Media Release
Mark Butler MP.
Shadow Minister for Environment
Climate Change and Water
Date: 30 October 2014
MARK BUTLER, SHADOW MINISTER FOR CLIMATE CHANGE: Good
morning everyone. Well, a report from Reputex this morning confirmed
that the deal done yesterday between Clive Palmer and Tony Abbott, at
best, will deliver 20 to 30 per cent of the emissions reduction that is
needed by Australia to get to the five per cent target by 2020. This is a
devastating report from Reputex, it confirms that the deal announced
yesterday is utterly hopeless for Australia’s future. What it means is
that in order to get to the five per cent target, the Australian
Government, Tony Abbott is going to have to spend, on Ken Henry’s
estimate, four to five billion dollars per year between now and 2020
just to get to the five per cent reduction. Or else, it means that Tony
Abbott’s going to have to give up on any substantial attempt to reduce
Australia’s carbon pollution. What it also means is that Tony Abbott is
going to go to meetings like the G20 next month and a range of other
meetings over coming months leading into next year, that will discuss
climate change, whether or not he likes it, he’ll go to those meetings
completely empty handed while countries like the United States, China
and many others have serious plans to tackle climate change. The deal
done yesterday between Clive Palmer and Tony Abbott has left Australia
utterly empty-handed.
JOURNALIST: Is it a positive thing that the Climate Change Authority will at least investigate an ETS?
BUTLER: Well, the Climate Change
Authority is a great authority filled with great people. It’s done work
on this before. This is an assignment, frankly, you could have given a
first year high school student who had access to the internet. This is
an utter joke. And for Clive Palmer to claim that somehow he has saved
the ETS – which was the headline on his media release – either shows
that he doesn’t understand the deal that he has done with Greg Hunt or
that he has developed an extraordinary capacity for spin.
JOURNALIST: [INAUDIBLE]
BUTLER: Well, Labor has been
utterly steadfast on this. We took an emissions trading scheme to the
last election, we argued the case for an emissions trading scheme in the
House of Representatives and the Senate. There was a real, substantial
emissions trading scheme before the Senate only a couple of months ago
and Clive Palmer lined up with Tony Abbott to kill it. So, he’s not in a
position to be issuing media releases saying he saved the ETS when he
joined with Tony Abbott to kill an ETS only a couple of months ago.
JOURNALIST: Isn’t it time for Labor to introduce its own proposed alternative?
BUTLER: We had a proposed
alternative for the last several months, we released draft legislation
before the last election, we issued costings that would reflect the
change from the carbon tax which we said we would terminate for an
emissions trading scheme. You could not get more detail, it ran to
hundreds of pages, it had been released and the subject of comment from
business and dozens of other stakeholders. It was a proposal killed by
Tony Abbott.
JOURNALIST: Do you think the safeguards for emissions in Direct Action will be able to stop them emitting too much without penalty?
BUTLER: Well of course it can’t. A
meaningful safeguards mechanism will involve a substantial price on
carbon pollution and Tony Abbott has made it clear he’s not interested
in that. He’s just not interested. So what we have is a situation where
billions and billions of tax payers dollars will be handed over to some
polluters to make some change to the way they operate, changes that many
of them would have been intending to make anyway, can now do so on the
taxpayers’ chip. While on the one hand, they will do nothing to prevent
other companies from blowing their carbon pollution, from massively
increasing their carbon pollution.
JOURNALIST: You don’t have any faith that Australian businesses will do the right thing? You think they need a stick?
BUTLER: Well Australian
businesses, as has been recognised around the world, will operate best
under an economy wide cap on carbon pollution that then lets business
work out the cheapest and most effective way to operate. That is the
essence of an emissions trading scheme. You see it in all of our oldest
trading partners in the UK and Europe, we see now seven emissions
trading schemes in China, moving to a national trading scheme we think
in the next few years, South Korea – not North Korea, South Korea, not
North Korea to my knowledge – South Korea, our third largest export
partner, starts an emissions trading scheme next year. Many other parts
of North America have them. It is recognised around the world as the
most effective and the cheapest way to reduce carbon pollution.
JOURNALIST: How are the negotiations going for the RET?
BUTLER: Well we are committed to
doing all that we can to get this policy back on the rails. Tony Abbott
walked away from the long standing bipartisan support for renewable
energy that had meant that by the middle of last year Australia was one
of the four most attractive places in the world to invest in renewable
energy along with China, the US and Germany. So these were the power
houses investment in the world, and what we’ve seen since is Australia
plummet down the table to the point where now we’re 10th, the 10th
most attractive place to invest and there’s been essentially no large
scale investment this year. Now, we think it’s our responsibility as the
alternative party of government to engage in good faith negotiations
with Ministers Macfarlane and Hunt to see whether they’re able to come
back to a position of bipartisan support for this industry because if
there is not bipartisan support we will see no investment in the future,
we lose thousands of jobs and we see carbon pollution in the
electricity sector, which is the largest source of pollution in
Australia, start to increase rather than start to reduce. So, we’re
engaging in those negotiations in good faith, but we will insist that
any deal between Labor and the Liberal Party will ensure that the
renewable energy industry in Australia continues to grow robustly into
the future.
JOURNALIST: That 41,000GWh target, is that going to be a prerequisite for any deal?
BUTLER: Well we’ve said that is
our starting position for these negotiations. This is a policy that
undoubtedly worked. It’s a policy that Tony Abbott voted for in the
Parliament in 2009 and that he took to the 2010 and 2013 elections. Even
his own handpicked panel, Dick Warburton’s panel, found that it worked,
it created investment, it created thousands of jobs, it’s keeping down
power prices – they’ll be lower under the RET than without the RET – and
it’s also reducing our carbon pollution. So yes that is our starting
position but our objective is to stop the renewable energy industry
collapsing in Australia ensuring instead that it continues to grow, but
grows robustly in the future.
JOURNALIST: How do you rate Clive Palmer’s negotiation skills?
BUTLER: Well frankly I just don’t
know what Clive Palmer’s done yesterday. I said yesterday that Greg Hunt
must have performed some Jedi Mind Trick to get Clive Palmer to sign up
to this. He has lambasted the Direct Action policy for months – and for
good reason, it’s a waste of taxpayer dollars that will do nothing to
achieve meaningful reductions in carbon pollution. Now he’s back flipped
on that, decided to support that hopeless policy, just for an authority
to deliver a report you can get off the internet.
JOURNALIST: To take the Star Wars
analogy a little bit further, Jedi Mind Tricks only work on weak minded
forms, is that what you think Clive Palmer is?
BUTLER: Well, that’s not the case.
Jedi Mind Tricks work on pretty much everyone except Jabba the Hutt. He
was the only one I remember being able to resist Jedi Mind Tricks, so I
pay no disrespect to Clive Palmer being vulnerable to Jedi Mind Tricks,
I’m sure I would be as well, but the fact is – Star Wars analogies
aside – this is a hopeless deal, an utterly hopeless deal which might be
good for the Government, which is the only thing that Greg Hunt seems
to be saying at his press conferences, but it is terrible for
Australia’s future.
JOURNALIST: So he’s gone to the Dark Side?
BUTLER: Well there was always a
question about whether Clive Palmer was on the Dark Side on this
question before, notwithstanding his press conference with Al Gore, but I
think he’s been exposed here. He’s sided with the Government on a
hopeless policy that will waste billions of tax payer dollars, achieve
nothing in terms of meaningful reductions in carbon pollution, for a fig
leaf about a study on emissions trading schemes that, as I said, has
been done countless times before and you could give to a high school
student to do.
JOURNALIST: Glad you know your Star Wars.
BUTLER: Thanks very much.
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