TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW ON ABC'S INSIDERS
Date: 02 November 2014
BARRIE CASSIDY:
That is the Sunday papers. Now straight to our program guest, it is
the Shadow Minister for the Environment Mark Butler who joins us from
Adelaide. Good morning, welcome.
MARK BUTLER: Good morning, Barrie.
CASSIDY:
Whatever you might think of Direct Action, the Government this week
finally got through the Parliament support for a policy that it took to
two elections.
BUTLER: Well, it did.
CASSIDY: Well, go on.
BUTLER: It
did and Greg Hunt is patting himself on the back for that but
the question is whether it is good for the country. The question is
whether it is going to work in terms of bringing down carbon pollution.
For the 4 and a half or five years this policy has been in the
political marketplace, there has not been one single credible
economist or climate scientist or business organisation that has said
this is a good use of taxpayer funds that will achieve the stated
objective, which is to reduce carbon pollution. So, Greg Hunt might be
very happy with himself but at the end of the day this is not a good
policy for Australia.
CASSIDY:
What it might bring, though, is certainty to the table because, by
contrast, there was the Rudd policy, it was modified by Julia
Gillard and modified again by Kevin Rudd. This is a policy Greg Hunt,
the Minister, says could be around for 20, 30 years?
BUTLER:
To quote Malcolm Turnbull, that would be a recipe for
fiscal recklessness on a grand scale. There has been report after report
on this. I will quote two. Reputex, the leading carbon mark analyst and
a gentle supporter of Direct Action if anything, said this week that
Direct Action, the deal done by Clive Palmer and Tony Abbott this week,
will only achieve about 20 or 30 per cent of the carbon pollution
reductions we need to get just to the 5 per cent target in 2020. Ken
Henry endorsed Ross Garnaut's estimates you would have to spend $4
billion or $5 billion per year to get to the 5 per cent target. An
additional $20 billion between now and 2019. This is a colossal waste
of taxpayer funds and it is not going to achieve meaningful reduction in
carbon pollution.
CASSIDY: The
extent to which it reduces emissions is difficult to judge. What if
it does achieve the 5 per cent reduction and it demonstrates
incentives work, what becomes of the market-based alternatives?
BUTLER:
Well, we are in this curious position where Tony Abbott, the leader of
the Liberal Party, is arguing you can't have a market in this area, you
can't have businesses, for example, participate in a global market in
carbon pollution reduction; you have to trust the Minister, trust
Canberra, to work out the best way to reduce our carbon pollution
reduction. Notwithstanding the number of times Tony Abbott and Greg
Hunt stand up, put their hand on their heart and say "We are going to
achieve the 5 per cent reduction.” No-one else believes it. No-one else
has said we have a chance under this policy to achieve a 5 per cent
reduction, let alone the more ambitious discussions that will be the
subject at international negotiations next year.
CASSIDY:
Probably, at the very least, Australia is no longer out ahead of the
rest of the world but Australia is not carrying a
disproportionate burden?
BUTLER: Tony
Abbott certainly achieved that. We are not ahead of the rest of the
world. While the rest of the world is moving forward, particularly
leading countries like the United States and China but so many of our
other trading partners as well. Tony Abbott has made Australia the first
nation to completely dismantle a meaningful climate change policy and
start to put his country backwards.
CASSIDY: By
sticking with an ETS, with Labor sticking with an ETS, doesn't the
Coalition Government have a very easy argument at the next election that
one thing they can guarantee are cheaper power prices?
BUTLER: Well
we'll have to make that argument. We'll have to make the argument about
why the only serious way to deal with climate change is to put an
economy-wide cap on carbon pollution, a legal limit on carbon pollution
that reduces over time in accordance with our international
obligations. Then we let business work out the cheapest and most
effective way to operate. That is the sort of scheme you see in so many
different parts of the world now but particularly in our own region. In
China, there are seven schemes covering a quarter of a billion
people, moving to a national trading scheme soon. South Korea our third
largest export partner is starting an Emissions Trading Scheme on 1
January next year. They already operate in so many of our oldest trading
partners in the Northern Hemisphere. Around the world, by
business economists, other economists, climate scientists and the like, a
cap on carbon pollution that lets business work out the cheapest and
most effective way to operate is almost universally regarded as the most
effective way to deal with climate change.
CASSIDY: Business sorts it out but electricity prices will be more expensive under Labor's policy?
BUTLER:
That's not necessarily the case. Over the next 12 to 24 months we will
be working with businesses, other stake holders, keeping a very close
eye on international negotiations to work out quite what we should be
doing about the detail of the Emissions Trading Scheme, whether we
link with other parts of the world, for example, as so many business
organisations stress we should do, but Tony Abbott appears to resist. A
lot of that detail has to be worked through but you can't pretend Direct
Action is a free policy. There are billions and billions of taxpayer
dollars now being thrown at companies to reduce their carbon pollution.
That money doesn't come out of thin air. It is money raised
from ordinary taxpayers that now Tony Abbott is handing over
to Australia's big polluters.
CASSIDY:
Were you surprised, given that Clive Palmer once appeared at a
news conference with Al Gore, were you surprised when he cut this deal
with the Government? Did you see that coming?
BUTLER:
Clive Palmer never ceases to surprise me in this policy area. He
had said consistently for months and months that Direct Action was a dog
of a policy. He was no orphan there. Everyone says, except Greg Hunt
and Tony Abbott, this is a policy that won't work. All he appears
to have achieved for the backflip is a study, as Greg Hunt said, whether
there are Emissions Trading Schemes around the world and how they work.
You could have given that study to a first-year high school student who
had access to the Internet. This is work done all the time to track
what's happening around the world on ETS schemes. Why Clive Palmer fell
for this trick is beyond me.
CASSIDY: He
effectively dumped his insistence on the ETS, he wanted it to lie
dormant and picked up down the track. If there was a mug in the game,
it wasn't Tony Abbott or Greg Hunt.
BUTLER: You
have seen Liberal Party MPs, a Liberal Party Minister yesterday saying
Clive Palmer is a grandstander but they think obviously they got him on
this one. It is hard to argue at that when you look at the details of
the deal he agreed to.
CASSIDY: On
Renewable Energy Targets, you are still in conversation with
the Government on that, 20 per cent, now effectively 27 per cent because
of reduced power usage, will you meet the Government halfway on that?
BUTLER: We
will talk constructively with the Government. Implicit in your question
is this idea 20 per cent was the glass ceiling, we were never to go
above that. Our policy was always very clear. There would be at least 20
per cent of electricity delivered from renewable sources by
2020. Because of a fall in demand against what we thought would happen,
on the current projections, we are going to get more than 20 per cent.
That's not a failure of policy. That was always a possible outcome.
What the real objective here is to get renewable energy back on the
rails. By the middle of last year, there were four attractive places to
invest in renewable energy according to the global index on these
things. US, China, Germany and there was Australia. We have, since the
election of the Abbott Government, plummeted on that table. Renewable
energy invent was running to billion - investment was running
to billions of dollars last year has completely frozen. The banks, the
investors and the companies themselves tell us the only way to get
investment back on track is with an agreement between the two
major parties of government. Not what Clive Palmer says or the Greens
party. They are looking to what the alternative parties of government
will say because these investments endure for 15, 20, 25 years.
CASSIDY: If
you are going to negotiate, though, at some point compromise, surely you
have to accept at some stage the fact power usage is reducing, is in
decline, is at least in part relevant?
BUTLER:
Of course, it is a factor on the table but I wanted to deal with the
implication in your question we should somehow target 20 per cent as a
glass ceiling. We don't accept that. I've made that clear publicly and
to Ian Macfarlane their projection of a 40 per cent cut, which is
their so-called real 20 per cent target, is not something we will
be accepting.
CASSIDY: Mark Butler, thanks for your time this morning.
BUTLER: Thanks very much, Barrie.
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