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

Since coming to government, the coalition have tried to unpick every policy Labor put in place to ensure that Australia took meaningful action to combat climate change. While the events of this morning are still fresh in our minds and show that they are not always successful in these endeavours, we are still faced with a bill before us now that seeks to abolish the Climate Change Authority.

The policies that Labor put into place to address climate change were developed in consultation with Australia's leading climate scientists and economists. They were policies that evolved out of decades of discussion and debate among those economists, scientists and, indeed, politicians. The policies which emerged with a consensus across a range of spheres of our civil society included a broad acceptance of a market based solution to transition Australia's economy to a low-pollution economy. This emerged solidly during the period of the former Howard government. We certainly adopted a very strong stance when Labor came to government in 2007. That consensus only dissolved when Mr Abbott took over the leadership of the coalition. Since that time, we have seen a number of coalition representatives crawl out from under their rock, presumably with some neoconservative briefing, fuelling the politics of fear and giving them a run in Australia. We saw the fearmongering and the conspiracy theorists starting to unpick what was a very sound and, as I said, very rational—in fact, quite dry—approach to helping Australia's economy transition to a low-pollution economy.

What the coalition promoted in place of that is a policy that has been discredited. They called it Direct Action, and it is at worst a fig leaf, cynically designed to distract the Australian public from the fact that the government has no real interest in addressing climate change and so no real interest in reducing our carbon emissions. In contrast to Labor's policy, which made Australia's 370 largest polluters pay for their pollution, the Abbott government's policies are trying to make Australian taxpayers finance a fund to pay polluters so they will cut their emissions. It is ludicrous. This slush fund does not even require polluters to provide guarantees that emissions reductions are actually occurring. It is a policy that all experts agree will cost Australian households more, while achieving nothing in the effort to reduce Australia's carbon emissions. It is a policy that will inevitably cause Australia to default on its 2020 reduction targets and thereby undermine Australia's previously strong stance on the international stage in the collective fight to mitigate the damaging effects of climate change.

The Prime Minister has already indicated that he intends to abandon Australia's emissions reductions target when Direct Action fails, and the sad truth is that Australia has a government which is happy to sit back and stubbornly continue to ignore the advice of its scientists, public servants and economists and instead watch Australia default on its international commitments to reduce its carbon emissions and, by definition, pollution. I think that is exactly how Direct Action will be viewed by the international community—as a stubborn, ignorant and, I would even argue, arrogant attempt by the Australian government to avoid doing its part in the challenge of mitigating climate change.

The damage does not stop there. The government plans to do more to damage this effort. It is not enough for the government to hand all the power back to the big polluters so that a few companies can sacrifice the long-term interests of Australia. This government also wants to prevent scrutiny of its own climate change policies. Upon taking office, the first order of business for the Minister for the Environment, Mr Hunt, was to dismantle the Climate Commission. This was an institution created by the former Labor government to provide the Australian public with independent, easy-to-read, accessible, digestible information about climate change. It was an organisation dedicated to dispelling the myths and pseudoscience that had plagued the climate change debate in Australia and ensuring that the Australian people were kept reliably and independently informed on the impacts of climate change and what their government was doing to mitigate these impacts. Unfortunately, keeping the public informed was not a priority of this government, and today the government is again trying to shut down scrutiny of its climate change policies by this attempt to abolish the Climate Change Authority.

The Climate Change Authority was established to provide the government, the parliament, and the Australian people with the highest quality advice about the effectiveness of Australia's climate change policies. In formulating its advice, the authority takes into account expert scientific and economic evidence as well as developments across the international arena. It does so in order to circumvent the toxic politics that have tended to surround the climate change debate here in Australia and frame them in a context of actual science, evidence and all the discussion and debate that takes place in the scientific world, in order to move away from a situation where fear and denial and pseudoscience have become the characteristics of a lot of the public conversations around climate change.

The authority is independent of the government and is tasked with undertaking regular reviews of the government's climate change policies. I cannot think of a better check and balance to assure those sceptics out there that the policies they are being asked to support are valid. They are being tested independently. This is what the authority is charged to do. These policies include initiatives like the Carbon Farming Initiative and indeed the renewable energy target itself. The environment minister's direction over these reviews is deliberately limited to general matters only, and the minister cannot direct the conduct of a review, nor influence the content of a report. To ensure transparency 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 it—it is simple, it is independent, it is transparent and it works. But we are faced with a bill that abolishes the Climate Change Authority and transfers its responsibilities to the office of the Minister for the Environment, to Mr Hunt. This includes the responsibility for undertaking reviews of the government's climate change policies and, in doing so, demolishes the transparency and independence of these reviews.

We are left in opposition, as I am sure many members of the public are, to ask the question: why? Why is the government so determined to ensure there is no formal independent organisation left to scrutinise Australia's climate change mitigation strategies? We have been told that the Climate Change Authority is redundant, because it only exists to monitor the carbon price; and the carbon price, so the government says, is on its way out. This is not true.

The Climate Change Authority exists to monitor Australia's climate change mitigation strategies, of which the price on carbon is but one part. If the government seek to use that as an argument to abolish the Climate Change Authority, they are not telling the whole story; they are only telling a very small part of the story.

More importantly, the Climate Change Authority's brief, because it is so broad, should include the coalition's direct action policy. It makes perfect sense for the authority to continue and also oversee in a transparent and independent way the operation of the coalition's direct action policy, if it is ever legislated.

I have heard no reasonable argument as to why direct action should not receive the same scrutiny that the previous government's climate change policies were happily and willingly subjected to by the Climate Change Authority. We, in the opposition, believe that that scrutiny of direct action and other policies and strategies the coalition may put in place should come from an independent and transparent body like we already have, like the Climate Change Authority.

The authority demonstrated its continuing relevance in February this year when it incorporated the government's direct action policy into its Targets and Progress Review, stating:

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.

Other nations have similar bodies in place to scrutinise their own climate change mitigation policies. The United Kingdom has the Committee on Climate Change. It 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. Its responsibilities are identical to those of the Climate Change Authority here in Australia.

I note with great interest that when the Conservatives—the coalition equivalent political party—came to power in the UK they did not scrap the committee on climate change. The British Conservatives saw the sense in retaining an organisation that provided unbiased advice on climate change mitigation strategies. This is the ideological parent of the Australian Liberals, and even the Conservatives can see the sense in retaining an independent advisory body for climate change policies.

So why does the Liberal Party see things so differently to their ideological counterparts in the UK? We can speculate on this. I suspect it has very little to do with what the relevant stakeholders think. Numerous environmental organisations and climate change action groups provided submissions to the government asking that the Climate Change Authority be retained, even if the government were successful in abolishing the carbon price. The World Wildlife Fund's submission 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.

The business community also outlined their support for the Climate Change Authority during the submission process. For example, the Investor Group on Climate Change argued that the analysis provided by the authority is valuable for Australian businesses stating:

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.

So if both environmental organisations and the business community support the Climate Change Authority, why then is this government moving to scrap it?

If other conservative governments around the world see the sense in retaining an independent body to scrutinise their climate change policies, why does Australia's conservative government feel differently? Personally, I can only think of one explanation and it speaks to the arrogance of the Abbott government. The government do not want to preserve the Climate Change Authority because they do not want their climate change mitigation policies scrutinised. The government want the Australian parliament and the Australian people kept in the dark over the effectiveness of their so-called direct action policies, because they know what we all already know—and that is that their so-called direct action policy is ineffectual, it will waste taxpayers' money and do nothing to combat climate change.

Just as they did when they refused to release the Commission of Audit's final report until after the South Australian and Western Australian state elections, the government are developing a very firm habit of deliberately trying to shut down public scrutiny of their policies and indeed their activities. We know that this government have contempt not only for the expert advice provided by Australia's climate scientists but also the well-cited global expertise available through the scientific community. They shut down the Climate Commission when they came to power and they are planning to savagely cut our premier scientific organisation, the CSIRO. There was a $115 million cut to the CSIRO, which we know will cost that organisation 420 staff in the next 12 months and an estimated loss of some $49 million in external revenue. We have had feedback from the CSIRO Staff Association that they believe that carbon capture is one of the areas of research that will be adversely impacted by these cuts. And here we are today debating this bill, showing the coalition going after another group of climate change experts by destroying the Climate Change Authority.

We know that many members of the government are suspicious, are sceptical, about climate change and others flatly deny it. But, if that is the case, why would you remove the one independent body able to provide accurate, independent, clear and transparent advice to this place and to them—as sceptics, as climate deniers—so that we can, at the very minimum, as elected representatives in this place, keep ourselves informed of the facts as they are presented? We will obviously make our policy decisions, as political parties do, but the facts are the facts and they should prevail.

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

Well, what an extraordinary day it is where we have rolled straight into the debate on the proposed destruction of the Climate Change Authority through this bill, the Climate Change Authority (Abolition) Bill 2013 [No. 2], directly after the extraordinary shambles that the government's plans to wreck the Clean Energy Act were thrown into by the vote that we saw in here just a few moments ago. The Senate voting to oppose the government's repeal bills clearly was not in the Prime Minister's talking points for this week—but such was the sheer folly, the aggressive stupidity, that the government has shown in tying these votes together. By now we were meant to be, I guess, recoiling at the destruction of the vast bulk of the Clean Energy Act. We understand, after negotiation with Mr Palmer and his Senate colleagues in here, they had tied to this vote the introduction of an ETS that would effectively have a nil trading value and a carbon price, as far as we can tell, with all of the compliance costs and overheads and not requiring anybody to pay any money for emitting carbon pollution. But it does not appear to have worked out very well for you, has it?

What kind of government would propose the elimination of an expert body like the Climate Change Authority, that rests at arm's length from the political turmoil in here, that is staffed by scientists, experts, economists and researchers—people not necessarily polluted by the political churn and the argy-bargy that goes on here? It effectively sets those targets that are so essential and goes beyond the pointless one-dimensional talking points of the so-called bipartisan five per cent emissions reduction target, which I guess has served as a fig leaf for the last couple of years or as a proxy for a government that is deeply unhappy with the climate imperative but knows it needs to pretend that it is at least faintly interested.

One of the key functions of the Climate Change Authority is to review our emissions goals—that is, look at the audits; get a sense of how our emissions profile is tracking; look at what sectors of the economy are performing well and what is performing poorly; look at what restructuring is occurring, what the barriers are and where the resistance is; and then model how we are progressing towards the goals outlined in the renewable energy target and what Australia's target should be. Of the hundreds of expert bodies that this government abolished under public policy masquerading as some kind of drunkenly wielded chainsaw, the Climate Change Authority is one of the most important of all.

Let us take a quick look at the context here. In the wake of the remarkable rebuff that the Australian Senate just sent back to the Prime Minister's office this afternoon, I think it is worth scoping some of the context here. Let us take a quick traverse since just before the last election at the scope of the damage that this government has sought to do to the climate science community, to the clean energy industry and to ordinary people who are caught up in this government's fatal paralysis on the climate imperative. How about these. Axing the national partnership agreement on certain concessions for pensioners and Seniors Card holders, which supports state and territory concessions for senior citizens, including energy rebates. That was a pretty low act. Breaking a promise to have one million more solar roofs across Australia and at least 25 solar towns. It was clear as day—a black and white announcement by Minister Hunt, and the Prime Minister made him look like an absolute muppet in the wake of this rather humiliating backdown, where he had to admit that the money simply was not there. Here is another one: scrapping a range of grant programs aimed at funding innovation and start-up businesses, including Australian Industry Participation, Commercialisation Australia, Enterprise Solutions, the Innovation Investment Fund, the Industry Innovation Councils, Enterprise Connect, Industry Innovation Precincts, Textile Clothing and Footwear Small Business, and Building Innovative Capability. All of these things have direct bearing on energy efficiency—for example, more efficient production practices. It is almost like you have done a random word search and anybody who looks to have anything at all to do with innovation or anyone who has innovation or expertise or efficiency in their title has just been abolished without anybody caring too much about what it was they were doing. That was in the budget.

Next there is axing industry and community clean energy programs, including the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, the National Low Emission Coal Initiative, Energy Efficiency Programmes, the National Solar Schools Plan, Energy Efficiency Information Grants and Low Carbon Communities. All wiped out at the stroke of a pen. Next, breaking a very clear and unambiguous election promise by proposing to scrap the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. The Senate just sent that one a bit of a punch in the face, but nonetheless it was your commitment after the election to scrap the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. What ARENA does is promote innovation in projects that are not quite ready for commercialisation—getting Australian innovators on their feet for projects that are not ready to take to the bank yet, but could be. That is number five.

Six is blaming carbon pricing for the closure of Alcoa smelters and rolling mills and the loss of nearly a thousand jobs, despite the fact that the company made a profit from the carbon price by selling their free permits. It is a bit similar to Prime Minister Abbott claiming that BHP Billiton's decision not to go ahead with the expansion of Olympic Dam operations in regional South Australia was because of the carbon tax, even though the company's statement said the direct opposite. Utterly delusional. Next, appointing a climate change sceptic to head a review of our Renewable Energy Target, to deliberately stop investment through deliberate creation of uncertainty. Another broken election promise. Next, that a renewable energy review did not need to happen, because that is one of the things the Climate Change Authority is tasked with doing under its act. Next, cutting funding to the Energy Efficiency Opportunities Program, which made it mandatory for large-energy-using businesses to improve their efficiency and therefore save a fair bit of money. What is it that you hate about energy efficiency? That is really strange. You spend a lot of time on the government benches talking about productivity, which it great. It is a lively discussion and a good one to have. But what about energy productivity? Why on earth does a political party assume a hatred of energy efficiency? It is just bizarre.

Next, scrapping the Home Energy Saver scheme, which helps struggling low-income households cut their electricity bills. Of course you would cut that. Why would you want to help people on low incomes save money on their electricity bills? Weird. It is really peculiar. Feel free to interject and explain if I am missing something obvious here. Next, a budget freeze on the indexation of the Clean Energy Supplement, which helps pensioners, veterans, students and the unemployed—obviously not key coalition constituencies—'We will support them as long as they do not try to use energy more efficiently!' Very strange. Next, abolish the Clean Technology Investment Program, which leveraged co-investment for manufacturers and food producers to make capital improvements to reduce energy costs. Energy costs? I thought that was your thing. It is in most of your slogans. It has been in most of your dopey little pamphlets. Energy costs—no, that was abolished.

Next, seeking to abolish the Climate Change Authority through the bill we are debating today. Also, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Why would we want an investment arm of the Commonwealth making money for taxpayers while bankrolling innovation in the clean energy sector and leveraging private sector finance to get large-scale renewable energy plants built? Why would we want that kind of subversive activity going on in Australia! Best to abolish that.

Next, move to destroy farmers' and Aboriginal communities' opportunities to raise revenue through the Carbon Farming Initiative by removing the market and replacing it with Direct Action, which nobody believes will work. Everybody knows it will not work. It is policy designed by people who do not care whether it works. Next, making solar deployment in mines less competitive by restoring the full diesel rebate, by removing the carbon charge in the clean energy package—a pre-election commitment. Next, abolish the carbon price, which drives investment away from dirty industries and into clean new industries. You were fairly clear about that before the election. It is one of the few pre-election commitments that Prime Minister Abbott has elected to try to keep. Nonetheless, transferring money away from polluters and into clean energy innovators is clearly not a light-bulb that has gone off over any of your heads.

Finally, requiring departments to remove the link between extreme weather and global warming. That was recently reported in the media. You are really quite deliberately blindfolding yourselves to the consequences of the policy decisions you make. You do not want those experts to still be in the field to critique the things that you were doing. It is remarkable hostility. I would be interested to know whether it actually is coalition policy to drive renewable energy investment offshore. Is that actually the objective? Is this happening deliberately or just through a process of extraordinary coincidence, at exactly this time, as a consequence of the 16 policy initiatives I just put to you?

One of the things the Climate Change Authority is responsible for is protecting Australians from the worst consequences of climate change. In tracking these targets and making sure that our economy, along with others in the industrialised and industrialising world, is making that transition—that the transition is underway. It effectively makes the choice for us with foresight rather than regret as to whether we think we could cope with two degrees of average global warming, or more. When you look at the targets that have been set and hear the numbers that have been bandied around, like 350 parts per million, 80 per cent of the world's unburned fossil fuel needing to remain below ground or two degrees average surface temperature global warming, those rough numbers are to give teeth to the concept of whether you want to live in a world of dangerous climate change where impacts are costly, deadly but ultimately potentially manageable or a world in excess of two degrees of average global warming, of catastrophic climate change, where the impacts cascade and overlap and become eventually unmanageable.

That is the kind of world that the United States Department of Defense and some of its research arms envisage, and our US allies are making national security decisions. The US Navy has been at this since at least the 1990s and probably earlier. They have been making security and procurement decisions based on that kind of world. They are not hippies or fringe voices. That sense of impact on military doctrine or procurement strategies in Australia simply has not made any kind of impression at all. You are so hell-bent on closing down and eliminating from the public debate the voices of those advisory and expert bodies who do exist in Australia that you have advised departments not to link extreme weather events to climate change, even though that is mainstream scientific opinion. I have absolutely no idea how you look at yourselves in the mirror each day.

This is the kind of government that, having turned away from the extraordinary opportunities that present themselves in embracing the clean energy economy, is determined to back its way into the 21st century, clutching on to the remnants of the fossil fuel economy until it is far too late. These are the kinds of decisions that you end up making. It is a rather tawdry imitation of the Tea Party tactics in the US. It is a bit like the Tea Party without the passion. It is like a banal, less weaponised version of the Tea Party here in Australia; it is not as interesting but, effectively, a lot of the same thought processes are being brought to bear.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is still pretty scary.

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

I am not denying, Senator Cameron, that it isn't scary. It is just not very interesting. WA MP Dennis Jensen, who for a while had pretensions of being Australia's science minister until you abolished the portfolio, noted:

Another scheme that lamentably fails the Lomborg test—

which is pretty funny when you think about it—

is that of the Renewable Energy Target, which is certainly worse than direct action and should be dumped.

One of the few scientifically literate voices on the coalition side—

Senator Ryan interjecting—

He is actually very impressive on the Joint Strike Fighter, so I do line up with Mr Jensen.

Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order!

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

Through you, Mr Acting Deputy President, the interjections are so tantalising, I can scarcely ignore them. Mr Jensen, who is obviously one of the few on the coalition benches with scientific credentials, is a climate change denier. What on earth are we to make of that? This is not just the case with the federal Liberal Party room. Our present Treasurer in Western Australia, the former executive director of the IPA, Minister Mike Nahan, said:

Not only is the fact of global warming unclear, but a fully honoured Kyoto Agreement would have had only a trivial effect on temperatures.

There it is in a nutshell. For a remarkably condensed way of thoroughly misreading the science and the geopolitics of global warming, I am not sure that I could do that any better myself.

Senator Ian Macdonald interjecting—

Hello, Senator Macka! Lovely that you could join us. There was a book launched last year, edited by Peter Christoff, that scoped out what a four-degree warming world would look like. Four degrees does not sound like a great deal when the temperature in this town can fluctuate by a matter of 20 or 30 degrees in a day, but an increase of global mean surface temperature of four degrees puts an absolute blowtorch on the North and South poles. The book, which is titled Four degrees of global warming: Australia in a hot world, effectively maps to the greatest degree of precision possible, obviously with wide ranges of interpretation, what Australia will look like under those kinds of conditions—under the conditions that are set in train by policies of this coalition government and by your Tea Party allies in other parts of the world, where effectively we just say: 'Let it rip. Just burn everything.' It is not the world that I believe that we are heading for and it is not something that I think any of us would want to pass on to the next generation and the ones after that. But, nonetheless, there is some precision in the estimates available on exactly how dangerous that world would be.

Australia in a four-degree warming world will have a quarter of a million coastal properties inundated by rising sea levels at an approximate cost $63 billion. There are not a lot of global warming deniers in the insurance community, funnily enough. There are a lot of sceptics or very hard headed people trained in actuarial science in the insurance industry, and they estimate a cost of up to $63 billion. They are already refusing to insure people in particularly vulnerable parts of the country. There will be 17,200 heat related deaths a year, up from just under 6,000 today. Snow will disappear from all but the highest alpine peaks, which will lead to a cascade of regional extinctions in those ecosystem. A quarter of a billion people in the Asia-Pacific region will be displaced. These communities will somehow have to try and choose between defence and evacuation of their coastal settlements, their fishing grounds—places where people have lived for millennia. This is a quarter of a billion people. With the shrieking that we hear from the government benches about the tiny fraction of people who have managed to escape to our region from the horrors perpetrated by the Sri Lankan government, the Iranian secret police or the Taliban, can you imagine—

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought we were on climate change.

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

Yes, Senator Macdonald. Sometimes I really feel for you, because you will not be around when these impacts are in full swing, but my little nephew will, and he did not get to vote last September.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is that why you didn't win!

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

One more would have helped. On the issue of displaced people in our region, Senator Macdonald, since you have queried my comments: can you imagine the politics of immigration and border protection with a quarter of a million people on the move? These are credible estimates. They come from people who study these things for a living—from people inside the US defence community and the United Nations. It is not possible to adapt gracefully to mass movement of people on that kind of scale.

Colleagues, there is still time—and the Senate vote earlier this afternoon has proven that the Senate's reputation as a house of second thoughts is well grounded. The smartest thing we could do today would be to leave the Climate Change Authority in place so that it can continue to provide the advice that we need on the mitigation options, on the adaptation strategies and on ways that our country and our region can survive in a world threatened by the very serious life or death impacts of global warming.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to make a few comments on the Climate Change Authority (Abolition) Bill 2013 but, before doing that, I want to refer to some things that the previous speaker, Senator Ludlam, mentioned. I am not quite sure what it has to do with the Climate Change Authority bill, but he seemed to be warning us that Sri Lanka is a bad place to be and that it is a bad international citizen. It begs the question: why did your leader go for a much-publicised holiday to Sri Lanka? I think she publicly made some very favourable comments about Sri Lanka. That is not really relevant to the bill, but it simply shows again the hypocrisy of the Greens political party. On one hand they criticise Sri Lanka; on the other hand, the leader of the Greens political party goes there for a holiday and speaks glowingly about it. How can anyone in Australia take any notice of what the Greens might say?

The Climate Change Authority was set up by the Labor government, with the support of the Greens, as 'an independent advisory climate change body'. I suspect that all of the board members of the Climate Change Authority are clever people, probably committed to their own views, but you can just look at them and see how independent the authority is. One of the members of the authority is Mr Bernie Fraser, former Reserve Bank Chairman. You do not need to be a keen student of Australian politics to understand that Mr Fraser has always been of a left-wing inclination.

Another board member is a Professor Quiggin, from my state of Queensland. He is obviously quite an intelligent man; he is a professor at the University of Queensland. But I have never heard him say anything or write any document that is not supporting the Labor Party. I am sorry—I have seen him do stuff where he does not support the Labor Party but only because he is supporting the Greens party. This is the sort of independent advice you get on climate change. I could go through a few of the other board members. We have also got Ms Heather Ridout. How many boards was she appointed to by the Gillard government? How many times did she get up and publicly praise the Gillard government? No doubt these are very good and able people, but to put them on as an advisory body that is supposedly giving independent advice is just a joke. That in itself is a reason to get rid of this allegedly independent advisory body.

Professor Hamilton is another board member. Again I am sure he is a very good person, quite bright, but he set up the Australia Institute. Ask anyone what the Australia Institute is about. It is there to promote the views of the very left of Australian politics, represented in this place by the Greens and the Australian Labor Party. So 'independent' climate change authority it is not and never has been.

That authority costs Australian taxpayers something like $8 million a year. That is not a big amount in the scheme of things. We almost pay that amount each day in interest on the borrowings from the Labor-Greens government that occurred over the last six years. The interest that we pay on the debt that was run up irresponsibly by the Labor government, supported by the Greens, is costing us something like a couple of million dollars a day. So I guess $8 million for the Climate Change Authority is not a big amount, but every amount counts. When you have a financial crisis, as we do in this country, when you have a country that is heading towards owing something like $500 billion to foreign lenders, then every little bit of a saving that you can make is important.

Most senators will recall that when the Howard government left office we had some $60 billion in credit, plus $60 billion put aside for a rainy day. Within a couple of years, that $60 billion in credit had disappeared under the profligacy of the Labor-Greens government and, worse than that, we had borrowed over $100 billion from foreign lenders. Now we are on a trajectory towards a debt of almost $600 billion. Just calculate—you do not need to get out your calculator—$600 billion and put interest at anywhere between two and six per cent, whatever you like, and work out what that sort of mismanagement is costing our country at the present time.

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

How much?

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I could pause my speech and find the calculator, but you can do that, Senator Ludlam. You perhaps do not have much else to do at the moment. Perhaps one of the smaller benefits of abolishing the Climate Change Authority is that there will be an $8 million saving to the Australian taxpayer.

What was that particular body supposed to do? Was it supposed to give advice on climate change, on climate and on matters related thereto? It may have escaped the attention of the Australian Labor Party and the Greens that we actually have a very highly regarded Bureau of Meteorology that is very capable of giving any government advice that it might need in relation to climate change matters. We also have the highly regarded and highly respected CSIRO that has very good independent people who are able to give the government advice should the government need it. So why did we then set up another body? Apart from giving some Labor-Greens fellow travellers a job on the board, apart from setting up yet another bureaucracy in this town and leaving the Australian taxpayer to pay for it, I cannot see any reason we needed a Climate Change Authority. I suspect that I—and if it were not I it was certainly others from my side of the parliament—said that when this authority was established under the Labor-Greens regime in government.

If it were doing its job and did not have this obvious left-wing bent, what I would like the Climate Change Authority to tell me is: how is what we do in Australia, where we emit less than 1.4 per cent of the world's emissions of carbon, going to impact on the climate of the world? I keep asking that in this chamber. It is not a new question. In the long time we have been debating these matters, nobody has ever been able to give me an answer to that. Remember, it is not as if the Labor Party's carbon tax were going to stop the 1.4 per cent of the world's emissions of carbon. It was only intended to stop five per cent of Australia's 1.4 per cent. If you calculate that down, the absolutely infinitesimal impact that such an action would have on the climate of the world is very obvious. In the debate this morning, the minister kindly gave me figures. I did not write them down. Approximately, he indicated figures such as: China emitted 23 per cent, the United States emitted 19 per cent, the European Union emitted 13 per cent and Australia emitted 1.4 per cent. And yet, if you listen to Senator Milne and the Greens political party, all of the cyclones, all of the floods and all of the natural calamities throughout the world are caused by Australia's emission of 1.4 per cent of the world's carbon emissions, and under Labor and the Greens we were going to reduce that by five per cent.

You can see the stupidity of the argument and you can see the hypocrisy of the Labor Party and the Greens on this issue. I was recently alerted to some comments by a retired English politician, Lord Deben. I thank Senator Singh for very cleverly pointing out to me that I was pronouncing his name wrongly previously. This member of the august House of Lords, an unelected body in the United Kingdom, suddenly appeared in Australia a couple of days ago and was roundly critical of the Abbott government because it was trying to get rid of Australia's carbon tax. I wonder why Lord Deben did not make a comment about his own country and the European Union, of which the United Kingdom is part. He did not seem to worry about the 11 or 12 per cent of emissions from his own country, but he thought Australia's emission of 1.4 per cent, which the Labor Party was trying to cease by five per cent, was suddenly a huge issue. Of course, when you have a look at Lord Deben's background you will see that he is chairman of a consortium of some of the biggest wind development companies in the world. He also has a couple of other interests in that particular area. I read on Google that, for just one of his board positions, he was getting something like 35,000 pounds of English taxpayers' money. I do not attribute bad motives to Lord Deben, but it does raise the question of whether his interest is more than just his alleged interest in climate change.

There is another question I have asked the Greens and the Labor Party on every occasion I have spoken. It has been many times over many years, but never once has anyone attempted to explain this to me. Once upon a time, the world was covered in ice. Once upon a time, the centre of Australia was a rainforest. Once upon a time, there was an inland sea in Australia. All of those things changed. I am the first to agree that the climate does change. My opponents opposite call me a climate change denier. It is typical; they never let the truth get in the way. I accept climate change; I always have done. The climate has clearly changed, because if it had not we would still be covered in ice and snow. Clearly, it has changed. But is it man's emissions of carbon since the 1850s that has caused that?

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

Yes.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry—I do not think man was emitting industrial carbon at the time we were covered in ice or at the time when there was a rainforest in the centre of Australia.

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

You haven't moved past year 9 science.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, explain it, Senator Ludlam; don't just sit there and shake your head. Of course the climate is changing—I agree. But is it man that is doing it? Well, I do not know, and I am always very open about that. I am not a scientist. I have read both sides; they both sound good to me. But there are as many well-qualified scientists who disagree as who do agree.

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

Ninety-seven per cent agree.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, '97 per cent'—that is when you count them, Senator Ludlam! We have had in this chamber the vilification of anyone who did not happen to agree with Ms Gillard or Senator Wong or Senator Milne. If you had a different view to them, you were clearly—well, I will not go into that, but you were clearly, in their view, someone of lesser understanding, if I could put it politely. And they were loud in their vilification of anyone who had the temerity to have a different view.

I know any number of highly qualified scientists who have a different view but, because they have a different view, under the Greens-Labor regime they were never able to get a grant for research out of the Labor-Greens government. I can give you the names of two, and I know there are hundreds more whose university careers were destroyed simply because the research grants that are so important in the careers of university academics would never come their way because they had a view that the Gillard government and the Greens political party did not like. That in itself is a scandal. I wonder where the Human Rights Commission and all those other groups that are so vocal when it suits them were when this little piece of information came around? I have an answer to a question on notice back in 2009 from the good Senator Kim Carr here, when he was the relevant minister, listing pages and pages of research grants that had gone to people who were trying to prove the political case of the Labor Party and the Greens political party, the alliance in government. I could not identify any grants—I believe there were one or two—in these dozens of pages of grants that went to anyone who was trying to question the orthodoxy.

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

Did they apply?

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They have always applied, Senator, and I can give you the details if you want them. But, under your regime, they knew it was just a waste of time.

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

Did they apply?

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, they did apply.

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

But they didn't get up. They weren't good enough.

Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senators on my left!

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They might put it up again under this government, but, under you, Senator Carr, they had to follow the government line.

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

I didn't pick them—unlike you, I wouldn't do that.

Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senators on my left!

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They had to follow the line of Ms Gillard, Senator Carr and Senator Milne. If you did not follow that line your chances of getting a research grant were zero, zilch—non-existent.

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

Rubbish! They weren't good enough.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, 'weren't good enough', Senator, because they would have said something that did not fit your political line. Remember: it was your leader who promised the Australian people before the 2010 election: 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' She told us it would never happen. Why did she tell us that if she subsequently said it was a good thing to do? You do not need to delve too closely into what happened to understand the hypocrisy, and the downright dishonesty, might I say, of the Australian Labor Party. Ms Gillard and Mr Swan promised there would be no carbon tax. The minute they could, they got in and broke that promise.

I just want to ask: if it was such a good idea, why did Ms Gillard promise not to do it? Has anyone ever answered that? I repeat my question in the hope that someone might be able to explain it. Australia emits less than 1.4 per cent of the world's carbon emissions; how is reducing that by five per cent going to save all the cyclones and floods that the Greens tell us will come upon the world if we do not reduce our 1.4 per cent emissions by five per cent? Is there anything in that that is believable? Similarly, the climate has changed. What was the cause of that climate change prior to the industrialised era of this nation? Something was doing it. It clearly was not man's emissions of carbon, so tell me what it was. That is why this whole debate is never as clear cut as the Greens and the Labor Party would have us believe. I retain an open mind—

Penny Wright (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

An open mind!

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You see, this is the thing, Mr Acting Deputy President: if you cannot win the argument, just shout abuse; just belittle those who do not agree with you; abuse them—that is the Greens' position. (Time expired)

Penny Wright (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, what an extraordinary day it has been so far. We have had the Abbott government failing to destroy the carbon price, although that was the promise that they said they made. And we have just had the opportunity to hear such an erudite—I know Hansard does not pick up irony and sarcasm, so perhaps I had better say 'not such an erudite' contribution from Senator Macdonald. He accuses others of vilification, but I think he is a dab hand at vituperation. He is pretty good at that, and at misrepresentation.

Today I am rising to speak on the Climate Change Authority (Abolition) Bill 2013 [No. 2] which will seek to abolish the Climate Change Authority and thus give additional succour to the government's anti-science, anti-evidence climate change denial—and we have had an excellent example of that in Senator Macdonald just now—that we have witnessed in this place since they came to government. I know that there are members of the government who indeed do know that climate change is happening right now and that it is a serious risk to our health, our environment and our prosperity, as a nation and globally. But, for some reason that I just cannot understand, given the privilege and the power that we have in this parliament to make decisions about the future, they are resolutely silent and they allow the misrepresentation to occur.

I keep thinking to myself: do those people think about their children and their grandchildren? How do they live with the knowledge that they are actively allowing the government that they represent to tear away the effective action we are taking at the moment and go backwards? But this action is not as effective as it could be; we all know that the aspiration of reducing emissions by five per cent is absolutely inadequate. That is one of the things that the Climate Change Authority, which this legislation seeks to abolish, has been very clear in communicating to us. And I suppose the Climate Change Authority giving messages that the government does not want to hear might be one of the many reasons why the government is seeking to silence the messenger.

The rest of the world has moved beyond the debate about whether climate change is occurring and accepted the irrefutable evidence that it is and that it is anthropogenic—that it is being caused and contributed to by human activity—and has made decisive moves towards reducing emissions. But not so this government. We have a government that is attempting to abolish, repeal and ignore anything or anyone who disagrees with their reckless path—which basically was designed to get them into power. The trouble is that, once you are in power, you need to be doing things that are in the national interest—that is why you are elected in the first place—but that is not what we are seeing here.

It seems to me that the government thinks climate change will no longer exist if it abolishes the Climate Change Authority—having already abolished the Climate Commission—repeals the price on pollution, which economists almost universally say is necessary to change the behaviour that is causing the problems we are confronting with climate change, and ignores the world's climate scientists. It is a short-sighted, futile, reprehensible and irresponsible way to deal with one of the most significant challenges that we will face this century and that we as a parliament will be asked to deliberate on and make decisions about. It is a privilege to stand in this parliament with the trust of the Australian people to make difficult, challenging and hard decisions not only for the current generation but for future Australians. It is not a responsibility that I take lightly but, unfortunately, it seems very clear that politics is going to prevail over policy and principle on this issue.

Today we have witnessed the government's ruthless attack on a price on pollution. It has not been successful yet, so this will live on for at least some more days. We will see. Hope springs eternal. Who knows what will happen between now and next week. But the government is not discriminating in its bid to rip down any skerrick of action on climate change. It will leave no stone unturned, it seems. The next on the list is the Climate Change Authority. This is an independent body established to provide balanced, expert advice on a range of climate change issues. Maybe that is where the problem lies initially—'independent, balanced and expert'—and in what we have already seen in terms of decisions that have been made by this government in appointing hand-picked people to give advice when it knows the results of the advice and what the views of those people will be. We know that those people will be giving ideological advice across the spectrum. Whether it is in relation to renewable energy or the education curriculum, this government has a practice of hand-picking people whose ideology it knows and hearing advice from them.

Of course, that is not the case with the Climate Change Authority; it is 'independent', it is 'expert' and it is 'balanced'. Those are words that severely disconcert this government because they do not want to be hearing that sort of advice, information and evidence. The Climate Change Authority is required to take into account the latest science—and the idea of 'science' probably creates great problems for some members of the government—and what other countries are doing around the world and make recommendations to the government about the emissions reduction targets, the carbon budgets, the renewable energy target, the Carbon Farming Initiative and the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System. These are all aspects of the framework designed to reduce Australia's carbon emissions and encourage innovation in clean technology and clean energy. These are all measures that are designed to usher Australia into the future. These are all measures designed to secure a safe and liveable climate for our young people—the young adults who will be inheriting the legacy that we leave for them.

But this government does not want to hear from experts, does not want to hear from independent people and does not want to listen to the science. Its anti-climate agenda is completely ideological—no room for facts here, thanks very much! And, of course, we know that the Climate Change Authority insists on telling the government things it just does not want to hear, including that Australia should triple its minimum target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, that the current goal of five per cent is inadequate, and that if we fail to significantly ramp up action on climate change Australia will fall behind dramatically and not be able to play its global role in avoiding climate change.

The Climate Change Authority chair, Bernie Fraser—that renowned hippie, that renowned wild, extreme thinker!—has said that sticking with the five per cent target will make it 'virtually impossible for future generations trying to prevent a two-degree rise in global temperatures'. Another thing the Climate Change Authority insists on telling the government that it does not want to hear is that Australia's minimum commitment is out of step with current global efforts—those of China and the US. And yet another thing it is saying that the government does not want to hear is that Australia should be reducing emissions by 19 per cent from 2000 levels by 2020 if we are indeed to do our fair share of the heavy lifting. And we know that this government is always talking about the 'lifters' and the 'leaners'. Well, if we go down the track that the government is proposing in relation to our action on climate change we will certainly be leaners. As a result of the actions that we are failing to take, there will be many people within our own Pacific neighbourhood who will bear the brunt of that and end up homeless because of the incursion of seawater onto their low-lying homelands. And what will we be doing then? Again, given the track record of this government of openly welcoming refugees to Australia—I am being sarcastic—no doubt we will say: 'Come and be here in Australia. You don't have homelands anymore. We haven't taken decisive action on climate change, so you are welcome to come here because we have a moral responsibility to welcome you.'

Debate interrupted.