013 and related bills come before the chamber in what is clearly a very black week for this nation. In less than six months in office this government has destroyed the automotive industry. It has done nothing other than to ridicule and abuse an industry that was determined to transform itself for the future. It comes at a time when this government is turning its back on every endeavour that manufacturers are making to transform the way they do business. It is for this reason that you would think that the government would be able to articulate a plan for the future, a plan to modernise the economy, a plan for innovation and growth, because it is at this time that we are facing these extraordinary pressures on manufacturing. But this is not a government that appears to have done any serious work in opposition to actually develop such a plan to respond to what it says now are inevitable changes.

We have a government that is paralysed by its own indolence. We have a government that is paralysed by an outdated, stale ideology. We have a government that offers nothing more than platitudes. But then what more would you expect from a conservative political party? I do not mean that in the Menzian tradition, but in the New Right tradition of trying to turn the clock back when it comes to issues that face the people of this country. This is the message of this particular bill. Last time the Liberal-National parties were in government they failed this country on the issue of climate change, and now that they are back in office they think that the leadership we should be offering is to try to drag the country back to a period prior to when they were in office last time.

This is legislation that, at its heart, seeks to undo one of our country's most historic and important reforms—that is, the preparing of this country to meet the challenges of the 21st century around issues of climate change. The government maintains a view that if it does anything here the sky will fall in. The fact is simple: Australia is in its 22nd straight year of economic growth; this is the time when you ought to deal with the issues of climate change, particularly if you want to see that growth continue. But what we have in fact seen is a government that wants to put its head in the sand and pretend that climate change is not real; it is not happening. That is the message it wants to send to Australian industry.

My experience dealing with business, dealing with industry at all levels, is that that is in fact not the view of most people who actually make things in this country, who actually do ensure that they have the enterprise necessary to secure the future. They know that they cannot turn their backs on the rest of the world; they know they cannot afford to be left behind. Business understands that in manufacturing there needs to be a constant process of improvement, a constant process of innovation, a constant process of achieving ever-increasing productivity. And that process is one that commenced centuries ago with the industrial revolution because it is a fundamental premise on the basis of which modern societies work—that is, the constant need to improve.

What this government fails to grasp is the unbreakable link between action on climate change and the need to modernise manufacturing—modernisation in terms of reducing the cost of energy, modernisation in terms of driving technological change that allows for us to be able to produce goods and services more effectively and with less impact on the environment, modernisation in terms of developing renewable energy sources.

We see with the automotive industry that there is a view in some quarters that this is old-fashioned stuff, that it is something we can dispense with. There is no recognition that this is actually cutting-edge industry in this country. The Australian automotive industry is amongst world leaders in terms of the capacities in material science, in light-weighting, in the development of gaseous fuels, in its capacity to expand our abilities in robotics and electronics more generally, in plastics and chemicals—in fact, an industry that spends some $700 million a year on R&D.

Manufacturing in its most advanced forms, the most elaborately transformed manufacturing, is fundamental to our science and technological base—our capacity to actually transform this society. But this is not an approach you will hear from this government, because they do not understand the importance of modernisation to harness the outstanding capabilities of our scientists and engineers, our abilities to find the new materials, the new and better processes, the new and better products, the new and better services and the new export opportunities.

The reality is simple: governments do need to be part of the solution to problems, not just to be part of the problem. That is what we know with this government: they do not want to be in the business of solving problems. What we need is to ensure that the policy settings are able to assist industry to adapt, to develop the new technologies, the new work processes, the new goods and services. It cannot be left to the individual firms. It cannot be left to the market alone. It requires the full resources of the innovation system: the capacity to harness our researchers, our universities, our scientists, our entrepreneurs, our workers to be able to find the better ways of doing things.

That is what real industry policy has to be about: to ensure that we are able to adjust to modernise and innovate. And that is what our climate change policies were aimed at: trying to find ways to actually be part of the solution rather than just being part of the problem. But what do we see from the other side? Overblown, distorted political rhetoric to suggest that the market really is a device that, by itself, can solve the problems of modern industry. That is failed policy, a policy that has historically not been appropriate—and it is not the policy that business itself has supported.

Take the Australian Industry Group—not known as a hotbed of militant socialism. What they say is:

Market mechanisms will generally be most efficient in locating and driving least cost abatement.

But they also say:

… bureaucratic or political decision making are usually poor substitutes for the judgments of market actors responding to price in light of their own circumstances.

But that is what we are being given in the government's attitude in terms of their policies on direct action. Climate change policy requires us to be able to find mechanisms that actually work, and that is why we argue that putting a price on carbon is the best mechanism to achieve that.

We also say that there has to be government support to assist industries to transform their behaviours. We know of the short- and medium-term impacts of carbon pricing on the emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries. We also know that there has to be appropriate transition arrangements to support companies that are prepared to invest in themselves, prepared to invest in the research and development that is needed. But, what does this government do? It takes away industry support such as the Clean Technology Program, which has seen hundreds of businesses enjoy the benefits of investment that comes from new technologies. We have seen that co-investment with manufacturers brings down emissions and impact on the environment and allows them to modernise their operations. The Australian Industry Group said:

This program has made a significant contribution to maintaining many businesses’ competitiveness at a time of sharply rising energy prices, including the impacts of carbon pricing.

In the past the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry has been quite a fan of the program. He thought it was, in fact, sufficiently worthwhile to go to a winery in the Hunter Valley this month and congratulate the company on the large solar field array it had constructed through this program. He even put out a media release so that other companies could follow the example. Of course, the project was 50 per cent funded by the Clean Technology Program. So, I congratulate the parliamentary secretary for the discovery, but I do not suppose he has ever brought to the attention of the public that the government's plan is to actually get rid of this program.

The program is an exemplar of Labor's approach. We listened to the scientists and we listened to the best experts available. We were in the business of modernising the Australian economy and allowing Australian businesses to modernise their operations. That is the most effective way we can assist to solve the problem rather than be part of the problem as this government is.

Mike Sandiford from the University of Melbourne wrote that the recent bout of electricity emissions was an example. He said:

In fact, in the one key sector that counts—the electrical power sector—emissions are declining rapidly. It's the sector that counts because it is most directly affected by the carbon tax—

as he calls it. Mr Sandiford went on to report:

… emissions have fallen 14% over the past two spring seasons since the carbon tax was implemented. In total spring emissions are down almost 20% since the peak in the spring of 2008, just five years ago.

He also said:

At face value, the figures point to an increase in the rate of emissions reductions since mid 2012, coincident with the start of the carbon tax. On the back of a persistent decline in emissions, our electrical power sector emissions are falling at unprecedented rates.

This is the basis of results that we can start to see, which you would have thought this government would have taken some notice of. What we have is, in fact, an ideological hatred that blinds this government from the facts. It persists in trying to cripple industry in its capacity to compete and to modernise. And, of course, it says that the carbon price is part of that scapegoat.

In November 2008 the average value of the Australian dollar was around 65c, by November 2009 it was up to 91c, in February 2011 it was around one dollar and it remains around about 89c or 90c, which I saw on the TV last night. This is an extraordinary sustained period of a very high dollar, and it has played havoc with the manufacturing sector. It is not just the fact that the dollar is so high but the fact that it is so volatile. It has increased some sectors by as much as 30 per cent. Our exporters and producers have been hit very hard, and they are struggling and often unable to compete with the cheaper imports. But, of course, what this government's approach is doing is not to deal with the problem but to stand in the way of a solution by not wanting to work with industry to secure the future.

The Productivity Commission is very big on making the point that particular sectors of the economy, in its view, get far too much support from government. For instance, some ridiculous figures are often cited in regard to what the Productivity Commission regards as the cash transfers in the automotive industry. It claims the figure is $1.1 billion; it includes tariff support in that. But the actual value of the sector is around $21 billion, as I was reminded by an article in The Conversation this morning which draws our attention to these figures. What the government also fails to acknowledge is that there are many sectors that have secure government support. I quote from the article in The Conversation this morning, which refers to the ATO's recent annual report about the value of tax foregone in various industries:

The 2013 report showed the superannuation industry received A$33 billion worth of tax concessions. This tax foregone was made up of the contributions on superannuation which … only taxed at 15%, and concessional tax on capital gains paid by super funds, which is also taxed at 15% … Then there is the $1.5 billion private health insurance rebate; or the $4 billion mining diesel fuel rebate. These are not classified by the Productivity Commission as industry assistance—

which, by any normal measure, you would have to say would be difficult to explain. The simple point I am making here is that governments need to provide support to industry. They make choices all the time. There is no talk in this government about removing any of those other concessions but, when it comes to providing support for industry to be able to modernise, this government says that is corporate welfare.

Of course, what the government is in the business of doing in that process is actually standing in the way of innovation. This government is not in the business of assisting innovation. It is not in the business of providing support for science, research and innovation. It has no jobs plan. While it is telling business to compete and modernise on its own, we know that governments around the world provide support to their industries to make the necessary changes to secure prosperity for the future. What we have is a government that says that some industries are more worthy than others. The government will support some industries, but it will not support manufacturing, it will not support industry being able to transform itself and it is even failing to understand how significant the consequences of its own policies are.

What we are seeing today is yet another example of a backward-looking government that wants to betray working people, because it is only through the capacity to secure new investments and new jobs through new technologies that we can ensure that prosperity is spread throughout this country. The alternative is pretty straightforward. There will be winners and losers from this government, but most people will not enjoy the benefits of modernisation. There will be some people who will be forced into less skilled, less secure part-time or casual work, and there will be those who will have no work at all. This is the price that the country will pay for a government that essentially wants to live in the past.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I did listen intently to my colleague Senator Carr's words, and it is quite daunting. I cannot argue with anything that he said there. Especially coming from a previous industry minister, I think those words are quite solemn.

I rise to speak on the Climate Change Authority (Abolition) Bill 2013, which will see the abolition of the Climate Change Authority. I can think of nothing that epitomises the government's total disregard for the future of the Australian people than its proposed legislation to dismantle the authority which informs Australians and the government on the effects of climate change. Recently, thousands of Australians turned out to show their support for strong action on climate change. Right around the country there were demonstrations of people's concern about climate change and demand for actual policies to address the challenges ahead of us.

Today Australia stands at the crossroads. As a nation we can go one of two ways, both in this debate and, of course, more broadly. The first course is the one that the coalition government has embarked upon: to disparage scientists, to cut their funding or to sack them. It is a path where the Minister for the Environment relies more on Wikipedia, unfortunately, than the consensus of the scientific community. It is where the Climate Change Authority is seen as expendable. That is the course that this government has set. The other course—the course that the Labor Party supports—is towards a nation that relies on the facts and the expert analysis of our brightest minds. It is a course where we make the tough decisions now to ensure a better future. It is a course where we lead others, rather than wait for others to lead us. One of these courses is on the right side of history, the other takes a short-term view that ignores the challenges we face as a nation.

One thing that really amazes me about this debate is that it is alleged that there is some sort of divided opinion on the facts surrounding climate change. The fact is it is only on the conservative side of politics that there is any division. As far as scientists are concerned, there is a near unanimous view that climate change is real and it is caused by humans. Ninety-seven per cent of peer reviewed scientific climate change papers over 20 years have said that climate change is real and caused by humans, so the scientific community is united. This issue also has done the near impossible by uniting the economic community. No less than 86 per cent of economists who were surveyed recently backed an emissions trading scheme to deal with the threat of climate change in a cheap and efficient way.

I would like to reinforce a point that my good mate and colleague Senator Alex Gallacher made in the chamber recently with regard to the insurance industry. As Senator Gallacher stated, the reinsurers—Swiss Re, General Re and others—are the ones who are responsible for predicting and costing disasters such as cyclones, floods, tornadoes and earthquakes. It is a very interesting subject. As Senator Gallacher noted, it is interesting to see how these companies assess the risks involved when carrying out their business. They go into an organisation and they test it. They go through all the likely scenarios involving potential catastrophes that could happen to your organisation. Obviously, depending on where you are located, they can range widely. They can go through and place a price on the risk. You go and buy that insurance and then you go on about your business.

A really interesting notion that arises from examining the behaviour of these reinsurers—and one that should really be investigated in greater detail—is how the reinsurers are factoring in climate change. If the coalition seriously do not believe in climate change, or if they do not accept the scientific evidence, then the money men in those reinsuring industries will tell them that the prevalence of tornadoes, cyclones and catastrophic storms in the American Midwest or in the UK or in Europe demonstrates that something is happening there. Something is changing.

For the economic rationalists in the Liberal Party—if there are any left—this should be pretty clear evidence. If the market is factoring in climate change—that is, if the insurers are factoring increasingly extreme weather events into their premiums—then that is something that an economic rationalist should be able to accept. You would not think it was that hard.

They can deride the scientific evidence all they want, but the reality is that the people whose business is to factor in this kind of thing, the re-insurers and the insurance companies they sell their insurance to, are operating that insurance on the premise that something is happening globally that cannot be ignored. The money men around the world are certainly not ignoring it.

I pose this question: how do the Liberal Party argue their position in the face of such clear consensus? It is because the sensible heads in the Liberal Party have been usurped by the fringe and the mad loonie Right. The Prime Minister saw an opportunity to score a political victory over former Prime Minister Gillard and had no thought of the consequences. Sadly, he was cheered on by sections of the right-wing media who think they know better than the near-unanimous view of all the scientists and economists around the world.

Once Mr Abbott had become the champion of every far-right whacko and their friends at News Corp, there was no turning back. As I have said in this chamber before, it is clear to me that the Prime Minister is a climate change sceptic. This should come as a surprise to no-one. The Prime Minister's view affirm, and he has repeated them over a very long period of time, that the science of climate change, in his words—and I quote: is 'absolute crap'. He has described an emissions trading scheme as a 'so-called market in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no-one.' That was at a press conference on 5 July 2013.

In March 2011 Mr Abbott said, 'Whether the carbon tax is quite the environmental villain that some people make it out to be is not yet proven.' In March 2012 the Prime Minister said that he did not 'believe that the science is settled.' I think the Prime Minister's words speak volumes. As I have said before: the government's so-called Direct Action Plan is just a shell, a policy for the sake of having a policy.

I have spoken previously in this place of the fact that the Prime Minister is not of the same political calibre as his hero, Mr John Howard. While the former Prime Minister had enough political nous to hide his climate change scepticism and present the Australian people with a legitimate policy of emission trading at the 2011 election, his protege has delivered far, far less. Mr Abbott has not even gone to the effort of attempting to put forward a credible policy. He is repealing, with support from that mob over there, one of the most effective climate change policies in the world and replacing it with nothing more than a slogan. The Prime Minister obviously has a very dim view of the intelligence of the Australian people if he thinks that he can pull the wool over their eyes on this issue. But what is clear is that, while there may still be some sensible heads in the Liberal Party—and I do not want to mislead the Senate: I said 'maybe'—the fringe-dwellers and climate sceptics have taken over. That is a fact. I notice the heads down on that side: no-one is going to argue with me on that one. In fact, I would welcome it if they were to charge into the chamber and challenge me, because I do not think there are any sensible heads left.

We saw that, during the debate on the sale of GrainCorp, how agriculture minister, Barnaby Joyce, and the Nationals, were really in control in the cabinet. We saw that, despite the Treasurer sticking out his chest on foreign investment, and insisting that he would not be bullied by anyone—those were his words: not 'bullied by anyone'—it did not take long before he was held to ransom by Mr Joyce and the Nationals. We saw that, in the end, the Treasurer Mr Hockey's bluster was empty: he really was full of wind. His total capitulation to the Nationals on the GrainCorp deal highlighted the lack of courage inside the so-called 'moderates' within the Liberal Party. In this bill we see again the defeat of any sensible heads inside the Liberal Party, as they set about abolishing the Climate Change Authority.

We saw the former leader, Mr Malcolm Turnbull, knifed by sceptics for his support of an emissions trading scheme. We have seen the new Minister for the Environment, Mr Greg Hunt, so debase himself at the feet of the climate-sceptic leader that he has given up on what was, until recently, his most passionate issue. It was Mr Hunt who, until 2009, championed—I repeat: championed—the idea of an emissions trading scheme. It was Mr Hunt who wrote a thesis at university entitled 'A tax to make the polluter pay'. Now the minister, Mr Hunt, has to stand in front of the Australian people with a straight face and advocate the abolition of the Climate Change Authority.

I just want to take a moment to talk about the Climate Change Authority. Some people must be wondering what is so terrible about the authority that it is in need of abolition. The Climate Change Authority was set up by the former government to advise on the setting of carbon pollution caps, to conduct periodic reviews of the carbon-pricing process and, importantly, to report on progress towards meeting national targets for emissions reductions. That does not sound too terrible to me, and I am not sure what the Prime Minister finds so unpalatable about that. Perhaps what was so unpalatable to the Prime Minister has more to do with what information the authority was releasing. Was it perhaps the fact that the authority noted that the former Labor government's price on carbon had led to a 6.1 per cent decrease in emissions in the electricity sector that so annoyed this Prime Minister?

For the benefit of the Prime Minister, I should note that a 6.1 per cent decrease in emissions is equivalent to 12 million tonnes of CO2. We know that the Prime Minister believes that CO2 is just an invisible gas, so for the sake of the Prime Minister I have checked the figures and he will be surprised to learn that 12 million tonnes of CO2—this is a real groundbreaker—actually weighs 12 million tonnes. Maybe I should have whispered so it did not get to him so quickly. It might be too much to fathom. As an ex-truckie, I understand what 12 million tonnes means. It is a heck of a lot of road trucks. It is a gas that is invisible to the naked eye—bewdy!—but I am assured by a scientist that 12 million tonnes of CO2 weighs 12 million tonnes, which just happens to be, in layman's terms, the equivalent of taking about 3½ million cars off the road. Maybe the Prime Minister will understand that equation. He has already accepted that, because of the crash of Toyota and Holden, but anyway.

Perhaps the Climate Change Authority's greatest crime was that it was doing its job of involving the public in the effectiveness of a price in carbon too well and causing Mr Abbott and his climate sceptic colleagues to be a tad uncomfortable. Perhaps it is what the chairman of the Climate Change Authority, the very well-respected former Governor of the Reserve Bank Mr Bernie Fraser, has been saying that has Mr Abbott's hackles up. Mr Fraser recently said that the government's target of a five per cent reduction in emissions by 2020 is not enough and the target should be higher. Mr Fraser also debunked another of the Liberal Party's favourite lines when he said that the economy would continue to grow even if emissions targets were increased. In a recent appearance on 7.30, Mr Fraser labelled climate change an important and complex issue and said that climate change will not go away because there is a new government. Perhaps it is an eminent Australian with the backing of a credible institution speaking an inconvenient truth that is the real reason behind the government's decision to abolish the authority. It is because Mr Abbott does not want to have a debate on the facts of this issue.

I will give this to the Prime Minister: he is a master of the political slogan. We see this again with the so-called direct action plan, but the reality is that we are not getting anything that could be defined as direct action. The policies that the government says it will implement are untested. There is not one economist who says they will work. The Minister for the Environment is hanging his hat on the success of soil carbon sequestration. I think they are drifting into magic dirt territory if they think that soil carbon is going to be the answer. Some experts are saying it might—might—reduce emissions by an amount in the order of 10 million tonnes. That certainly will not be enough.

Then there is the great brainwave the government has to plant trees. That is right—one of the core tenets of the government's climate change policy is to plant more trees. In all seriousness, you would have to plant the entire area of Victoria and Tasmania with trees to achieve the sort of offset that the government is aiming for. Now, don't get me wrong: I am all for planting trees—I am a big fan of it—but we have to get real. To get that sort of offset you would have to get rid of all the grazing land in Australia and put it under trees. You would have to kick farmers off their land and turn farms into tree plantations. In all fairness it is a ridiculous policy because it is not a serious policy. The Prime Minister has no intention of planting trees across Australia. Direct action was merely another political fix to take the issue off the agenda before the election.

Before I conclude I want to make a point that is sometimes forgotten in this debate. The catalyst for the ascension of Mr Abbott to the Liberal leadership was brought about through negotiations between the Labor government and the then opposition leader, Mr Malcolm Turnbull, over the introduction of an emissions trading scheme. Such negotiations were taking place because of the outrageous behaviour of the Greens, who chose to grandstand on an issue that should never have become a political football. If the Greens had acted with maturity and chosen to negotiate on this important issue then things could have been so different. It is no good being an expert after the event and, unfortunately, that is the fact: the Greens abrogated their responsibility on that day. Rather than choosing to get most of the things they wanted, they held on to their extreme and unproductive positions, demanding unrealistic concessions that were never ever going to be accepted.

Senator Ludlam interjecting—

Through you, Mr Acting Deputy President, Senator Ludlam said that the Greens could have. That is right—they could have, if they had grown up on the day and not sided with the opposition to condemn the government's policy. They had their chance like so many other things. It was no different than trying to save desperate souls leaving countries to travel across treacherous waters. They could have had an input, they could have had a place in history where they were on the right side. But, because of political expediency, they chose to side with the former opposition and go for the headline rather than go for the good policy.

Senator Ludlam interjecting—

As I said, the Greens could have had an emissions trading scheme in the final weeks of November 2009. Every senator in this chamber remembers, Senator Ludlam, where you sat on that day. The Greens destroyed any hope through their reckless grandstanding. But we should not be surprised, as that is their modus operandi. The Greens are as much responsible for this as the Prime Minister and the Liberal Party. Through you, Mr Acting Deputy President, take these words away with you, Senator Ludlam: you, the Greens, are responsible. Thank you very much for what you have done. The Libs are very proud of you.

However, do not for one second think that this in some way reduces the culpability of our Liberal Prime Minister. While the Greens have their share of the blame to carry, it is the Liberal government's dismantling of the system that is making a real difference in cutting our emissions. What Mr Abbott needs to understand is this: he can cut the Climate Change Authority and deny the science all he wants, but it will not stop the effects of climate change. It will not stop the rest of the world regarding Australia as a pariah on this issue. The Prime Minister trumpets the letter he received from his like-minded conservative mates in Canada for repealing carbon pricing. What he does not realise is that he will eventually be shown to be on the wrong side of history, along with the Greens, on this issue.

What the government needs to realise is that, while they might see an opportunity to make some political mileage on this issue in the short term, if they do not act to kerb emissions, the planet will pay a price. Our children will pay a price, our grandchildren will pay a price and our great grandchildren will always remember the names of those who have done this to our country. Sadly, they lack the foresight and the vision to make the hard decisions. I will not be supporting the bill.

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

I can indicate that I have reservations about supporting this bill at this stage. I cannot support this bill, but I come to that position from a different place than some of my colleagues on the other side of the chamber. My view is this: I do believe that climate change is real and that we need to—as Rupert Murdoch once famously said—give the planet the benefit of the doubt. I think that the science is incredibly strong and that there are issues that need to be dealt with. We need to play our part and be regional leaders in relation to this.

I also believe that it was fundamentally wrong for former Prime Minister Gillard to say, just prior to the 2010 election, that there would be no carbon tax. I think that, if anything, the former government had a reverse mandate not to introduce a carbon tax given the promise that was made. I believe it would—

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was not.

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

Senator Whish-Wilson said it was not. I do not believe that the former Prime Minister lied, but I think that the electorate was misled.

What we are debating here is the role of the Climate Change Authority. We know that the role of the authority is to monitor Australia's emissions mitigation processes, including reviewing the functions of the Renewable Energy Target, the Carbon Farming Initiative, and the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Scheme. It also advises the government on the carbon pricing mechanism and it reports on Australia's progress in emitting the national emissions reduction target.

I note that the government's rationale is that the repeal of the carbon tax makes many of the authority's functions redundant. I think that there is a flaw in the government's rationale in respect to this, for a number of reasons. Firstly, the coalition says that it has a bipartisan commitment to the same level of reduction as the former Labor government of a five per cent reduction of greenhouse gases by 2020 on 2000 levels. I may have got my dates wrong in terms of 2000, but I think that basically it is clear that there is a bipartisan commitment in respect to that. There is another debate whether that five per cent is adequate or not. I suggest that it is not, but at least it is a start to reversing an increase in emissions. That is a good thing.

Because the government is proposing a Direct Action Plan—I will get to that shortly—and other mechanisms in respect to dealing with greenhouse gases, I think that the role of the authority is not redundant in terms of having an independent, robust look at whether targets are being met and whether it is the most efficient way regarding how these matters are dealt with. What needs to be done is this: we need to have an independent mechanism. I am concerned that what the government is proposing to put in place is not independent at all.

I do not think that the functions of the authority are redundant in the absence of an alternative robust mechanism to look at them. I note that the government is proposing that some of the functions will be shifted to the Department of the Environment. I think there needs to be an independent oversight of emissions reduction. The authority's remaining functions should not be handed over simply to the department. There needs to be that level of independence. I do not know whether what the government is proposing to do is necessarily the best approach, given that they too are making a commitment to spend billions of dollars of taxpayers' funds in terms of reducing emissions.

I think it is fair to say that the way the carbon reduction policy was dealt with by the previous government was less than satisfactory. I note the comments of Danny Price from Frontier Economics. I disclose that he is a person who has given me advice over many years. When the Liberals were in power in South Australia, he advised me about the privatisation of the electricity assets back then—another case of a reverse mandate by the Olsen Liberal government. The advice that Mr Price gave about the disastrous way that the electricity assets were privatised and the impact on consumers was met with a lot of derision from the Liberal side of politics and, I think, a lot of unnecessary abuse directed against him and me at the time. But he was right; his predictions of price rises were pretty much spot-on. That privatisation simply shifted public debt to private households, in terms of higher electricity prices.

Back in 2009, together with then opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull, we both commissioned Frontier Economics—Mr Price in particular and Matt Harris from his office—to look at an alternative emissions trading scheme. The scheme that was the subject of debate in this place and the subject of debate in the coalition party room was one of an intensity-based scheme, where you actually could have less revenue churn and a better outcome in terms of emissions reductions. That is because you would not have the enormous revenue churn or price effects that you would have with what was being proposed by the government, even in its first and second forms.

The point that Danny Price made in an opinion piece in TheAustralian in September 2012 was that the former government was backflipping, there was a lot of waste in that scheme and there were different pricings being given all the time. He said that, with those backflips in terms of removing the price floor, private brown-coal generators in Victoria and South Australia would end up getting a massive windfall of funds in terms of compensation. I think he has been proved right in respect of that.

I note that Mr Price is now the chairman of the government's reference group on its direct action policy. I have great confidence in him. I believe that he is robustly independent. He has said that we still need to have a Renewable Energy Target and a renewable energy scheme. I think it is good that the government is getting sensible, measured advice from someone with his expertise in respect of this.

They are the sorts of concerns I have. I think that the current carbon-pricing mechanism is deeply flawed. It has given coal generators—particularly brown-coal generators—windfall gains, which seems to me to be perverse. It has not been good for investment in terms of the uncertainty. Tying it to the European scheme, as was proposed by the former government, is not a good thing in that that price is subject to political manipulation, to regulatory failures, and to fraud and corruption in terms of the European scheme. We have seen that previously. I think we can do better. Whether Direct Action is the way to do that is something that needs to be subject to intense scrutiny, but I think it is important at this stage—unless the government has an alternative independent mechanism to determine the extent of greenhouse emissions reductions—that we ought not to throw the baby out with the bathwater by repealing the Climate Change Authority.

I will keep an open mind on this if the government comes up with other mechanisms to independently assess greenhouse gas reductions; you need to get independent advice. I agree with the former Reserve Bank governor, Bernie Fraser, now the authority's chairman, who said, 'On a subject as complex as climate change, I would have thought every government—whatever its complexion—would want to get good independent advice.' I think that is a pretty wise thing to say.

There is a lot of talk about the Renewable Energy Target. I make no apology for the fact that I am very concerned about the price effects of wind energy in my home state. I think we have more wind turbines than the rest of the country combined. It is something that the former Wran government pushed very hard in South Australia. There are issues about the impact on nearby individuals. Leaving aside issues of low-frequency noise and easy-to-measure decibel counts, people are being kept awake and their health is suffering. Also, I think it is legitimate to look at the way that renewable energy certificates are issued for wind energy compared to other forms of renewable energy. In other countries—for instance, in the UK—my understanding is that wind energy does not get the same loading of renewable energy certificates as other forms of renewable energy, because it is not as reliable, it is intermittent and, as we know, particularly on hot days, when the demand for power is greatest, it has to be switched off.

A couple of weeks ago following some terrible fires in the Barossa Valley in South Australia, I met with a number of local residents who were concerned that, but for the aerial firefighters, they would have lost their homes. The Henschke winery is one of the great wineries not only in this country but also in the world, with their Hill of Grace wine. I have never tried it—I am sure some of my colleagues have—but it is a rare commodity that is up there with Grange. Stephen and Prue Henschke spoke out about this situation. These winemakers are concerned about climate change; they are passionate about the environment and about looking after the land. If it were not for those aerial firefighters, their property, including their historic 140-year-old vineyard, would not have survived. There is a real concern that fighting fires around wind turbines, which are up to 165 metres high, will not be practical.

I would urge the government to look very closely at strengthening baseload renewables, including solar thermal, which is much more reliable than wind, depending where it is. Geothermal has a lot of potential, along with tidal power. If we tweak the scheme to have the same end objectives but also to give that funding, the impetus for baseload renewables—more reliable renewables than wind—will be an unambiguously good thing. You are not going to get rid of coal fired power stations if you have unreliable forms of renewable energy. I think that is part of the debate.

What is being proposed by the government is somewhat premature. The government needs to come up with a plan B for a robust independent mechanism to measure greenhouse emissions. The government's reasoning, in saying that we do not need this authority because there is no longer a carbon tax, is flawed. If the carbon tax is abolished—I have said I support it, with various caveats, and we will discuss that later—you still need to measure greenhouse emissions, given the government's commitment to reduce them. Not to do so, not to have that robust independent mechanism, would be a grave mistake. I do not think most Australians would think that would be a good thing. Most people are still concerned about climate change, as they should be. The government has made a mistake to prematurely seek the abolition of this authority in the absence of a robust, alternative independent mechanism to measure greenhouse gas reductions.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sometimes one of the problems in this place is that there are just too few quotes to use. Senator Xenophon gazumped me straightaway with Bernie Fraser's quote, which I know has been used many times in this debate, about the importance of strong independent advice. I know that Senator Xenophon and Bernie Fraser are not the only people in the world who think that strong independent advice is important. That is the argument that I am going to put up in my contribution to this debate.

We know that parliamentarians in this place bring a significant volume of skill, passion and commitment into their jobs and into debates. There have been major debates in this place where all parliamentarians have had a go, for a range of reasons, about the issues around climate change. We have heard significant comments made on all sides of the debate. For many of us, in relation to the focus of our future, issues around the best ways to respond to climate change are not our primary knowledge base. We rely on other people to give us information, we rely on seeking out advice and sometimes we rely on people who have a particular point of view; we listen to them, learn from them and then run arguments.

One of the most important elements that has come through this process is that people consistently argue that we must have the space, the respect and the ability to have strong independent advice. It really does not matter on which side of the argument you are. In this case we have opposing views on whether or not you accept the science of climate change and on whether or not you accept that we in Australia have a responsibility to respond and take action in whatever way is put forward to make change.

Given that there are diametrically opposite views about what should happen, everybody is seeking advice to find out exactly what the truth is, what the basis of the argument is and what arguments are put forward to make a case for the need either to act or not to act. We have heard many people put forward their personal views, their passions, but what has come through over the hours of debate in this place and considerably longer in the open community is that there remains a difference but that a great number of people have realised that there is a need to accept that there is climate change. Some of the aspects of that climate change have been driven by growing populations and the way we use energy on our planet. When the previous minister, Greg Combet, brought in the Climate Change Authority Bill 2011, he said that the bill would establish the Climate Change Authority, but that it would be based particularly on independent advice. He said:

This means that climate change policy will be directed by evidence and facts, rather than fear and political opportunism. It will take the politics out of the debate.

I am sorry, but that second sentence could be a little optimistic. I do not think, in this place or in the wider community, we will ever be able to successfully take the politics out of the debate.

The argument behind setting up the Climate Change Authority Bill was to establish within the community a process whereby a group of experts could seek advice and information from the broad community and come up with reports to government—not directions to government. It was not to be an outside body to take away power from the parliament. We were not removing the responsibility of parliament and handing it over to some other body. The authority was to be an independent body that would focus on evidence and facts. Minister Combet went on to say:

Australians also deserve an approach to tackling climate change that respects the scientific and economic consensus, where facts and not fear set public policy.

It seems to me that that is a fairly open statement and one with which there should be very little argument. Individuals have every right to have their own views about the issues, but all argument must be based on facts and evidence. We speak for ever in this place about evidence based policy. In fact, in all debates people complain that we should not make statements off the top of our heads—regardless of how important we believe the tops of our heads to be. We need evidence based approaches.

Through the entire climate change debate so much of the argument has been about what the science says. To our shame, through some of that debate, a quite serious lack of respect for people in the scientific community has been evident. There were allegations of flawed reports or inaccurate reports or reports that were biased in some way. We always insisted that the science be made public so that the information gathered by science was presented in a way that was accessible to everyone so that they could have confidence in it, but could still question it. But simply because something has been presented does not mean the argument is over.

The Climate Change Authority said consistently, in their very short life, that their role was to gather evidence and put it into reports to government and the community. Mr Combet stressed that it was very important that the authority's findings be independent, avoid unnecessary duplication of data collection and analysis and be publicly available. He also emphasised the need for the authority to examine best practice models for its own corporate governance.

We have heard a number of speakers on both sides talk about the importance of the climate change debate, but one thing we have all agreed on, and are committed to, are reductions in greenhouse emissions, regardless of whether the reductions are sufficient. There is agreement that climate change is impacting on our community and we need to take action, but how that is to occur differs widely. The process that was put in place by the previous government was set out in a range of legislation that is before us again. Then we went to an election, with both sides of parliament pledging to remove all forms of tax on carbon and to move to an emissions based scheme. The current government, however, has a significantly different plan for how they will address the issues of climate change.

It would seem to me that no matter what direction we take, there should be a shared acceptance that it is based on independent scientific information. There should not be any argument that any proposed action needs to be effectively reviewed, questioned and scrutinised. That is particularly so with our international position, because we are all agreed that it is an international problem. In the two previous debates in this place on the whole issue of climate change in Australia, one longstanding argument was that Australia by itself could not take the lead on the issue by itself—that you could not act alone. We heard strong statements that we were the only country to move forward at such a rate, in addressing climate change, that we were likely to cripple our economy and our industry.

One of the core roles of the Climate Change Authority was to investigate such statements by looking at what was happening not just in Australia but also across the world, because the problems of climate change are not peculiar to Australia. We have our own significant problems with our rate of pollution and the way we use our energy—we are, per capita, a relatively high polluter. This is a fact which is nothing to be proud of, but it is an independent fact. The Climate Change Authority was able to see what was occurring not just here but also internationally and to put the facts into the public arena. This is one of the things I value most about the way the Climate Change Authority has operated since it effectively came into being in 2012.

We have not had long to evaluate the authority. I think we are rushing to dismantle it even though it has only just begun to operate effectively and to gain the trust of the wider community and the scientific community that it has the freedom to put forward views in public discourse and not be subject to the kind of abuse we have seen in the past. The Climate Change Authority was designed to operate as an independent body and not be caught up in the very real politics of the climate change debate. When an organisation is set up with the word 'independent' in its name, there is an expectation that it will indeed be independent. The thing about independence is that it pleases no-one; statements made by an independent organisation do not please any side of the argument because they challenge people who have made up their minds completely and are no longer willing to question further. Any organisation which is independent must fight hard to retain its independence, because, once it is no longer accepted that what it is doing is in fact truly independent, the organisation loses its value. The Climate Change Authority has, since it was initially set up in 2011 and then came into being in 2012, taken its responsibility to be independent extremely seriously. This attitude consistently comes out in the people who work on the board and in the community.

When you are independent you make statements which do not please the government of the day. In fact, it is almost a position of honour that, when you are working as an independent authority in a government environment, you will at times make statements which the government of the day—or, indeed, the opposition of the day—does not agree with. This is the job of an independent authority. Its job is not to just recycle information which is part of the political discourse, and it is certainly not to pander to any particular argument. The Climate Change Authority was set up quite explicitly to ensure that these things did not happen.

In its original draft report the Climate Change Authority made a lot of comments about the Renewable Energy Target, and these comments raised further questions. In compiling this report, the authority took evidence from so many sources and did not limit the public's opportunities to give evidence, to make submissions and to engage. From the time that the Climate Change Authority was developed, the idea was that it would work for Australians and not for Australian governments. It was with this principle in mind that certain people were chosen to be on the board. Have a look at the bios of the people who are on the current board. I think it would be very difficult to claim that any of these people had pre-existing views which would have closed their minds.

I find it very disappointing that, in seeking an alternative approach to the consideration of climate change in our country, the view is that the Climate Change Authority needs to be dismantled completely without first taking a look at the value of each of its component parts. I have my own views about what should happen next, and I certainly think that the things we put in place while we were in government widened the knowledge and awareness of Australians about climate change. It is all very well for governments to make decisions and pass legislation, but if the processes are not fully understood and are seen as detrimental Australians will not support them.

We saw in the recent election that it is so simple just to say 'no climate tax'. Linking climate change so strongly to taxation seemed to me to ignore several basic requirements for Australia: identifying and understanding the vulnerability of our planet; looking at the way we use energy and the way we operate in our own country; and accepting that Australia's role is international and not only about our daily work and daily lives in Australia. I had hoped that the Climate Change Authority would help to create awareness and understanding of the issues around climate change rather than of the political, often short term, debates. When you dilute an argument so that it becomes a slogan, there will be problems with creating understanding—or at least a desire for wider understanding—because it is all too simple. Slogans, particularly negative slogans, are easy.

We really have not had the chance to see the full impact of the work that the Climate Change Authority can do for all of us. They are, at this moment, continuing to work on putting together a draft report on where we are now in reacting to climate change in our country. They have a significant public schedule—again, doing the job for which the authority was set up, which was to engage and then through that process provide independent advice about what was happening on these issues, not just to governments but also to the community.

It is a sadness, I believe, that that work may not be able to be completed. I have seen nothing in the proposals being put forward by the government that sets up an alternative way for this work to be done. Regardless of what governments choose to do about the real issues of climate change in our community, there needs to be a way to ensure that there is independent scrutiny and independent advice that are not touched by the passionate elements of politics. I am a parliamentarian, not a climate scientist. No matter what argument comes up, I will need to look at it and question it. I think the best way of doing that, for anyone in this country, is to have access to the kinds of information that should be available in the draft reports of the Climate Change Authority—to look at the evidence that has been provided, and by whom that evidence has been provided, and to see what the volume of evidence is around a particular issue or response. Without this kind of independent advice, we will come back to individual slogans, and I do not think that is the best way for public policy to go. Regardless of what we are going to do with the process, I think there should be a place for an organisation like the Climate Change Authority. We need to respect independence. We need to respect science. That is the only way that we will be able to get an effective response to something that is real for all of us.

Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Since coming to government, the coalition have begun attacking almost every institution, every tool and every utility that this country needs to tackle climate change and its impacts. Mr Abbott's direct action policy removes a legal cap on pollution, giving free rein for organisations to choke the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. Instead of making them pay for this pollution, he will be giving these same organisations billions of taxpayer dollars as part of his carbon slush fund. All experts agree that this will cost households more and will fail to reduce carbon emissions. Moreover, it will mean Australia is left behind as the rest of the world moves to a clean energy economy built on emission trading schemes. It will almost certainly discredit Australia's international reputation, as we fail to do our part to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Sadly, the changes and damage do not stop there. It is not enough for this government to erode Australia's ability to respond to climate change and to hand back power to those big polluters; it also wants to prevent scrutiny of how it goes about this, and to deny the public information about climate change. One of this government's first orders of business was to dismantle the Climate Commission, an organisation dedicated to providing the Australian public with independent and easily digestible information about climate change. Today, with this bill, they are coming after the Climate Change Authority.

This bill abolishes the Climate Change Authority and transfers to the minister the responsibility for ensuring that all of the authority's periodic reviews are carried out. These reviews cover a range of issues and include: the Carbon Farming Initiative, a scheme for farmers and landowners to voluntarily reduce greenhouse gas emissions and be rewarded with carbon credits; the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Scheme, a framework for monitoring and reporting on companies' greenhouse gas emissions and energy use; and the Renewable Energy Target Scheme, a market mechanism that puts a requirement on electricity retailers to surrender annually a certain number of Renewable Energy Certificates, where each certificate represents one megawatt hour of electricity generated from renewable sources. The bill also makes some changes to the scope and timing of these reviews. These include making the Renewable Energy Target Scheme review biennial instead of quadrennial and delaying the first review of the Carbon Farming Initiative by two years.

The Climate Change Authority was established to provide the highest quality advice and transparency about Australia's climate change policies. It has a charter that includes taking into account expert scientific and economic evidence and developments—as you would expect—in the international arena. By respecting the scientific and economic consensus, it circumvents the politics of climate change and ensures that Australia's policy is directed by empiricism and reason instead of fear, denial and greed. The CCA is also independent of the government and is tasked with undertaking regular reviews of the government's climate change policies. The minister's input is limited to providing direction on general matters only; they cannot direct the conduct of a review, nor can they influence the content of a report or a particular view. To ensure openness and accountability, the authority is required to hold public consultation as part of its reviews. In short, the Climate Change Authority provides the facts and the advice for everyone to see, and the government and the parliament decide how to act on that advice. This model is simple, it is independent, it is transparent and, most importantly, it is working—four big ticks for any policy, in my opinion. But apparently that is not enough to save it from being run over by a government stuck in reverse gear.

The coalition have told us that the Climate Change Authority is no longer necessary because it only exists to monitor the carbon price, and the carbon price is on its way out. There are a couple of issues there, but let's focus on the authority for now. To call the authority redundant, as the government have done, and to suggest that its lone purpose is to monitor the carbon price, is not true. The Climate Change Authority exists to monitor Australia's climate change mitigation policies. This government's direct action policy should receive the same scrutiny as that received by the previous government's carbon price and associated policies. And that scrutiny should come from an independent and transparent body—like the Climate Change Authority.

The authority also exists to track Australia's progress in meeting its emission reduction targets—the ones, I might remind my coalition colleagues here in the Senate chamber, that both our parties agreed to—and to determine whether Australia is doing its part to combat global climate change. It did exactly this four months ago when it released Reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions: targets and progress review draft report. This draft report pointed out that, while Australia was on its way to meet its target of a five per cent reduction in year 2000 emissions by 2020, it should be considering doing even more to cut its emissions by 2020. The authority also highlighted its own continuing relevance to the new government:

The Authority has taken the Government’s different policy approach into account in the analysis for this Draft Report. In the Authority’s view, this Report remains highly relevant despite the changing policy landscape. Its primary focus is Australia’s goals for reducing emissions. The setting of these goals raises the same critical questions, whatever the particular policies adopted to meet them.

Minister Hunt's argument that the Department of the Environment can assume the authority's review function flies in the face of the authority's very purpose—limiting ministerial influence and guaranteeing public transparency. This bill undermines the whole point of the authority, which is to keep the politics out of the facts so that Australia can have an informed and meaningful approach to tackling climate change. Extending the minister's logic, can we assume the Department of Finance will soon be subsuming the responsibilities of the Productivity Commission? We do not see that policy idea being floated.

Given the toxic and damaging political debates that have surrounded the science of climate change, one would have thought that retaining an independent authority to provide the government and public with an apolitical source of advice would be a great idea. That is what we in the Labor Party think—and we know we are not alone. The United Kingdom has an equivalent entity to the Climate Change Authority. Their Committee on Climate Change was established in 2008 with the express purpose of advising the UK government on emissions targets and reporting to parliament on the nation's progress towards reaching those targets and preparing for climate change. Essentially these are the same responsibilities as those of our Climate Change Authority.

When the Conservatives came to power in the UK, however, they did not scrap the Committee on Climate Change. They could see the sense in retaining an organisation that provided apolitical advice on climate change mitigation strategies. This is the British Conservative government—the ideological parent, one would argue, of the Australian Liberal Party. But even they can see the sense in retaining an independent advisory body for climate change. It shows just how out of step this government is with the international community—a conservative outsider even among their own conservative peers.

We in the Labor Party know we are not alone in Australia in wanting to see the Climate Change Authority left intact to do the job it was created to do. Numerous environmental organisations and climate change action groups provided submissions urging the government to retain the Climate Change Authority even in the event that the carbon price and pollution cap are repealed. For example, the World Wildlife Fund said:

… it is critical that the Climate Change Authority or similar body is retained to ensure Australia’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are informed by independent scientific, economic, energy, and policy experts with a level of distance from stakeholder influence.

Similarly, the Conservation Council of South Australia said:

The Conservation Council of SA does not support the abolition of the Climate Change Authority. Such an Authority is vital to the independence of advice on climate change policy and initiatives.

Professor Frank Jotzo, who works in my electorate as the director of the ANU Centre for Climate Economics and Policy, pointed out in his submission to the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee that the Climate Change Authority could still function under the coalition's direct action policy.

The business community also supports the Climate Change Authority. The Investor Group on Climate Change pointed out that the investor community values the analysis provided by the authority:

Regardless of the policy tools that Australian governments choose to implement, the CCA’s analysis assists investors to interpret the likely future emissions reductions trajectory for Australia and the scale of policy response that will be required.

By removing the Climate Change Authority, we also risk Australia falling out of step with the emissions reduction developments emerging at the international level in response to new science and global carbon budget commitments. This could have dire consequences for Australian businesses as they become uncompetitive, or less competitive, in an international market that now values low-emission products and services.

If environmental organisations and the Australian business community both support the Climate Change Authority and the intelligence it provides to all considerations surrounding climate change, why is this government moving to scrap it? Allow me to speculate here. They have said a number of things, but I believe it is because they do not want their climate mitigation policies scrutinised by an independent body. They want this parliament, and the Australian people at large, kept in the dark about the impacts their policies are having on this country's carbon emissions. I suspect—and many people have made this observation—it is because they know their policies will not work.

Moving the authority's review responsibilities to the environment department is a sleight of hand to give Minister Hunt the right to censor reviews of his own policies. And what about the authority's other responsibilities? This bill does not make any mention of who will assume these responsibilities—responsibilities that include assessing and recommending national emissions reduction targets, providing the government with analysis of the response and efforts of other countries and providing the government with advice on the developments in climate science that are occurring all the time around the world.

By abolishing the Climate Change Authority this government is seeking to shut out any form of public and unbiased scrutiny of its climate mitigation policies. I suppose it should not come as a surprise, because of this government's poor record when it comes to transparency. We know it has made a virtue of ducking for cover, of keeping things secret, and it is an absolute discredit to a government that for many years in opposition clamoured for greater transparency—transparency that the former Labor government was only too happy to provide. We made a diligent effort to be transparent on a whole range of policy issues, not the least being the level of scrutiny we were able to establish for our climate change policies. An example of the government's lack of transparency is the weekly briefings on border control, which proved too sensitive and have been downgraded to press releases. I am involved in one of the committee inquiries into the Commission of Audit, another process shrouded in secrecy. It is extraordinarily difficult to get information, and yet the Commission of Audit seeks to make recommendations to the government on a wide range of cost-cutting and expenditure reducing measures that not only are likely to impact on the social experience of millions of Australians but also go to the heart of the function of government itself. Yet there is no transparency.

This lack of transparency is becoming a characteristic of the Abbott government. It is a characteristic that has no place in the 21st century. We have seen time and again that the benefits of transparency not only offer citizens of a country the opportunity to participate in a modern democracy but also allow for parliaments, and us as elected representatives, to engage more fully and openly in the great policy challenges of our time. I think this lack of transparency is because the Abbott government are afraid that their policies will not work. It may be worse than that—it may be that they already know that and they are seeking to provide a blanket to shield that knowledge from the rest of us. We know this government have nothing more than contempt for the way in which climate science is presented by experts who have devoted their life to that field of science, and some—not all—have ridiculed the strength of that science. Many Australians have observed that over many years with dismay.

The government closed down the Climate Commission when they came to power and they have savagely cut the CSIRO, and today they are looking to shut down the Climate Change Authority. We know that many members of the government are suspicious of climate change; we know that there are some deniers of climate change, even now, after decades of established science. This is, after all, a government led by a person who has questioned whether carbon dioxide is quite the environmental villain that some people make it out to be—not to mention his describing climate change at one point as 'absolute crap'. These kinds of comments, disregarding well established science, bring this whole place down. They reflect on all of us as parliamentarians and they reflect on the professionalism of the Australian parliament. It is embarrassing that such things are said about established science. I believe in a future where we do use science to test our policies, where we do rely on science for evidence of where we need to go next and to ensure we are making policies that best serve the next generation of Australians.

I do not understand why this government is trying so hard to hide. I have speculated on the potential motivations—I guess it is up to members of the government to tell us why they need to scrap the Climate Change Authority. As yet, there has been no plausible or satisfactory explanation, other than the lack of transparency, for a policy that I suspect they already know will not work.

Lin Thorp (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in opposition to the Climate Change Authority (Abolition) Bill 2013. I reject the coalition's push to abolish one of Australia's most vital independent statutory bodies, the Climate Change Authority, as they move to scrap the carbon pricing scheme. The opposition will not support the scrapping of statutory bodies whose role it is to provide independent advice to governments on climate science policy. Scrapping the Climate Change Authority would be an act of ignorance and recklessness as we face the increasing pressure of climate extremes from the global phenomenon of climate change. The coalition's attempt to abolish the Climate Change Authority indicates that they will do anything to ensure that there is no independent analysis and scrutiny of their 'direct action plan'—a plan that will achieve nothing and become a policy failure for the coalition government.

The creation of the Climate Change Authority was one of the most important of a set of policies put in place by the former Labor government to address increasing concerns about the impact of climate change—its impact on the Australian landscape, the Australian people and the Australian way of life. Despite the coalition's repeated promises before coming to government that they were serious about climate change, attempts to scrap this statutory body indicate that the coalition government have no intention to take meaningful and effective action on climate change.

The role of the Climate Change Authority is to provide independent advice and recommendations to the Australian government on matters such as carbon pricing and Australia's renewable energy targets for carbon pollution. The authority conducts periodic reviews of carbon pricing processes and provides reports on Australia's progress towards meeting national targets, such as Australia's national emissions targets. Unlike the coalition led by Mr Tony Abbott, Labor will always base our policy direction and decision making on the best available science. Conclusive and comprehensive scientific assessments have strongly indicated that climate change is a reality—a reality that can clearly be attributed to the carbon emissions produced by human activity.

Labor understand that climate change is set to have a major impact on Australia's economy and environment. We know that the dangerous consequences of climate change increase significantly as increases in temperature persist. This Prime Minister can ignore the science all he likes but he cannot ignore the realities of climate change. The contrast between Labor and the coalition here is very clear: Labor stand with the scientific community and stand by taking real action on climate change; Mr Abbott and the coalition do not.

We know that the Liberals do not accept the science of climate change. It was in July 2009 that the now Prime Minister stated that he was 'hugely unconvinced by the so-called science on climate change'. Again, in October 2009, as my colleague said previously, Mr Abbott said that climate science was 'absolute crap'. In 2010, he went on to state that he did not believe that the 'science is settled'. The Liberals' treatment of climate scientists and their work was reinforced yet again recently, when Prime Minister Tony Abbott accused the United Nations climate chief of talking through her hat. When in opposition, Tony Abbott led one of the most irresponsible scare campaigns on carbon pricing that the Australian people have experienced. These attitudes are not surprising, however, with former Liberal Party leader John Howard travelling overseas and telling London audiences that he would rather trust his 'instinct' than the evidence of over 97 per cent of the world's climate scientists.

With the attitudes and very dated beliefs of those opposite, it is no wonder that the coalition's policy has not been backed up and supported by one credible scientist or economist. Therefore, it really comes as no surprise to me and my Labor colleagues that the coalition is seeking to abolish the institutional bodies which report on the facts and realities of climate science.

These institutional bodies are comprised of Australia's most well respected, experienced and highly educated scientists who report on the facts and the reality of climate science. It comes as no surprise, because the coalition know that their proposed Direct Action Plan would not stand up to any of the high-level scrutiny and policy analysis which would be provided by the Climate Change Authority. The coalition know that Direct Action is merely a slogan, a con of a policy, with no substance. It has no capacity to deliver the outcomes that the coalition promised before the election. The coalition know this and they are running scared from the independent scrutiny that the Climate Change Authority would provide.

The Climate Change Authority is a statutory body which was created under the Climate Change Authority Act 2011 and commenced operations on 1 July 2012. Advice provided by the Climate Change Authority is well respected in the Australian scientific, business and academic communities. The advice is provided by Australia's best, with an incredibly strong board comprising a former governor of the Reserve Bank, who I understand was not even consulted on the development of the Direct Action Plan; an Australian Research Council Federation fellow of the University of Queensland; a current member of the Reserve Bank board and recently retired chief executive of the Australian Industry Group; the chair of AustralianSuper; and a former member of the Productivity Commission. Overall, these prominent Australians form a board which includes four professors, several economists, a leading climate scientist and Australian community members with strong backgrounds who have practical knowledge about investment and business. The talents and academic credibility of these outstanding Australians is as clear as day, yet Mr Abbott and those opposite would prefer to manage and control the information and advice provided to them through the Prime Minister's office. I find it hard to see how Mr Abbott could reject advice from such prominent people, when his understanding of climate change, as expressed in an interview with Steve Vizard on MTR in March 2011, is as follows:

Well, I’ve always thought that climate change was real because I’ve always known about the ice age and other things …

During the recent inquiry into the government's carbon tax repeal bills, the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee heard from many stakeholders about the high esteem in which the Climate Change Authority is held. During the inquiry, Mr Erwin Jackson of the Climate Institute stated:

… the Climate Change Authority plays an essential role in informing that climate policy should be retained. … To achieve a sustained emission reduction consistent with our national interest, Australia needs climate policies that are based on a sound foundation of evidence rather than political agenda.

He went on to state:

What … the Climate Change Authority does is provide an opportunity for all those stakeholders to present their views, to have them scrutinised in a transparent way and then for conclusions to be drawn from that … We need a solid base of evidence and a strong analytical foundation upon which to base our decisions, which should be independent of government, should be independent of business groups and should be independent of environment groups. That is why we need institutions like the Climate Change Authority …

Labor believe that the role of the Climate Change Authority in providing this independent information and advice is vital. We believe that the Climate Change Authority has the capacity to continue to add value to the debate about climate change and its impact. There are similar examples of such independent bodies operating successfully to inform governments, such as the Committee on Climate Change in the United Kingdom. Labor believe that the value of the Climate Change Authority extends beyond policy debates over carbon pricing and ought to be retained regardless of the direct action policy approach pursued by the coalition government. It is vital for large, developed countries with advanced democracies to have robust and independent institutions which can assess and analyse both sides of the debate and make decisions based on the evidence presented.

The opposition have some serious doubts that the functions of the Climate Change Authority could be performed in-house by the Department of the Environment. The opposition do not support the shutting down of strong, independent voices in Australia's public policy debates in order for the coalition to ensure that government advice to the Australian parliament and the wider Australian community is created, controlled and managed from the Prime Minister's office. Independent modelling has shown that the coalition's alternative climate change policy will cost billions of dollars more than Tony Abbott has claimed.

Witness evidence provided to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee inquiry into the carbon tax repeal legislation from the Climate Institute noted that there had been no independent analysis to date which suggested that the Direct Action Plan could achieve the proposed five per cent target. Being one of the largest per capita polluters in the world, Australia has a great global responsibility to pursue policy avenues which aim to tackle climate change. Climate change is a shared global responsibility, and that is why Australia has a global obligation to act. If the coalition walks away now, future generations of Australians will have to pay the price of this government's ignorance and inactivity. If the coalition's legislation passes the Senate, Australia's response to climate change will be viewed as a joke, because no expert believes that the Direct Action Plan can deliver real outcomes.

The science on climate change is clear. This is why over 97 per cent of published climate scientists agree that it is real and driven by human activity. It is accepted knowledge that carbon pollution is having a harmful and dangerous effect on our environment. The average air temperatures of our nation have increased by 0.9 degrees Celsius since 1910 and, since the 1950s, each decade has been warmer than the previous decade. It has also been noted in the record books that January 2013 was recorded as the hottest month in Australia since 1910. Australia's climate policy directions are globally significant to the rest of the world, particularly to other developed nations.

Let me remind those opposite that we are watched with a careful eye by our international partners. Not acting on our global responsibilities is simply not an option. Even the world's major international economic institutions have pledged their support in favour of climate change based policies such as carbon pricing. China, who is one of Australia's biggest trading partners, has also made clear indications that it will place a cap on coal consumption. China has also begun seven pilot emissions trading schemes in regions covering more than 200 million people. As one of the largest polluters, it is vital for Australia to play a key role as an influential and powerful force in the fight for global climate action.

It is now clear that it is in Australia's national interest to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and work with international partners to cut global carbon pollution. If emissions are not reduced, Australia will continue to experience more extreme weather events. At a time when 99 countries in the world have made formal pledges to the United Nations to reduce carbon pollution and taken serious action to lessen the impact of climate change, the coalition government is turning its back on Australia's climate achievements.

Under the former Labor government, Australia began to build a strong global reputation and a proud record for serious and effective policy measures to tackle climate change. Labor legislated a comprehensive plan to tackle climate change and cut the pollution we emit. The first act of the previous Labor government in this area was to ratify the Kyoto protocol. It was Labor who subsequently committed Australia to a second commitment period under the protocol. The former Labor government delivered outcomes which included more than one million households being fitted with solar panels; employment in the renewable energy industry more than doubling to over 24,000 people; and renewable power generation as a share of the National Electricity Market increasing by 25 per cent, ensuring that pollution in the National Electricity Market decreased by seven per cent. The former Labor government also provided support to reduce land sector emissions through the Carbon Farming Initiative; unprecedented support for renewable energy through the Renewable Energy Target; and support for business to become more efficient and productive, including the Clean Technology Program.

Australia enjoys some of the best renewable energy resources in the world, which range from sunshine and wind power to geothermal energy and the tidal power of oceans. I would urge those opposite not to let these policy achievements go to waste. Unlike Labor, the coalition seems to have no ambition to create a cleaner and more energy efficient Australian economy. In stark contrast to the opposition's policy, Mr Abbott and the coalition have not been able to come up with one credible scientist or economist who is willing to stand up and back their 'direct action' policy.

Every day it is becoming clearer to the Australian public that the government's proposed direct action policy is a con. The approach of this government on carbon pollution will ensure that taxpayers' money is used to pay out the big polluters. The Australian public should not be surprised that the coalition is once again running away from engaging in a substantive policy debate on climate change policy. After all, Mr Abbott has consistently ignored the scientific evidence and advice. This is why the coalition's direct action policy is nothing more than a costly one-liner. Not one expert scientist has been able to show that the coalition's plan has the capacity to meet Australia's emission reduction targets. Labor believes that it is a government's responsibility to act on the professional advice provided by those in the scientific community.

The Climate Change Authority provides expert, transparent advice and information on carbon pollution and climate change issues to government, business and the public. The role of the authority is essential to inform the public debate and the public policy which follows. Despite efforts to silence the work of prominent scientists within Australia's statutory bodies, the coalition must realise that, regardless of their political tactics on this issue, climate change will not go away by simply pretending that it is not happening and ignoring academic advice which details the contrary. It is time for the coalition to stop pretending that those who advocate for greater action on climate change are alarmist; rather, they are simply realists about the issues facing our region.

It is clear that, as a country, now is the time to do more, not less. Now is not the time to be promising results under a direct action plan that simply will not work. And if I may quote the great Tracy Chapman, Mr Acting Deputy President: 'If not now, then when?' If not today, then why make your promises? It is time to start listening to the experts. It is time for the coalition to stop ignoring what 97 per cent of the science community are telling us about how our climate is changing. The Labor Party's position remains clear: we support retaining the Climate Change Authority so that we can ensure a robust and informed national debate continues. Unlike those opposite, Labor will always listen to the science and act to protect the flow of information and independent analysis on how best to tackle climate change. I will not be supporting this legislation.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Listening to that contribution from Senator Thorp reminds me that a little knowledge is a very dangerous thing to have on occasion. It also reminds me of the maxim that 97 per cent of statistics are made up on the spot, because there is absolutely no justification for saying that 97 per cent of published climate scientists think that catastrophic global warming is created by mankind. That is what has continually been peddled by those who have become immersed in this quasi-cult of climate change and the belief that by imposing a tax upon carbon dioxide we are somehow going to stop the ever-changing pattern of climate change that has been going on for aeons.

For two days we have been here listening to the Labor Party and their alliance partners, the Greens, sandbagging the legacy of their six years in government. And what a legacy it is. It is a legacy of intergenerational debt. It is a legacy of peddling catastrophic and alarmist climate change propaganda that was always more about taxing the Australian people, putting government at the centre of business decision making in this country and outsourcing aspects of our sovereignty to unelected officials in the United Nations rather than delivering positive environmental outcomes. They are desperately ashamed of their legacy.

Senator Thorp in her contribution talked about evidence based policy that was coming forward and how they had put in solar panels on all these roofs. She neglected to say that the Labor Party in government delivered the highest electricity prices in the world to Australians. They delivered higher gas prices for all Australians. They delivered higher costs of business for every business in this country. They have driven manufacturing industries to the wall in this country. That is the legacy of the Labor Party and their public policy agenda.

Senator Thorp and her colleagues have also glossed over the evidence based policy where they rushed out the pink batts program, which, of course, cost billions of dollars to implement, cost billions of dollars to fix and, tragically, cost the lives of four young men because of the incompetence of those involved in implementing a coherent, incisive and deliberate evidence based policy agenda. And we could go on. Do we remember at the election when they said that we were going to have a cash for clunkers scheme? There are plenty of clunkers on the other side—and some of them have cashed out, let me tell you, because we do not have the climate change minister with us anymore. We have had a whole bunch cash out. We have had two prime ministers leave the parliament because they were clunkers, according to the Labor government.

We saw the citizenship council. There was going to be no change or implemented policy on climate change, no carbon tax and no emissions trading scheme until there was an agreement by a citizens convention, or council, or whatever it was called at the time. That went the way of the clunkers. We saw a debt cap. Do you remember the debt cap? 'We are going to be prudent and only have a debt ceiling of $200 billion or thereabouts,' they said. If Labor's policy agenda were allowed to continue, it would reach $667 billion worth of debt, and that is intergenerational debt. It may not worry those on the other side, but it worries me because I am concerned about the children of this country and the future of this country. It is not about the rhetoric, it is about delivering outcomes for people.

What about the school halls? Let us have a look at that evidence based policy where $8 billion of taxpayers' funds was wasted on rorts because Labor were incompetent administrators. Let us also have a look at their great defence of the HSU, the Health Services Union. They stood 100 per cent with them because there was nothing wrong. There was no rorting and corruption there, just like they stood shoulder to shoulder and man for man with Craig Thomson, a man who now faces these charges in court. We know that there have been slush funds in the union movement, but they are in denial on that side. When we call them out on their policy agenda and say that they do not have the evidence to back up what they are saying, we know full well that the evidence is on our side, because we know that that was the most incompetent government that Australia has ever seen.

When it comes to dealing with matters of climate change, let us also remind ourselves that the opposition, in government, took a policy to get rid of the carbon tax to the last election. That was their policy. They said, 'The carbon tax is gone; it is finished; it is all over,' yet, all of a sudden, for two days we have had Senator Thorp and others on that side saying how the carbon tax is saving the planet. None of them has said how much Australia's contribution is going to cut the temperature. We have heard about countries promising and signing pledges to do stuff. We have not seen any action, and that is the problem. You do not see America signing up to pledges. You do not see China doing anything; they are building more coal fired power stations. No matter how they want to gloss this and dress it up, power is absolutely important. Australia has the most expensive power in the world as a direct result of the policy agenda of those on the other side when they were in government.

They have of course been critical of policy outcomes and an agenda that will deliver real environmental benefits—that is, the coalition's Direct Action Plan. Everyone in the country probably knows that I am absolutely sceptical and do not buy the catastrophic climate change alarmism that has been peddled by so-called environmentalists. I do not believe that carbon dioxide is radically changing the temperature. I do not believe it is rapidly changing the planet. I do not believe it is a pollutant. It is important for functioning life on earth, but that is not the point. I do support proper and prudent environmental outcomes, because it is a legacy for our children and that is what our policy will deliver.

Our policy is going to increase the fertility of the soil. It is going to sequester carbon in the soil. It is going to allow more moisture to be retained. That is a net positive. Yes, it costs money, but so does everything. At least there is going to be something to show for it. We are going to plant more trees, which will be a good thing for the country. When they are planted in an appropriate area they help to clean the air, they grow and they provide a better environment. We are going to clean up our waterways. We are going to encourage more environmentalism in a practical and sensible way.

We are also going to encourage businesses and individuals to be more energy efficient. What is wrong with that? Apparently, those things are all terrible things to do, but, if you just whack a tax on something, it is suddenly going to stop climate change. If you believe that, you will believe almost anything. I regret that there are a number of people that really will believe anything, because they continue to vote for the Labor Party. If those on that side of the chamber truly believe what they are telling themselves today and what they are saying to this chamber, then it shows just how far groupthink has descended upon those on the other side. That is where the true denial is: the true denial of their legacy for Australia.

Can we remind ourselves of how many variations we have seen in their climate change policy? All of them were going to solve the planet's problems. We had much hullabaloo about the great moral issue of our time and how Copenhagen was going to change the world. Australia went to Copenhagen with the largest contingent of representatives of any nation, I think. They spent millions of dollars going there for zero outcome. What was the direct result of that? When the Labor Party returned, instead of embracing the great moral issue of our time, as Mr Rudd then characterised it, they decided to ditch the policy and knife Mr Rudd—the first bloody coup by Mr Bill Shorten and his acolytes, the faceless men. It was a coup. It ditched a first-term Prime Minister in this country in a bloody and brutal fashion on the back of his dumping of their policy that no-one in the world was embracing. It was an extraordinary performance.

We can continue. Shortly after that, when Ms Gillard became Prime Minister, there was that crystal-clear promise—you would remember it, I am sure—in 2010: 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' That was about the same time as the cash-for-clunkers scheme came in and when there was the promise of a citizens assembly. What happened after the election? The great accord, which Mr Paul Howes is trying to bring back. The great accord was entered into with the Greens party. We saw Mr Bob Brown, Senator Milne, the Prime Minister, Mr Swan and others all happily embracing and signing their accord to change the planet and deceive the Australian people along the way.

The Australian people have rendered their verdict. The Australian people have made a determination that they saw the most incompetent, disingenuous and hopeless government—two governments—in, virtually, the history of this country, certainly that I can recall. They rendered their verdict; they voted overwhelmingly against the Greens-Labor alliance. They voted overwhelmingly to repeal the carbon tax, to get rid of the waste, to get the debt under control, to give some hope to our children, and yet those on the other side are still in denial. I know some of them secretly recognise just how poor they were in government. You cannot blame them all, but the fact is they should not be here defending what is truly indefensible.

We have to get the budget back under control. We have to restore hope and opportunity. We have to restore the ability for Australians to have confidence once again in their parliamentary institutions, that their government is going to act in the national interest; not act in the secular interest, not act in the personal interest and not act in the interests of the union movement but act for Australians. Let's remember: that is what we have been elected to do. So we need to cut the waste, we need to get back to sensible policy and we need to reduce and limit the size of government, because it became engorged with borrowed money under the regime of those opposite.

It is important we get these facts on the record. It is important that the Labor Party actually come to reality: they are no longer the government. Their legacy is poor and it has done a disservice to Australia. It is time they let us get on with the job of making positive change in this country, that is going to make our country stronger and more prosperous and will restore faith and confidence in the institutions that govern our parliament.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Climate Change Authority (Abolition) Bill 2013. I get the honour of following Senator Bernardi. To use his own words, I follow a contribution that was 'alarmist climate change propaganda', because the former speaker, Senator Bernardi, is one of the chief deniers about climate change. He is a very up-front about it, unlike many other members of the coalition government. At least Senator Bernardi is up-front about it. He does not believe. He is one of the chief deniers, one of the chief clunkers over there. But the coalition government's response to climate change is a defining issue for our parliament and the country. The early signs are not good. Indeed, I think Senator Bernardi has captured the leadership team and perhaps was an architect of Direct Action. As the coalition have done in the past, and I assume they will continue to do this, they name their policies and legislation the exact opposite of what those policies and legislation will do.

The Prime Minister, Mr Tony Abbott, has an axe hanging over the Climate Change Authority. Senator Bernardi in his contribution said that he welcomes 'proper and prudent advice', and that is what the Climate Change Authority gives. The Climate Change Authority gives thought-out, independent advice on climate change policies to improve the quality of life of all Australians—the same Climate Change Authority that makes its recommendations based on the best available science. It is an impartial body with the freedom to 'call things as they see it' on the very important challenge of climate change.

But, rather than listening to the best available science, Mr Abbott and those opposite seem to know better than the best minds on the matter of climate change. The coalition have such a low regard for science that they do not even have a science minister. The coalition do not like what the Climate Change Authority has to say, so they are trying to shut it down. That is not the way Mr Abbott should run his government. As part of the suite of policies the former Labor government put in this place, the creation of the Climate Change Authority was one of the most important. In its inquiry into the government's carbon tax repeal bills, the Senate's Environment and Communications Legislation Committee heard from a number of stakeholders about the value of these bodies. The value of the Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, as we have debated in this place recently, extends beyond carbon pricing. These bodies are value-adding to our nation. They are helping Australia to plot a chart towards reducing our emissions footprint. They are making a difference, as this generation attempts to combat a problem that will only get more challenging for future generations unless we act now.

The legislation regarding the Climate Change Authority is being considered separately because, regardless of the outcome of putting a price on carbon, it still has a significant role to play. The bills are being debated separately regardless of the outcome of the debate on how this country should price carbon. Both bodies should be retained regardless of the policy approach that the country ends up with.

The Climate Change Authority gives expert, transparent advice and information on carbon pollution and climate change issues to government, business and the public. It is impartial. It looks at the science, looks at the facts and makes its recommendations. The CCA's advice is well respected. It is doubtful that its functions could be performed in-house by the environment department. The Climate Change Authority's role of providing information and advice should continue so that value can be added to the climate change debate in Australia, even if the Abbott government succeeds in foisting its policy con on Australians and gets its way on Direct Action. Even if the Direct Action Plan, which will line the pockets of the polluters, goes through, both the Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation will have important roles to fill. To scrap them will set the country back.

Mr Abbott has the chance to do the right thing and leave these bodies in place. To scrap the Climate Change Authority would prove that Mr Abbott and those opposite are climate change deniers. Is the coalition's rationale for disposing of the Climate Change Authority that it thinks climate change is not real? I suspect we have just heard an answer to that from Senator Bernardi. The Australian people know climate change is real, and Labor is with them. We are listening to the experts. We are listening to the best available science. But this is a Prime Minister who has in the past, when speaking to an audience in regional Victoria, in October 2009, said that the 'climate change argument is absolute crap'. That speaks to his attitude on this issue. He is out of step with the views of Australians.

Because this narrow-minded Prime Minister does not believe in climate change, the country must suffer. Future generations will suffer. It makes no sense to destroy the very authority that seeks to deliver independent and expert advice to government and other stakeholders. The Climate Change Authority has continued to gather information and debate policy positions. Is Mr Abbott concerned about the Climate Change Authority's opinion of Direct Action? Is that why he wants to get rid of this independent body of experts? If we refuse to listen to the experts, we are doomed to fail.

So, if not the experts, just who has Mr Abbott's ear on this matter? His top business adviser, Mr Maurice Newman, certainly seems to have it. Mr Newman is a climate change non-believer. On 17 September, Mr Newman wrote in the Australian Financial Review:

The CSIRO, for example, has 27 scientists dedicated to climate change. It and the weather bureau continue to propagate the myth of anthropological climate change and are likely to be background critics of the Coalition's Direct Action policies.

Mr Newman denies the science. He thinks climate change is a political issue. And, most significantly, he has Mr Abbott's ear. In his column in the Australian Financial Review, Mr Newman also advocated the abolition of the Climate Change Authority.

We have seen from Mr Abbott that he certainly got Mr Newman's memo: the Climate Change Authority is in his sights with this legislation. But the Labor party will not accept this bill. We will not side with the climate change deniers who are only prepared to provide lip service towards an issue to important to most Australians. That essentially is what Direct Action is: lip service.

Mr Abbott says no more money than has been allocated will go towards Direct Action. Even more damning is that the former Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull told the ABC's 7:30 that the best virtue of direct action is that it can be ripped up. Mr Malcolm Turnbull explained why when speaking with 7.30 presenter Mr Tony Jones on Lateline on 18 May 2011. Mr Turnbull told Lateline that under Direct Action the government spends taxpayers' money to pay for investments to offset the emissions by industry. Of its virtues, he says:

One is that it can be easily terminated. If in fact climate change is proved to be not real, which some people obviously believe—I don't. If you believe climate change is going to be proved to be unreal, then a scheme like that can be brought to an end.

Is that it? The best case scenario for direct action is if climate change is not real? That would be cold comfort for all who hear it. The Climate Change Authority certainly believes that climate change is real. The leading scientists all believe that climate change is real. The Labor Party believes that climate change is real. In that interview, Mr Turnbull went on to Direct Action's other virtues:

Or if you believe that there is not going to be any global action and that the rest of the world will just say, "It's all too hard and we'll just let the planet get hotter and hotter," and, you know, heaven help our future generations - if you take that rather grim, fatalistic view of the future and you want to abandon all activity, a scheme like that is easier to stop.

A grim and fatalistic view indeed, but one it seems other members of his party are happy to adopt. Why bother taking any meaningful steps to reduce emissions when you can stick it in the too-hard basket and give up. It is cause for concern if that is the approach that this government will take towards tackling climate change but, frighteningly, this appears to be the only rationale. Deny the science. Deny that climate change is an issue. Deny, deny, deny.

Climate change is certainly an easier issue to tackle if you refuse to acknowledge that it exists. Is that the Liberal-National coalition's real solution to this issue? They have no answers and will not listen to a body like the Climate Change Authority, which is there to give advice. Worse still, the coalition wants to scrap it altogether. Labor, on the other hand, whole-heartedly supports the Climate Change Authority. Labor also supports replacing the carbon tax with an emissions trading scheme. We do not support Direct Action.

But regardless, the Labor Party wants legislation around abolishing the Climate Change Authority to be debated separately, as it has a role to play no matter what the outcome of how this country puts a price on carbon. The shadow minister for environment, climate change and water, the Hon. Mark Butler MP, said the reason for this is that the Climate Change Authority is:

… a statutory body charged with providing strong and independent advice to government about matters, including the Renewable Energy Target as well as caps and targets for carbon pollution or carbon emissions. The authority is chaired by former Reserve Bank governor Bernie Fraser, with a board made up of highly esteemed business leaders, economists and scientists, including Australia's Chief Scientist, Professor Chubb.

… These bills would also shut down the independent voice of the Climate Change Authority on the critically important question of targets, extending yet further the emerging theme of this government: to ensure that all advice—advice to the parliament and advice to the Australian community—is managed and controlled by the Prime Minister's office. Well, Labor will stand up for strong, independent advice. We will oppose the bill that abolishes the Climate Change Authority outright.

The government must be taking action on climate change. It must show leadership on this matter. The evidence just keeps piling up about what is happening in the climate.

The 12 months to October were the hottest on record in Australia in spite of it not being an El Nino period. The evidence is there that our climate is changing. It is almost certain that humans are speeding it up. We cannot do nothing. We must continue to act. To destroy the Climate Change Authority undoes so much good work and sets back future governments and, indeed, future generations. Senator Bernardi, in his contribution, talked about his concern for our children, our future generations and, indeed, the country. Yet, in the next breath, he denies climate change all together. Well, Senator Bernardi, those future generations will inevitably have to tackle the issue, because this issue is not going away. The Climate Change Authority must be allowed to continue its good work.

The coalition's plan to close the Climate Change Authority is clear evidence that they have no time for independent expert advice. I think we have already seen that in a number of other policy areas. It is more of a central command process that is going on, coming out of the Prime Minister's office. The coalition seems to be more interested in listening to climate change deniers, like Mr Maurice Newman and those others in the coalition caucus. Already the coalition has sacked leading public servants that were too frank and fearless in pointing out that the coalition's direct action policy would be disastrous for Australia. So it is hard to imagine Mr Abbott wanting to listen to the Climate Change Authority.

But look at the contrast between the positions of Labor and the coalition. Concerning the year 2020, both parties are committed to being five per cent below the 2000 level. However, if you look closely, the parties have differing positions. That is even putting aside this new government's attitude to its commitments, which have played out with the Better Schools funding fiasco that the Minister for Education, Chris Pyne, put the nation's schools, parents and children through.

For Labor, five per cent below 2000 levels is the minimum. Our position was and is that Australia should reach a reduction of up to 25 per cent, conditional on international action. The Labor Party would also set its final target after considering the advice of the Climate Change Authority. The coalition has on paper made a commitment, but Mr Abbott told the National Press Club, on 2 September 2013, that if Direct Action did not work he would not meet the target.

The five per cent target is a minimum target, but Mr Abbott is unlikely to commit to anything other than the minimum, as reported in The Age. The Prime Minster said that the five per cent target will not increase 'in the absence of very serious like-binding commitments from other countries, and there is no evidence of that'.

Any excuse to weasel out of so-called binding commitments to reach the target. Mr Abbott agreed to the five per cent target when he wrote to the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2009. Even though he did not agree to putting a price on carbon, he agreed that five per cent of 2000 emissions by 2020 was the minimum target. If he wishes to achieve this without putting a price on carbon then he needs bodies like the Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to achieve it.

Looking further ahead to 2050, Labor's policy is to be 80 per cent below 2000 levels. That means taking more than 17 billion tonnes of pollution out of the atmosphere between now and 2050. The coalition has no commitment for a 2050 target. It cannot be overstated how short-sighted this coalition is when it comes to attempting to reduce Australia's carbon footprint. If setting goals for seven years away is a headache, setting goals for 2050 is just too hard to compute for those opposite.

The Climate Change Authority is a key institution to give governments advice on the effectiveness of their policies. This is a government that not only ignores the scientists but also does not even have a science minister. If this government has its way and scraps the Climate Change Authority, it is clear evidence that Mr Abbott and his inner circle have no interest in hearing any views other than their own backward, conservative, slash-and-burn mentality. Prime Minister Abbott's decision to try to axe the Climate Change Authority shows his complete hostility to independent expert advice.

The coalition makes the argument that the Department of Environment can do the work of the Climate Commission and the Climate Change Authority. But this is a government that has already fired three senior public servants, including the former secretary of the Department of Climate Change, Blair Comley, who dared to be more frank and fearless than the coalition wanted to hear. It is a disturbing pattern. If you say things this government does not want to hear, you will be shown the door. It makes you question whether the Department of the Environment can be expected to keep the public properly informed. If the government gets away with it and scraps the Climate Change Authority, primarily it seems because those opposite do not like what it has to say, can anyone seriously expect the Department of the Environment to fill the void when their jobs are constantly at risk from a coalition government that is seeking to remove anyone who will hold them to account?

It should be left to the Climate Change Authority to advise the government in the area of climate change, not the department. The Climate Change Authority is independent and it is there to provide expert advice. As we know, Mr Abbott's coalition government is lukewarm on this approach.

Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think it is important in this debate to acknowledge that there are some things that are agreed on by both sides of this chamber. One of them is that there is an agreement that we should abolish the carbon tax. But, while the fixed price on carbon should end by 30 June next year, it should end with a transition to a floating carbon price. Labor believe that we must support the most effective and least costly way of reducing carbon pollution.

The scientific consensus on climate change—that global warming is occurring and human activity is a contributing factor—has been settled. The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, was released on 27 September last year. It states the inescapable scientific facts: 'Warming of the climate system is unequivocal and, since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.' The fact that in 2014 we in this chamber still have to, in part, have a debate about whether or not climate change is real is an indictment of this chamber and an indictment of the debate that this nation has been having on this issue in the past few years. Observed changes have included more extreme weather events, more warm days and nights and greater frequency of heatwaves. The report concludes it extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by human activity.

The reality of climate change is fundamentally changing our strategic view of the world. In his contribution in the other place, the member for Isaacs pointed out that the Pentagon has identified climate change as one of the greatest security challenges we will face in coming decades. Addressing an international security forum in November last year, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said that climate change was heightening global instability. The new arctic strategy he announced was dealing with what he described as a new frontier, opened up by the rapidly-changing conditions in that region.

We have to see this Climate Change Authority (Abolition) Bill through the prism of this government's approach to science and evidence based policy, and it has been extremely poor. There is an absence of a science minister, as Senator Brown referred to in her speech. There are flags of cuts to organisations such as the CSIRO and there are more cuts coming—unfortunately, we expect, in the area of science and research—as part of the still secret Commission of Audit process. In under a fortnight's time a report will be delivered to the government but the government are yet to give us a detailed timetable on when it will be released to the public, and they are ruling nothing in or out. I worry it will contain another attack on the science community and the science infrastructure of this nation.

Let us take a step back and look at the function of the Climate Change Authority. It provides independent expert advice on Australia's emissions-reduction targets and the scope for emissions reductions in Australia. As an independent body based on a similar advisory committee in the UK, it is intended to ensure that climate change policy is directed by evidence and facts rather than political opportunism. It was intended to take the politics out of the debate. Its advice, based not only on scientific evidence but also on economic evidence, is presented to government to inform its decision making.

The UK Committee on Climate Change outlines four strategic priorities:

These principles are shared with the Climate Change Authority and underpin evidence based policy on climate change. We all know that an evidence based approach is the cornerstone of good public policy. If the government do not have objective, factually accurate, rigorous information available when making a decision, then what are they basing their judgements on?

There are plenty of self-interested stakeholders out there, especially those who would benefit from government inaction. Caving into these pressures is not the mark of strong leadership. It is easy to ignore facts when they do not suit your argument, but selectively dismissing evidence is not leadership. The Prime Minister, on 31 July 2011, said: 'I agree it's very wrong to attack scientists, and no-one on the coalition side is doing that.'

Ignoring the evidence on climate change and abolishing independent expert advice to government is an attack. It is an attack on science, on good public policy and on the truth. Scrapping the Climate Change Authority means worse advice to government and amounts to the government looking to be wilfully and, in my view, negligently ignorant of expert scientific evidence on climate change. Responses to climate change have been highly politicised in recent years. That makes it all the more vital to have an agency independent of government that is responsible for advising on this policy area. In July 2011, Malcolm Turnbull said: 'We cannot afford to allow the science to become a partisan issue' and I agree with him, and this is why these bills should not pass.

The broader suite of bills that the Senate will consider is designed to tear apart the entire framework for delivering a cap-and-trade mechanism for reducing carbon emissions in Australia. They will also undermine the solid evidence base on which government decisions will be made. The Renewable Energy Target, when it was initially discussed by former Prime Minister Howard, was seen as a bipartisan pathway. Only a market based approach can guarantee that the Renewable Energy Target can be achieved. What worries me is that, contrary to positions that those opposite have held at different points in time, recent performance and the recent path the coalition has chosen to take are concerning. At the 2007 election—and some of this gets forgotten—the coalition supported putting a price on carbon emissions. The former Prime Minister, John Howard, commissioned a significant report, chaired by Peter Shergold, recommending that Australia support an emissions trading scheme. Releasing the report of John Howard's emissions trading task force, Mr Shergold said:

Australia should commit to an emissions target...ahead of any comprehensive global response, and it should do that with an emissions trading scheme based upon cap and trade.

The Shergold report also found that 'picking winners will increase the costs we impose on ourselves'. An ETS—an emissions trading scheme—gives incentives for constant business innovation by allowing the market to determine best practice. It empowers the corporate sector to make decisions that improve outcomes for the environment, minimising government bureaucracy and setting rules rather than taking a command-and-control approach. You would think concepts like these would be at the core of the Liberal Party's philosophy when it comes to environmental policy. But instead of rewarding ongoing efficiency, they will do exactly what Shergold cautioned against, and that is pick winners.

The direction the government is heading at the moment is effectively to create one giant slush fund for those the coalition think should be looked after in this process. Different speakers from the other side have slammed the use of slush funds for environmental projects in the past; they believe that only projects that are too risky for the market to fund should be funded. What hypocrisy that such a fund would be the core of their entire carbon policy. The Emissions Reduction Fund, which the coalition describes as the 'centrepiece' of its Direct Action policy, is still in development. One Coalition MP described Direct Action as 'like a school project'. At the moment they keep saying there is an ongoing process of consultation based on a green paper, but what do we actually know about Direct Action? Not much, because this green paper process replaces the policy that they published in 2010. We know what it will be called; we know how much it is going to cost—$2.8 billion over four years. But what we do not know is how it is going work and what worries me is neither does the government.

That is why they still have key questions unanswered in their green paper: They are questions like: how do we work out whether emissions reductions are genuine? How are emissions reductions calculated? How do we run an efficient tender process that actually subsidises the lowest-cost emissions reductions? How do we apply and enforce a safeguard mechanism against baselines being exceeded? What should the governance arrangements for the Clean Energy Regulator be? Are any processes available for this to be reviewed? It seems to me that some of these questions are very basic, and the lack of detail that has been provided by the government—outside a few slogans and documents that they themselves are now insisting they need to review—is very worrying.

The series of bills we have been debating will abolish the entire framework for managing emissions reductions, while nothing will replace it until the coalition sort out an alternative. Frankly, for the Australian public, on an issue as serious as climate change, this is just not good enough.

The government have allocated a budget without even detailing their own policy. The member for Isaacs said in the other place:

Those opposite pretend that the abolition of the fixed price on carbon will lead to lower electricity costs. They pretend that taxpayers will somehow be better off; they pretend that this legislation is somehow business friendly; and they pretend that their policy can achieve the same environmental outcomes as Labor's. Nothing could be further from the truth. The coalition's policy is a hoax on the Australian electorate.

The government are seeking to repeal the carbon pricing mechanism without even coming up with a genuine alternative. Good public policy on climate change has fallen victim to the political and campaign interests of the coalition.

At the end of the day, the coalition's decision to repeal the carbon pricing mechanism was not about finding a solution to the climate change challenges that face this nation; neither was it about finding a solution to improve the economic and social framework for emissions reduction. It was about getting through an election campaign. These facts are clear now that we are on the other side and see no detail of the policy. How can we expect the government to achieve anywhere near their emissions-reduction target of five per cent below 2000 levels by 2020 when they themselves cannot even outline the details of their policy? Even without knowing the detail, we know that the coalition are going the wrong way on the fundamental design and framework of their policy.

The government are proposing to replace a policy that is working with a policy that experts say will not work. The Shergold report said that not choosing an ETS would 'impose a far heavier burden on economic activity' and that the cost of measures such as Direct Action would be 'enormous'. The Shergold report was commissioned by John Howard. Geoff Carmody—a co-founder of Access Economics, a former Treasury official and one of the three people hand-picked to verify the coalition's policy costing figures before the last election—agrees with Shergold. He has written:

In general, ‘direct action’ options tend to be the least cost-effective. That is, they deliver the lowest emissions abatement for a given cost, or the same emissions abatement at the highest cost.

A Fairfax survey of 35 economists which was published on 28 October last year found that 86 per cent favoured an emissions trading scheme while only two supported the Direct Action approach. Justin Wolfers of the Brookings Institution and the University of Michigan describes Direct Action as producing 'more economic disruption for a lesser environmental pay-off'. On a floating carbon price versus a system of picking winners, Rob Henderson, a National Australia Bank senior economist says:

If I had to make a choice between pricing carbon and having bureaucrats allocating permits, then I’m going to go for the market mechanism every time.

This view is shared by BT's Chris Caton, who said that any economist who did not favour an emissions trading approach 'should hand his degree back'.

We know that by pricing carbon we will empower the market to create incentives for business to shift to a new, cleaner standard of practice which will reduce our negative impact on the environment. Labor supports the abolition of the fixed carbon price, but our support for abolishing the carbon tax must depend on Australia's moving soon to an emissions trading scheme—a market based mechanism which rewards innovation and adaptation, discourages inefficient and environmentally damaging practice and helps us meet our emissions-reduction targets. We in the Labor Party are willing to work across the aisle to develop an emissions trading scheme that provides the best environmental outcomes at the lowest cost. That is why these bills should not be supported—emissions reduction is too important, and good public policy cannot be allowed to fall victim to partisan politics.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens, as our leader, Christine Milne, articulated in her contribution to this debate, will be opposing the abolition of the Climate Change Authority. The Climate Change Authority is an essential part of our national infrastructure. It, along with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, is essential in creating the zero-carbon economy which we all must achieve if we are to continue our shared prosperity. We always believed, and we continue to believe, that the carbon package which was debated in this place under the previous government is an essential package of legislation which, if it continues to be implemented, will reduce carbon emissions and ensure that we have an economy able to grow into the future and develop our prosperity. It will also enable us to hold our heads up high as part of the global economy in the knowledge that we have a robust economy which can withstand the impact of climate change.

There is absolutely no doubt that climate change is already impacting on our economy, on our environment, on our health, on our agriculture and on our marine ecosystems. Every part of our existence will be and is being impacted by climate change. To know this you only have to look at the extreme weather events of this summer and see the number of people being impacted by them—the casualties of the heatwaves who have unfortunately passed away as a result of the excessive heat we are suffering. This century has seen the 13 hottest years on record.

The Climate Change Authority was established as part of the Clean Energy Future package of legislation, along with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. They are both key to achieving the change that we need in this country. They are institutions that the Abbott government has targeted in its effort to wind back the clock—part of this government's denial of climate change and its impacts. It is irresponsible of this government to be getting rid of this essential infrastructure. We know that a five per cent reduction in emissions is totally inadequate; in fact, unless we recognise this, we are and will be for the future a global joke. The Climate Change Authority was set up to depoliticise the process of setting greenhouse gas reduction targets. Perhaps Mr Abbott thinks that, by getting rid of the authority, he will make climate change go away! The Prime Minister has not distinguished himself in his leadership on climate change. He continues to make Australia a pariah and a joke by his denial, by burying his head in the sand, and by dismantling institutions that are leading-edge in their ability to tackle climate change. The Prime Minister is crippling our economy with his denial of climate change and his denial of its impacts on our economy. He is putting the halters around the process of developing a clean green economy and our ability to be leaders in renewable energy. We are looking backwards by continuing to subsidise fossil fuel industries, and by continuing to believe they are the future. It should be recognised that they are fossil fuels—that is, fossils of the past. The future is investment in renewable energies.

We in this country used to be leaders in the development of renewable energy. My home state of Western Australia was a leader in solar research—until the Howard government came in, cut funding to that research, and took us backwards again. We are just getting back on the right track with that investment, just starting to get ahead in showing our leadership once again in the development of renewables—and we are being nobbled again by going back to the future, by burying our heads in the sand and by trying to undermine the clean green economy. And this is happening just at a time when we are losing some of that manufacturing base in Australia. Here we go again, let's undermine the very industries that can start leading our economy and developing our economy again.

The Climate Change Authority is, as many speakers in this place have articulated, an independent advisory body. It is a very difficult task—and they always envisaged that it would be—to depoliticise this process. But, of course, it is the very independence of this body that is an anathema to the government. They do not want to hear the advice—because then they may need to take it on board and action it—about climate change and about how we could be really making a difference. We have the old industries that have a vested interest in continuing business as usual, while the government make their money from subsidies and wring out the last little bit of money they can from an economy that they are wrecking—because they are entrenching the old way of doing business, while hobbling what is going to be the new future for this country in terms of our economy. They have got those old big-business buddies in their ears saying, 'Get rid of it, wind it back.' It is winding us back. It is hobbling our futures and our children's futures. That is what this process does: it undermines the future for our children and for their children.

The authority should be able to provide fearless advice based on the science. And that is the other area where we are having a problem: climate change is actually based on science. Not on what people think, not on what it is in their waters, but on the science. We now do not have a minister for science, and we have seen other examples of the failure by the government to look at the evidence and the science. It is almost as if science has become a dirty word in this country. But if it was not for our investment in science, where would we be? The CSIRO has been a world leader and has developed world leading technology based on—I hate to say it—science. And yet here we are again, ignoring and getting rid of the body that can provide that independent advice that is based on the science.

The authority exists to provide advice to the government, to the parliament and, through them, to the Australian people. The advice is independent, it is based on science, and it is given in the context of international action and responsibility. The authority's draft report said of the major parties' mutual pact for the five per cent reductions that it 'would require an implausibly rapid acceleration of effort beyond 2020'. It would also mean that Australia would have used 86 per cent of its national emissions budget at the halfway point to 2050. The authority is there to chart our country's course through the 21st century by issuing and helping to develop the level of capped emissions our economy can produce in any given year. They gave us a figure of total emissions Australia could produce to play our part in limiting global warming to less than two degrees: 10,100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent until 2050. That is one per cent of the global budget. Any future national discussion around so-called budget emergencies should be based on this figure provided by the Climate Change Authority. This is part of a budget. This is a true budget emergency. If we do not properly address climate change, we will be having lots of budget emergencies in the future. That is not being recognised.

Another crucial role the Climate Change Authority plays, which is completely absent in the government's Direct Action Plan, is the provision of investment certainty. The authority recommends emission caps in five-year blocks out into the future. This sets the number of permits for the market, ensuring that all players know exactly how to arrange their business affairs over those periods. With the Direct Action Plan, we will only have contracts that last for five years. Banks will not want to finance any investments over such short, finite periods. The Climate Change Authority is the bedrock for clean technology investors. These investors are the future of this country. They are the future of our economy. They have been thrown into deep turmoil. Investment has ceased because of the absence of certainty under this government. The Climate Change Authority disappearing will entrench that turmoil and undermine investment in the development of renewable energy.

The Climate Change Authority also has responsibility for reviewing climate programs, such as the renewable energy target, as part of its legal obligation to provide independent advice. As I said, it is this independence that the government does not want. I think the whole business sector should be nervous that the government does not want this independent advice. This repeal bill hands renewable energy review powers over to the minister's department. It takes away that independence. Why is the government afraid of the independent advice the authority provides?

Getting rid of the Climate Change Authority will make us even more of a joke on the global stage. We set up these two bodies—the Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation—to be a critical part of the infrastructure we need for charting our way through climate change, for developing an economy that is robust in the face of climate change. We set up these two bodies as part of our package, as part of our legislative process to address climate change. The world thinks we are a joke for abolishing them.

This is all about the impact of climate change. While the coalition government continues to deny it, the reality is that businesses, farmers and others who are managing our natural resources are addressing climate change and managing its impact virtually every day now. In my home state of Western Australia, it is true that we have had a bumper harvest. You could look at that and think: 'All is well. This climate change stuff—what are they talking about?' But, if you delve behind the headline figures, you see that there are at least 150 farmers who were, yet again, in drought this year. They did not get adequate rainfall and were not able to get a crop off—and this is not the first year this has happened to them. Some of them have had a bad run for the last three, four or five years. That is happening more and more.

We also have the drought in Queensland of course. Our Minister for the Environment says, 'You can't plan for drought—this is an exceptional circumstance.' Unfortunately, with climate change, droughts will not be an exceptional circumstance. Climate change means we will get much drier and more variable conditions and that we will get more and more extreme weather events. So our farmers and our agricultural sector have to plan for that—plan for droughts, plan for extreme weather events. We can no longer treat them as 'exceptional circumstances', because they no longer will be.

We are a long way behind the eight ball because we have not been adequately planning for the impact of climate change. We do not have in place the resilient agricultural systems we need. We do not have ready to go the new crop varieties that can adapt to climate change. We do not yet have the landscape scale models of land management that we need in order to address climate change. We do not have the investment in R&D to develop those systems. In the programs we are developing to address drought, we are not building in climate change issues. We are not building processes for working in partnership with the farming community to develop more resilient systems or to address climate change issues across catchment and farm boundaries.

Given this government's approach to climate change, I have no faith that, in the short term, we are going to be taking those messages on board. In fact it is quite clear, given Minister Joyce's comments, that we are ignoring the impact of climate change. That is not to say that we should not be helping those farmers affected by drought. We need to do that. But that assistance needs to incorporate an investment in helping farmers build resilience into their operations over the long term. That is missing. But how can you expect such sensible policies from a government that is in denial over the impact of climate change?

I have spoken a number of times in this place about the impact of climate change on the marine environment. We have had marine heatwaves off the west coast of Western Australia. We are seeing the impact of climate change and warming oceans. Again, the science—I say that word again, although I am wondering if it will soon be one of those words you are not allowed to say in this place—is showing those impacts. We need to be putting in place systems that manage that climate change. But what do we see from this government? Just before Christmas we saw them abandon—axe—the management plans for the world's leading system of marine parks.

Debate interrupted.