Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A letter has been received from Senator Siewert:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:

"The lack of strong environmental policies to address climate change or safeguard natural resources in Victoria."

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

I understand that informal arrangements have been made to allocate specific times to each of the speakers in today’s debate. With the concurrence of the Senate, I shall ask the clerks to set the clock accordingly.

Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is timely that on the eve of a state election in Victoria we are having a discussion about the need for strong environmental policies to address climate change and to protect our precious biodiversity. We have a situation where in Victoria neither the Victorian Labor Party nor the coalition is prepared to commit to strong action to tackle climate change or to grasp the opportunity to save the remaining habitat of the Leadbeater's possum—through the creation of the Great Forest National Park, for example. In that context, we are reliant on our federal government for leadership.

But we have seen a federal government that, instead of demonstrating leadership, has a vendetta to decimate the dean energy industry. Tony Abbott has been on a personal crusade trying to destroy renewables and to prop up coal. As a result, a number of Victorian renewable energy projects are under threat. The Mildura solar farm has been shelved. That would have been a great boom for the city of Mildura. We have seen dozens of new wind projects being put on hold. The manufacturer Keppel Prince in Portland recently announced that it will have to shed 150 jobs as a consequence of the renewable energy laws in this country going backwards. I visited Keppel Prince only a few weeks ago. What an inspiration. Here we have an entrepreneur recognising the opportunity to create the towers that support wind turbines. We have people who were previously stacking shelves at Woolies and Coles now being trained in welding techniques and in fact becoming experts in their field, becoming very highly specialised and highly trained. Victoria has moved from being one of the leaders in the country to being a laggard on renewable energy. According to the Climate Council report, the government's anti-wind-farm agenda has cost Victoria an estimated $4 billion in lost investment, as well as 3,000 jobs. We have seen new renewable projects basically seize up. The pipeline is now dry because of the uncertainty over the future of the RET. And investment in the sector has plummeted by around 70 per cent over the past year.

We have a solution. I know my colleagues in the Victorian state parliament, as well as the Greens candidates right across the state of Victoria, are advocating forcefully for that solution. We can salvage the clean energy industry in Australia. We can make progress in tackling climate change. And how do we do it? We do it by phasing out dirty coal fired power stations. We do it by banning onshore fracking and gas drilling. We do it by reinstating the Renewable Energy Target in Victoria. And we do it by paying solar panel owners a fair share for generating clean power. That is how we do it. But to do it we have to move beyond this obsession that this government has with fossil fuels. It was only today that Todd Stern, Obama's climate change adviser, said that it is just obvious that fossil fuels have to stay in the ground; if we are to combat climate change, that is where fossil fuels belong.

If Victoria were a country, we would be the world's fifth biggest producer of brown coal. The average age of Victoria's power plants is a staggering 40 years. And that is the average age; we have plants that are older than that. In Victoria we produce the dirtiest energy in Australia. And we produce more of it than we can use. But it is not just coal that is the problem. In Gippsland and parts of the Otways and south-west Victoria we have seen an explosion in the number of exploration and development licences for onshore gas. In Gippsland there are 22 exploration licences for unconventional gas. Lakes Oil, the company now known as Ignite Energy, conducted 23 fracking operations in Gippsland before the 2012 moratorium. In the south-west of Victoria we have 10 exploration licences for gas, mostly tight gas and shale gas. And I have to declare an interest here: some of them are not far away from where I live.

In Bacchus Marsh we see a community threatened by a huge open-cut brown-coal mine. High-impact exploration has now included a number of test drills right next to people's homes. For those who are not familiar with these areas, these are the breadbasket of Victoria. They are highly productive, fertile communities—places like Gippsland, the Otways and Bacchus Marsh—that produce some of the best food anywhere in the country, and they are now under threat from coal and from unconventional gas, including from fracking. At risk is one of the most precious resources of all, and that is water, which stands to be poisoned by coalmining, by drilling and by fracking.

So, what do we need to do about it? Well, the first thing is that we need a ban on new coalmines. We just have to stop this idea—this last-century fixation—of digging big holes in the ground as the solution to our problems. We have to stop this fixation with onshore gas, and particularly with fracking, so that we can make the transition towards a clean energy future. What the Greens are advocating is that we implement a Victorian—a state based—renewable energy target, which will bring renewable sources of power online. Importantly, if we do that we can phase out these dirty brown-coal fired power stations. Hazelwood, Anglesea and one of Yallourn's four units are to be phased out in in 2015 under the Greens' policy. We would retire Loy Yang B and the other three units of Yallourn in 2023.

Anglesea is a coal fired power station on my back doorstep situated in some of the most important heathland anywhere in the world. The opportunity to turn that back to what was one of the most important biodiversity resources in the state just cannot be missed. What would it result in? It would result in 21 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from Victoria every year from 2023 being removed. It would reduce the pollution intensity of Victoria's power system by almost a third. A third of the pollution coming from Victoria's brown coal fired power resources would be gone.

Under the plan, we would see decommissioned power plants and mines replaced by solar farms and a range of other renewable energy projects. It would create hundreds of jobs. There is also huge potential in the rehabilitation of these mine sites. There are jobs that will last for decades. This economic transformation is jobs rich, is good for the economy and it can occur without one cent of taxpayer funding going to the coal generators.

Over recent years we have seen the Napthine and Baillieu governments hand out $1.8 billion in public money to our brown coal power stations. They do not need another cent. We are going to get more people employed in putting solar panels on than in the entire coal mining industry. In fact, that is the situation at the moment. Clean energy is not a threat to employment; it is an opportunity. It is a jobs-rich industry and it is ordinary trades people who are employed in the installation of solar panels on people's roofs from places like Western Victoria right across to the La Trobe Valley.

We have got one million Australian homes and businesses already generating clean power, but they are not being given a fair go from the power companies. So what else do we need to do? We need to make rooftop solar much simpler and more affordable for everyone. We have to allow people to install panels with no upfront cost. Let's get rid of the administrative regulatory barriers that we put in front of people. This is genuine red tape reduction. If the government was serious about reducing red tape, this is exactly where it would start. The Greens would make sure they were being paid a fair share for generating clean power. That is why the Greens propose introducing a minimum one-for-one feed in tariff, so the owners will be paid at least the same amount for the electricity they put into the grid as it costs to get out of it—it is common sense. This will boost the income for many solar panel owners and will protect the over 50 per cent of solar home owners, who would otherwise be left with no guaranteed price of solar when existing schemes close in 2016. Of course nothing would change in those few households who are paid already above the minimum one-for-one feed in tariff.

This is a good story. Cutting pollution means cleaner air, it means cleaner water, it means better health, it means more jobs, it means tackling climate change and it means exporting our brains—rather than the current 'dig it up and ship it out' mentality which belongs in the last century.

We have an election in a few days' time. This is firmly on the national agenda.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this motion moved by Senator Siewert. I would like to address a couple of the things raised by Senator Di Natale in the course of my contribution. I note the motion today refers to the alleged lack of strong environmental policies to address climate change or safeguard natural resources in Victoria. I find myself in a bit of a quandary because over the last 30 years, no-one has done more to undermine the role of states in environmental management supervision and authority than the Greens, usually accompanied by the Labor Party. They will bring local issues into this chamber because they constantly claim that they are issues of national significance. But what this motion betrays, through its timing and through the hypocrisy posed by the Green's history, talking about state environmental management in this place, is that this is nothing less than an election stunt.

What I also found myself in a quandary about is that it refers to natural resources yet through my 6½ short years in this place and my time involved in state politics prior to that I saw no-one as hostile to the use of our natural resources as the Greens, whether that be our mineral resources such as coal, whether that be actually using the natural resources in farmland and exporting food and fibre or whether it be exporting protein to the world through programs like live exports—I am sure Senator McKenzie will talk about those some more—or whether, in particular, it be the Green's campaign to lock up one of our great renewable resources, forests.

The Greens have been hostile to the use of Victoria's natural resources and, indeed, hostile to their protection through their mismanagement of the national estate. Anyone on the border of a national park or a state reserve in a stroke in Victoria will tell you that the worst landlord is the government. Because the Greens, through a campaign of misleading people from schools right through the community, have done everything they can to create this false notion that we should not be trying to manage this natural resource. Tragically, we see that when we have the risk of fire as we do so often in south-eastern Australia.

I look forward to a Greens speaker commending the Victorian state government for increasing the burn-off ratios over the last four years to reduce the risk for so many people that live on the border or amongst our national forests and our state forests in Victoria.

As is usual for the Greens, this motion is phrased in a way that does not understand the limits of our own actions. When it comes to the first issue they raise, that of climate change, Victoria can no more dramatically impact the level of global emissions than can Australia. Yet what this motion does is it demands of Victorians to pay higher cost than the rest of the nation. What the states and the Commonwealth—and I might say with the agreement of the other state governments, including a signature of the then Greens environment minister from Tasmania—have agreed is that the states are responsible for adoption. But no, in an effort to increase the number of bumper stickers on bicycle helmets in Fitzroy, to turn this into a state political issue, the Greens somehow think that Victoria can lead the world.

The Greens come in here knowing that what they are saying is false, knowing that what they are saying will impose a greater burden on Victorian business and Victorian households and demand that Victorians pay higher costs than not only everybody else in the world but everybody else in Australia too.

Come Saturday at our state election, the Greens will see the results, as they saw at the last federal election, where people have started to realise the shallowness of their claims, the hypocrisy of their stance and the constant hyperbole: the Chicken Little, the Senator Henny Pennys, who come in here and say: 'The world is about to end.' When people do not believe them or the tides do not rise quite high enough, they will double down and say: 'The tides are going to rise higher' or that 'The cities are going to run out of water.' When that does not come true, they will then try and obfuscate and turn the debate to new issues, as we heard Senator Di Natale do, on so-called renewable energy targets.

I make this point: Senator Di Natale proposed that someone who has a solar panel on their roof be paid the same rate as they might pay for electricity. The one piece of credit I will give the former Premier of Victoria, Mr John Brumby, I think he was Treasurer at the time, is that in the insanity of pursuit of Green preferences that occurred right around Australia at the state level when Labor was in office, where outrageous gross feed-in tariffs were granted to a limited number of people that could get solar panels on their roofs before everyone realised what a racket it was—there is research printed in today's newspapers that point out that in South-east Queensland, they equate to a subsidy of $200 from every household that does not have them. This was to benefit a select few who got in before the gate was shut when the community demanded their power prices not be forced up so that the pensioner who could not afford solar panels was paying for the person driving the Land Cruiser next door, because they could afford the upfront cost. I do not know of any other part of this country where someone gets a legislated, regulated guaranteed market in the way that the Greens demand that every Australian subsidise their neighbours who can afford the upfront cost of solar panels.

When we go to the Greens war on coal and cheap energy, particularly in Victoria, there is an acute problem with this. Our brown coalfields that were first put to use by Sir John Monash after returning from World War I with some innovative acquiring of German technology at the request of the then Victorian Premier to develop the Latrobe Valley have been the basis of our middle-class growth for decades. They were the basis—I am sure Senator Carr will agree—of manufacturing for many years—

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

On the basis of public ownership, if I remember rightly!

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Carr, I will take that interjection, because I recall the public ownership principle was first breached by Premier Joan Kirner when she sold off 49 per cent of Loy Yang B. The Kennett government might have sold the rest of it, but the sales first started under Premier Joan Kirner, Senator Carr—I note the smile—

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

Address your comments through the chair.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If brown coal is taken away from Victorians, their power prices will dramatically spike. There is no resource in Victoria that can supply baseload power at that price nor can we import the power that we need to keep Victoria going. To say that solar panels on roofs and windmills on our landscape can power the entire state of Victoria is profoundly and utterly misleading. But the Greens do this in order to try and drive their vote higher in the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne, between the CBD and the lycra belt. These facts need to be known because the policies of the Greens hidden behind a veil of alleged respectability pose a real threat to most Victorians.

Over the last few months, we have seen the largest ever decrease in power prices in the records of the ABS in this country, because the carbon tax, which the Greens say was too small, was removed. Because brown coal has higher emissions than black coal, that had a greater impact in Victoria—just as the carbon tax had a greater risk for Victoria—because it is more emissions intensive. But, also, the war of the Greens on trying to prevent the expansion of the use of natural gas goes against their stated objective, because the single-greatest decrease in the emissions intensity over the last decade has been in the American economy due to the dramatic expansion of the use of natural gas.

Victoria potentially has very rich natural gasfields, yet because their favoured suppliers, donors and campaign workers all think we can run round with solar panels on our bike helmets, the Greens refuse to consider the expansion of responsible fossil fuels. There is no alternative to the use of fossil fuels to provide the majority of power not only in Australia but around the world. The facts about increasing access to energy and making energy cheaper in the developing world are all about expanding the use, responsibly, of fossil fuels, and that will not change with the current technology mix. This motion should be treated with the contempt that the empty slogans and the hypocritical statements of the Greens constantly illustrate to this chamber.

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

I first must express some concern that the Greens would move such a misleading a motion as we have seen here today. Of course I would be concerned that the Greens who are only too happy to tell us that they have a monopoly on environmental concerns have really failed to address some basic questions about the importance not so much of state policy issues but of national policy questions.

In fact, I would take the motion much more seriously if Senator Di Natale was able to tell us why in 2009 the Greens torpedoed the establishment of an ETS in this country. When they had the chance to develop an effective ETS arrangement, they chose to side with the knuckle-draggers from the Liberal Party in opposing concrete measures that could be taken to seriously affect our carbon emissions in this country.

But let me talk about national policies in more contemporary terms. The renewable energy target under the Abbott government has been quite strongly attacked. The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources we understand is very importantly associated with the RET. The requirement that 20 per cent of Australia's electricity be generated from renewable sources by 2020 is a very worthwhile policy objective and, of course, it is an important policy instrument through the RET. The Abbott government's appointment of a review, chaired by a well-known climate change sceptic, none other than Dick Warburton, undermined the somewhat broadly accepted scientific consensus on the values and the importance of climate change and produced recommendations which would effectively render the RET policies pointless.

Labor refused to go along with that agenda. While we are open to negotiations on adjustments of the target, we do not support undermining it. We have tried to discuss these matters with the government but it has become perfectly clear that the real intent of the government is to undermine the RET and, as a consequence, Labor has had no choice but to withdraw from those discussions. We will not repudiate the target and we will not betray the renewable energy industry and all those who work in it.

Daniel Andrews, the Leader of the Opposition in Victoria, has made it clear that that is the position the Victorian Labor Party pursues as well and that any Victorian government led by the Labor Party and Daniel Andrews would promote renewable energy sources, but of course that will depend upon the national policy positions which have been adopted. In that respect, the buck stops with Mr Abbott. While Mr Warburton's committee was conducting its deliberations, I must say I visited towns in western Victoria where the fate of the RET and the renewable energy industry is a matter of deep, immediate concern to those communities.

In the Western District and in many parts of rural Victoria, the RET is all about jobs and jobs that sustain communities. It is the uncertainty about the RET, created in the first place by the Warburton review and now by the government's insistence on substantially cutting the target that is putting those jobs at risk. In Ararat, a $450 million wind farm project had been stalled by the government's announcement of the Warburton review. RES Australia, the wind farm developer, said that the project would not go ahead if the target is changed. The same doubts have also been put out about wind farms in the Pyrenees, the North Grampians and neighbouring shires of Ararat.

Uncertainty continues around Victoria where 17 wind farms are considered unlikely to proceed if the RET is cut, at the cost of 6,400 jobs. The Abbott government has never concealed its contempt for the renewable energy industry. The Treasurer notoriously described wind farms as 'a blot on the landscape'. I heard similar sentiments expressed by Senator Ryan here a few minutes ago. When the people of Ararat and other Victorian towns affected by the government's hostility to renewables look at the wind turbines on hillsides, they do not see a blot. They see a source of jobs, of construction, of drought-proofing incomes for farmers who own the land, of cash flows to small businesses and of revenue to local councils which are able to build community services. This has been done at a time of great environmental crisis. That is what we ought be discussing here.

The Prime Minister and the government apparently think there is not a lot to like about the position that has been taken by many world leaders. We saw President Obama just recently making some observations about the importance of climate change to this country and to so many others. The government do not want to argue the case because there is no credible answer to put to the people of Ararat, the Pyrenees or the Grampians, to the people who know that their jobs can depend upon the development of renewable energy, who will, of course, understand the importance of the development of new industries. There is no credible answer to be given to people who ask why they no longer have a place in an industry that is crucial to the building of a sustainable future for the people of Victoria.

While the Abbott government goes about persisting on cutting the RET, we know that that position will be fiercely contested by Labor and will be fiercely contested by Daniel Andrews if he is elected Premier on Saturday. Strong indications suggest that the people of Victoria are tired of the fact that the coalition government has failed to stand up for their interests and has failed to defend them against the onslaught by the conservative government in Canberra. Tony Abbott knows that. That is why his Liberal colleagues have made it very clear that they do not want him anywhere near the Victorian election campaign because ordinary Victorians are onto him. They know what happened before the last election and about all the promises that were made, and the betrayals which have occurred since. We know the promises in health and we know the promises in education. We also understand that the government in Canberra does not want to see the development of new renewable energy industries in Ararat or in towns just like it.

The other great controversy which has emerged concerns the timber industry in Gippsland. I know some would like to see this as a very emotive issue. It affects the livelihoods of 600 people at the Maryvale mill, a $2 billion investment. It is the largest privately owned pulp mill facility in Australia. I know that the CFMEU and the workers in the industry have demonstrated their bona fides because of what I have seen in Tasmania. I know that the environmental groups in Tasmania were prepared to sit with workers in the industry and the environmental groups were prepared to work through serious issues with serious people about security, real environmental sustainability, real jobs and real prosperity

I know that the CFMEU actually took those industry agreements to a secret ballot of their members and that they were carried by those men and women who work in that industry. And those agreements have been stuck to; those agreements have been delivered. Even when this government—this Canberra government—wanted to remove the heritage listing of forests in Tasmania, those workers and employers stuck to those arrangements. I am equally confident that the same process will be followed in Victoria, because serious people who are serious about jobs and the future of Gippsland know that the only way to sort these issues is to actually get around a table and make binding commitments to one another about preserving jobs and the environment, and ensuring economic prosperity of the region.

Environmental groups will insist that solutions can be found. The Greens, however, have a long history of opposing such approaches. I take the view that, if you want to save the forests and if you want to be able to ensure that you save forest communities, you ensure that there are proper discussions— (Time expired)

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Our environment is under attack like never before, and we are feeling it in Victoria. We are facing climate disaster due to our reliance on polluting fossil fuels and we are seeing unprecedented species loss. Our dig-it-up and ship-it-out mentality to our natural resources prevails in the face of all evidence that this is an unsustainable way to manage our economy and our environment. Tony Abbott wants to make our environment laws even weaker—

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

Senator Rice, would you refer to the Prime Minister by his appropriate title.

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Prime Minister Abbott wants to make our environment laws even weaker, hacking away at vital safeguards and calling it 'cutting red and green tape'. It is selling out our future. We cannot leave protecting Australia's environment up to the states. As my colleagues in this place have pointed out time and time again, if we had given state governments sole control of national environmental law in the past, the Franklin River would be dammed, there would be oil rigs on the Great Barrier Reef, we would have cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park and the Traveston dam would have gone ahead—all with outrageous environmental impacts. The Greens are standing up to the Abbott government's plan to hand off national environment law to the states.

We are also working in our own patches for a clean, green future. In my home state, Victorians have welcomed with open arms my state Greens colleagues' environmental policies and initiatives that we are taking to this weekend's state election, because we know that the health of our economy will be based on how well we shift to a clean energy economy and protect our natural heritage. We understand that a healthy economy, healthy society and healthy environment are completely interconnected; you cannot have one without the other. We need to be building our natural capital rather than destroying it. Shifting to a clean energy economy is a win-win-win—providing jobs, building wealth and creating a safe climate and healthy environment all at once.

Victoria stands to lose so much from climate change, and we do not see our federal government standing up against the threats. Our farmers are facing a bleak future, with the threat of worse and more prolonged droughts. This summer is looking like it is going to be particularly grim. Global warming threatens to reduce Australia's livestock carrying capacity by in the vicinity of 40 per cent. Crops like canola, wheat and barley will be absolutely challenged by increasing temperatures. Heat waves are going to hit Victoria like never before. People living in Melbourne and other urban centres are going to suffer health threats. Excessively hot days will take a huge toll on our community's most vulnerable. The young, the elderly and the sick suffer most on hot days, and this is worsened in the centre of our cities. Heat-related deaths will increase, and we need a plan that is going to effectively mitigate this threat.

The increase in prevalence and severity of extreme weather associated with climate change is going to place a huge strain on Victoria. No-one wants to live through bushfires like those we saw in 2009. While Prime Minister Abbott and his government insists on wrecking our land, our water and our environment, the Greens in Victoria have a set of ideas that respond to 21st-century challenges. We have a plan to retire dirty coal plants and create jobs as we shift to renewable energy. In Victoria, we have the dubious honour of producing the dirtiest energy. But we do not need so many brown coal electricity generators. Renewable energy has been doing its job, and we now have an excess of electricity in the grid. So shifting and really encouraging that transition to clean energy generation makes sense for our environment and it makes sense for jobs. More people are employed putting solar panels on roofs than in the entire coalmining industry. Clean energy is not a threat but an employment opportunity right around Victoria for places like Anglesea and the Latrobe Valley.

We can shift our energy mix to wean Victoria off coal. We support communities threatened by mining companies and want a permanent ban on fracking, onshore gas and new coalmines in Victoria, because Victorians want to see a fast shift away from fossil fuels to a clean energy future. We plan to support the growth of wind farms, creating jobs and investment in our regional areas. And we want to establish the Great Forest National Park, just east of Melbourne, for all Victorians to enjoy, rather than leaving it shut off for all but those who drive the loggers' trucks. This important plan will protect the habitat and ecosystem of our animal emblem, the Leadbeater's possum, which we expect is going to be reclassified as critically endangered next month. We need the national park for tourism, for regional revitalisation and for opening up Victoria's forests for generations to enjoy. I must address the furphy that by establishing national parks you are increasing bushfire risk. The science shows very clearly that, if you leave forests to grow old, they are less susceptible to fire, and that younger forests, such as those created by regeneration after clear-fell logging, are much more susceptible to fire and are putting our communities at risk.

The good news is: we have enough plantation estate to serve our wood products industry. Already, over two-thirds of Victoria's wood production comes from plantations, and it is increasing every year. Only 10 per cent of forest industry jobs in Victoria are in native forests, and they are in decline. The growth for our timber industry is in plantations. We can all agree on this. The way to end the rancour and the division is to accept that we need to move industrial scale logging out of our native forests and we need to base our wood products industry on plantations. But we are going backwards. What is left of our native forests is under threat. The Prime Minister and his government are falling into lock step with their Victorian mates who want to perpetuate the destruction of our native forests and subsidise those who do this dirty work. The government's direct action policy is, sadly, set to do just this. The clean energy package which it replaced specifically did not allow the use of wood from native forests to be used as part of a carbon farming initiative or to be eligible for renewable energy certificates—for good reason.

Woodchipping has been cast as an industry that uses 'waste' wood, but, in reality it is the tail that wags the dog. Twice as many logs get sent off as chip logs as sawlogs. Over 80 per cent of the volume of wood that comes out of our forests ends up as woodchips. And now, just as the global market for Australian woodchips is in decline—as we have been outcompeted by plantation chips from elsewhere in the world—the woodchip mill in Eden is about to stop taking chips from East Gippsland, as forest furnaces to burn native forest wood are set to take over. We have already seen what is likely to be in store. Brickworks, the Liberal Party's very large donor, announced—immediately after the announcement of the direct action package—that they were very interested in the potential of using native forest wood to feed their kilns. This is not renewable energy. This is not something that should be supported under a carbon farming initiative aimed at reducing the impacts of climate change. In using native forest based wood and perpetuating industrial scale logging of our forests, it is going to increase the impact of climate change and reduce our carbon stores. It is going exactly in the wrong direction.

The carbon density of Victoria's forests is incredible, which is why they are so important as carbon stores. We have centuries-old trees that rival California's redwoods in their size and in their environmental significance. Our mountain ash is the tallest hardwood tree in the world. It grows extraordinarily quickly, reaching its maximum height in 200 years—five times faster than the redwoods—but it is as carbon stores that our mountain ash forests are the world's best. They store three times as much carbon as the forests of the American Pacific Northwest. These forest ecosystems, just to the north-east of Melbourne, do the heavy lifting in maintaining our carbon stores.

Beyond Zero Emissions had a session here at Parliament House today and said that protecting our native forests, leaving them to recover, is the best thing we can be doing to sequester carbon in Australia. We have got only one per cent of our original forest cover left in Victoria, yet our governments federally and in Victoria are standing by while our money is being spent on subsidising the clear fell logging of these forests. Together we can protect what we love about Australia. We must protect our land, our water and our natural wonders so that we can have them to share for generations to come.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance. A vote for the state coalition government on Saturday in Victoria will deliver strong environmental policies to address climate change and safeguard natural resources in Victoria. What we have before us is proof from the Greens that they struggle to understand the far-reaching implications that the imbalance of the state coalition government has upon Victoria. Far from ignoring climate change and not safeguarding our natural resources, the Victorian government has progressively worked on these issues over the past four years.

The Greens and Labor do not understand that our government, with the Victorian coalition, is committed to environmental standards that also manage to protect the small businesses and families that we are all here to protect. Since coming into office in 2010, the Victorian government has struck a balance, ensuring that we can preserve our environment and natural resources, not damage small communities and still stimulate business investment. The Greens have never managed to find a policy that strikes this balance, and their support for the carbon tax is a clear indication that they cannot safeguard our natural resources or find a pragmatic solution to climate change.

I have spoken many times about the effects that the carbon tax had on my constituents in Victoria, but I feel I must remind the Senate today, because those opposite are clearly incapable of grasping how drastic their policies were. Electricity prices soared with the implementation of the carbon tax. In the few short months since the coalition removed the carbon tax, we have seen electricity prices fall by 8.9 per cent for Victorian households and 10.7 per cent for Victorian businesses. The Treasury has also suggested that abolition of the carbon tax will reduce costs to the Australian consumer by about $550. But let's consider the practical implications this tax had on some typical Victorians that I represent. Dairy farmers were significantly impacted by the carbon tax, as I have spoken about several times in this place. They saw a 41 per cent increase in their electricity costs. This industry was disproportionately impacted because of milking machinery, milk storage and processes. Dairy farmers, along with many other farmers, struggled to pass their costs on to consumers and so they bore the burden of the last government's poorly constructed environmental policy.

I would like to commend the Victorian government for implementing goals that focus on uniting communities, business and local government in addressing climate change and preserving natural resources. Since 2011-12, the Victorian government has invested $3.1 billion in the environment and climate change portfolio. This investment has been channelled to the management of land, forests and parks, ambitious environmental programs and fire and emergency management. The coalition has been committed to ensuring that a wide variety of environmental concerns are addressed in a multitude of ways. So do not believe the rhetoric. Do not believe the hype. Senator Di Natale comes in, Senator Rice comes in, and they like to claim that the Victorian state government is not concerned about our national parks, is not concerned about the Leadbeater's possum, is not concerned about ensuring that Victorians have a healthy and sustainable future—which, in and of itself requires a healthy and sustainable environment. It is a no-brainer. Of course the state government is working towards that end.

Far from ignoring the threat of climate change, Victoria is indirectly supporting national emissions mitigation efforts, through the Commonwealth's Direct Action Plan. Australia's most comprehensive adaptation plan to increase resilience to fire, floods, drought, reduced snowfall and sea level rise has been released by the Victorian government. But the research has been focused on various ways to address climate change. For example, Victoria has invested in new forms of technology. The focus has been on practical action that has tangible results and delivers value for money and on continuing to invest in programs that improve sustainability outcomes.

Since 2010—you do not like to hear it, but please listen up; I have got some good news for you—over $12 million in grants have been awarded to research and development and pilot projects harnessing renewable resources, including wave, solar, geothermal and biomass. If you listened to those opposite, you would think that the Victorian state government is not doing anything in respect of these issues. The cold, hard facts are that it is more than adequately addressing them.

I also want to commend the Victorian government on the implementation of the Environmental Partnerships Program. This proves more than ever that we are a government that can find the balance. We are the side of politics that can get a triple bottom line occurring—good community outcomes, good economic outcomes based on sound economic principles, and environmental sustainability. Unless you have a healthy environment and a sound and stable fiscal position, people and communities are not going to thrive and prosper. But, if you tip that balance too far towards the environment, you are not going to ensure that communities can prosper, that families can remain healthy and safe. Senator Rice, I see you are shaking your head. You were not in this place for the Murray-Darling Basin conversation.

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

Address your comments to the chair, Senator McKenzie.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Through you, Chair. But it got pretty ugly along the Murray in our state of Victoria when the previous government decided to roll out the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Senator Hanson-Young was railing loud and proud about the amount of sustainable take that could be taken out of the system. We now know that was incredibly poor advice from Senator Hanson-Young. Our home state has managed to find environmental efficiencies to ensure a healthy river. As the water makes its way through New South Wales, along our beautiful Murray down into South Australia, the sustainable take is much less than Senator Hanson-Young claimed. That is due to the fact that we chose to invest in infrastructure throughout irrigation districts that ensured businesses could still prosper, families could stay on their farms, communities could remain economically viable and the environment could still get the water.

We hear the emotive arguments of the Greens and can get wrapped up in the hyper-rhetoric that they bring to the table. It is going on throughout my home state of Victoria right now, particularly around regional areas. It is just based on whipping up fear in uninformed communities. The fact is, when you put your heads together, sit down with communities and businesses and think about viable alternatives, you can get a triple bottom line. That is what this government is committed to doing.

The Environmental Partnerships Program aims to work with local communities and land managers to achieve positive outcomes for the environment through initiatives like committing more than $9 million to the Coastal Environments Program, supporting on-ground coastal risk management works; a commitment to plant two million trees across regional Victoria and metropolitan Melbourne; the $20 million Communities for Nature grants program, enabling local groups to carry out important on-ground works to conserve and enhance the local environment; investing nearly $16 million to protect priority habitat and threatened species; and investing $9 million over four years to renourish key beaches in Port Phillip Bay, by reintroducing sand to beaches depleted of sustainable sand levels by storm events and coastal processes.

This goes exactly to Senator Di Natale's scare campaign on the Leadbeater's possum issue. The Victorian government is fully committed to implementing all 13 recommendations from the Leadbeater's Possum Advisory Group, with $11 million committed for implementation. For Senator Di Natale to stand up and spruik the fact that our state faunal emblem is going extinct and will have to be rediscovered for the second time in the last hundred years is absolute bollocks. The state government has committed $11 million to implement all the recommendations. This is what environmental policy should look like. This is how to safeguard natural resources—bottom-up consultation, discovering what communities and businesses and people can do and how government can assist them. It reminds me of a community that has approached me on numerous occasions, the Mountain Cattlemen's Association. It is about getting the balance right and how we sustainably and safely use our natural resources for the forest industry, to ensure the Leadbeater's possum habitat is maintained and to ensure that communities like the mountain cattlemen can access those economic resources in our national parks to continue their economic and cultural practices. We can get it right.

Look at the water policy of past Labor governments in our state. The desalination plant is an albatross around Victorians' necks. The $75 million north-south pipeline, which we are still paying for, never delivered a drop for Melbourne. That is what happens when you let the Labor Party and the Greens control environmental policy at a state level. We are getting the balance right. We are reducing red and green tape and ensuring that we can get economic growth out into the regions, into our communities, while safeguarding our natural resources. That is exactly what good governance looks like. Vote 1 coalition.

Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to note for the Senate the excellent work that the Victorian Leader of the Opposition, Daniel Andrews, and his team have been doing in their election campaign against what four leading Victorian environmental groups have described as a government with the 'worst record on the environment since the 1960s'. Let me just repeat that: the Napthine record has the worst record on the environment since the 1960s. Just like our federal Abbott government, with its Victorian based federal Minister for the Environment, Denis Napthine has presided over a wholesale attack on the state's environmental assets. These four environmental groups and their members have never witnessed a government with such a callous indifference to the environment. For those of us observing this federal government hack its way into Australia's environmental protections and the climate change framework, increasing the clear and present danger to Australia's national environmental security, the numerous examples of the Victorian coalition's callous indifference to the environment are all too familiar. They are all too similar to what we have witnessed in the federal arena when it comes to a lack of support, let alone care for our environment. So they present the template and an alarming warning for the two years left of the Abbott government's term in office. What are they? Let us have a look.

Since 2010 Victorian coalition governments have, one, scrapped the Victorian emissions reduction target of 20 per cent by 2020 implemented by the Brumby government; two, abandoned Victoria's solar target of five per cent of Victoria's power coming from solar energy and made it almost impossible to get approvals for new wind farms; three, promoted coalmining, gas extraction and the coal export industry; four, extended the life of ageing and polluting Anglesea and Hazelwood coalmines and power stations; five, allowed loggers to operate in threatened species habitats; six, attempted to abolish energy efficiency targets; and, seven, slashed jobs at Parks Victoria. So it is no wonder that a study conducted recently by the Climate Council found that Victoria has the worst policy environment for renewable energy in Australia. In fact, its report said a comparison of each state's renewable energy sector found Victoria was the worst-performing state.

Matt Ruchel, the Executive Director of the Victorian National Parks Association, said:

I’ve not come across a government so openly hostile to conservation. I suspect they consider it some sort of war.

Well he could have just as easily been talking about the Abbott government, a government that views the environment as an obstacle to be quickly cleared, not as an asset to be properly managed. Similarly, when Mr Wakeham, the CEO of the state's peak group Environment Victoria, said he was surprised by how aggressively anti-environment the government proved to be after it won the 2010 Victorian election without releasing an environment policy during the campaign he might have been referring again to the Abbott government, whose only environmental policies before the election were to abolish the carbon price and to revoke—and we will never forget this embarrassing step—the World Heritage listing for some of Tasmania's most amazing forests, which was something UNESCO overturned and threw out the window.

Mr Wakeham described the Napthine government as 'totally out of step with where public opinion is at'. He said:

Not only have they been poor on the environment; they have actively attacked environmental protections. They’re not ‘do nothing’.

That is a description that rings equally and shamefully true of the Abbott government's approach to the environment, whether it is looking at the Abbott government's ripping up of the management plans of marine parks, looking at the rebuke of its bipartisan support for the renewable energy target or looking at the fact that we now no longer have any sort of legal cap on carbon pollution in this country, leaving us as the only country to go backwards on climate change. I could go on and on with the backflips and the lack of action by this Abbott government on the environment but, having said that, I am focusing today on the Napthine government.

There are so many similarities between the two governments. They have both attacked—and undermined of course in doing so—Australia's environmental security at every turn. However, an Andrews Victorian Labor government will respond to these attacks by addressing renewable energy, including the restrictive planning laws of the current government, strengthening protections and oversight for coastal and marine reserve management as well as riparian environments. Only last week we heard that an Andrews Labor government will make Newstead on the Loddon River Victoria's first solar town by transitioning it to renewable energy. Those words from Daniel Andrews certainly must be a breath of fresh air for Victorians who know that they will have a leader who will address the issues of renewable energy, which so many Victorian voters so desperately want. I attended one of the Solar Council's forums in Victoria only a couple of months ago. Over 300 people turned out. Of course the focus there was on the renewable energy target but it was very much on solar energy. So many Victorians wanted to continue to see an increase in solar power and an increase in renewable energy. I know that Victorians will be very pleased to hear from the Andrews Victorian Labor team about how it will very much invest in renewable energy.

Through solar power and energy storage Newstead residents will be able to rely on 100 per cent renewable energy to power their homes and businesses by 2017. What a formidable campaign to have. To underpin this project Labor will ensure that small renewable energy projects can have fair access to the existing grid and that distribution businesses are more responsive to distributed energy proposals. Labor will also ask the Essential Services Commission to inquire into the true value to the grid of distributed generation. I recently joined the Victorian shadow minister for energy and resources, my friend and colleague Ms Lily D'Ambrosio, at the save our solar forum in Ringwood. What she promised was:

Not only will the residents in Newstead reduce their reliance on coal fired power and cut their carbon footprint, they will be driving down household costs through cheaper energy bills.

So not only is this about a win for the environment; this is about a win for consumers. This is about a win for families. It is going to drive down the costs of energy bills. It could not get any better. She said:

… Labor will work with the community in Newstead to help them to achieve their goal of moving to renewable energy by 2017.

Newstead will be a leading example of what can be achieved when locals and government work together. It will take an Andrews Labor Government for this to happen.

I agree totally with Shadow Minister D'Ambrosio on that. Labor will also reboot the Victorian wind energy industry, which will employ thousands of Victorians and create energy for Victorian homes. Labor will also create the $20 million New Energy Jobs Fund, which will offer grants of up to $1 million to firms and companies specialising in high-growth renewable sectors like renewable energy technology. Mr Andrews and the Victorian branch of the Australian Labor Party are going into this election armed with the policies to beat back the conservative attack on Victoria's environment, and I wish him and the people of Victoria— (Time expired)

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

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