Mark Butler, Subject: President Obama's Climate Change Speech

TRANSCRIPT OF TELEVISION INTERVIEW SKY AM AGENDA

Date:  03 June 2014

HOST: First on the program, Labor’s climate change spokesman, Mark Butler. Mark Butler, Julie Bishop says that she anticipates other countries will also announce their plans for post-2015 in the lead up to the international talks next year. So, her point this morning is that this is what the Government expected.  

SHADOW MINISTER FOR ENVIRONMENT, CLIMATE CHANGE AND WATER MARK BUTLER: Well, she’s right in one respect. The speech from the EPA head this week is no real surprise in the sense that America has been making very significant shifts in the terms of carbon pollution for more than 12 months. President Obama has made it very clear; firstly at a domestic level he intends this to be a high order priority for his administration. But also that he, along with the Chinese significantly, intend the Paris negotiations next year to be ambitious and to reach a very significant agreement. So Ms Bishop is right in that sense, but she doesn’t admit that her government is now greatly out of step with international opinion. There is extraordinary momentum, particularly because the actions of the Americans and the Chinese – the two largest economies in the world and the two biggest polluters in terms of carbon pollution in the world – have made it very clear they intend next year to be an ambitious agreement. Australia really runs the risk of being left outside the room.

HOST: But what the Government has said in Opposition, and now in Government, is that Australia should act when the rest of the world does; and Julie Bishop this morning making it clear that Australia is in those talks, is monitoring what the rest of the world does and will act accordingly.

BUTLER: Well I’m not sure that’s how the rest of the world sees it. For example, the Americans, the Chinese, old trading partners like Germany, France, the UK, they’ve all made it very clear that next year will be ambitious negotiations. They’ve also made it clear that they want discussions at the G20 meetings about climate change this year and are being resisted by the Chair of the G20, which happens to be Tony Abbott. So, Australia really is under this Government at great risk of being out of step with the momentum we’re starting to see – we’ve started to see in the past 12 to 18 months in China as well – to make next year an ambitious agreement.

HOST: In terms of this announcement out of Washington overnight. What do you make of it and what would you say to critics that would point out that it’s still not a carbon price as such, not an emissions trading scheme, which of course Labor advocates here?

BUTLER: Well, it’s not an economy-wide emissions trading scheme. It’s quite clear from President Obama’s speeches that that was his first preference and he tried to get an

emissions trading scheme through Congress, co-sponsored by John McCain the former Republican Presidential Candidate, but was unsuccessful. So, what he’s been doing instead for some time is using the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency, a Nixon creation, to start to impose pollution standards. He’s done it on passenger vehicles, he’s done it on new power plants and what he’s done this morning is issue standards - quite strict standards - for existing power plants.

HOST: Will it be enough, in your view, to drive that international agreement, which has been elusive to this point, for substantive action beyond 2020?

BUTLER: Well, America has quite ambitious carbon pollution targets now. The Administration is working to a target of 17 per cent. So, a reduction in carbon pollution by 17 per cent by 2020, compared, for example, to Australia’s 5 per cent target. And everyone agrees America is well on track to achieve the 17 per cent reduction. The announcement this morning takes America beyond 2020 and into the 2030 period which is really the subject of the negotiations in Paris next year. This Government, here is Australia, is still flat-footed on the 2020 target, let alone getting to the point of discussing the next decade, and the ambition agreed by all countries in the world – our commitment to make sure carbon pollution does not reach a point globally where temperatures have increased by more than two degrees.

HOST: When you say the Government is flat-footed, isn’t it fair to point out that they’ve set their target in line with what Labor had set for 2020 and they remain committed to that target and have always said again, as I began the interview, that they will monitor world events with what the international community’s doing and will act accordingly?

BUTLER: Well, the world’s moving. The world is clearly moving. And most importantly, the US and China are moving. They’ve signed a memorandum of understanding only several weeks ago, committing to an ambitious agreement next year, recognising the need for urgent action, recognising a scientific consensus on climate change – language you would never hear from this Prime Minister. The world is moving and it’s time that the Australian Government came clean with the Australian people about the way in which it was going to participate constructively in these negotiations. Now, there is not an expert that I can find, in the four years that the Coalition’s Direct Action policy has been in the market place, who says seriously that we can achieve even a 5 per cent reduction under the Coalition’s policy. At Senate Estimates last week, it was clear the Government has done no modelling on how it’s going to achieve even a 5 per cent reduction. So this Government really needs to get its act together and recognise that the world is moving forward while Tony Abbott intends to take Australia backwards.

HOST: Mark Butler, thanks for your time. Appreciate it.

BUTLER: Thanks Kieran.