Mark Butler MP.
Shadow Minister for Environment
Climate Change and Water
MARK BUTLER, SHADOW MINISTER FOR CLIMATE CHANGE: This
is a matter of very significant public importance and has been for a
considerable period of time. There has been a growing sense of despair
within the Australian community about this country's direction on
climate change policy and the spread of renewable energy. Frankly, that
sense of despair is no wonder, given the track record of this government
over a short period of only two years.
To recap, this was the government that
abolished the legal targets, the 2020 and 2050 targets, to reduce
Australia's carbon pollution and to start to decarbonise Australia's
economy. This was the government that abolished the legal cap on carbon
pollution that would act as the discipline on the natural growth in
emissions that would otherwise occur in a growing economy with a growing
population like Australia's.
This was the government that attacked the
renewable energy target and talked down every possible expansion of
renewable energy—particularly the expansion of wind power—and this is
the government that continues to seek to abolish the Clean Energy
Finance Corporation, in spite of the Prime Minister's gentle words today
in question time, and to abolish the Renewable Energy Agency, ARENA, in
spite of a clear election promise to the contrary.
The despair has become even more pronounced
as it has become increasingly clear to the Australian community and to
the international community that there is growing global momentum in the
lead-up to the Paris conference in December—a global momentum
particularly led by the two largest emitters, the two largest economies,
the two most significant powers in the world today: the United States
and China. It has been quite clear for a good 12 or 18 months that those
two nations, under the leadership of President Obama and President Xi
Jinping, are committed to Paris reaching an ambitious agreement to
reduce global carbon emissions.
A great number of Australians held out very
significant hope that a change in leadership on the other side, a change
in Prime Minister, would mean real substantive change in these policy
areas. It was hoped that the change would drag the Liberal Party back to
the sensible centre on climate change and we could get to a position,
like the one you see in places like the United Kingdom, where there
would be a broad consensus between the alternative parties of government
that would underpin the real change that we need to see in the face of
climate change and in the long-term investments that businesses are
going to have to make.
Australians were perfectly entitled to hold
out that hope, given what the member for Wentworth had said about
climate change policy for many, many years—particularly in that painful
change in leadership from the member for Wentworth to the member for
Warringah only five or six years ago.
It has become increasingly clear in recent
weeks just how high a price the Prime Minister, the member for
Wentworth, was willing to pay to achieve his lifelong ambition of
becoming Prime Minister. There is no price higher than the price the
member for Wentworth has paid in the area of climate change and
renewable energy policy. It is now clear that this Prime Minister has
adopted the member for Warringah's climate change and renewable energy
policies hook, line and sinker.
This is no trifling matter. This is not an
academic issue for broad debate. In two short years these policies have
already been having a very real impact on our ability to deal with the
threat of climate change—a very real impact that no amount of kinder,
gentler, more florid language from the member for Wentworth, the new
Prime Minister, will be able to change. That impact started very quickly
following the election of the Abbott government.
Bear in mind that Labor's policies were
driving down carbon pollution levels. They were starting to work
significantly. In the last full year of the Howard government
Australia's carbon emissions were about 600 million tonnes. In the last
year of the Labor government, those emissions had reduced to 548 million
tonnes—a reduction of eight per cent in six short years.
Since then, all of the trends across the
economy have been bad. Most obviously, trends in the electricity sector
have been particularly bad as the former Prime Minister launched an
all-out attack on the renewable energy industry, in spite of taking to
the election in 2013 a promise to keep the renewable energy target in
place and a promise to keep the Renewable Energy Agency in place as
well. Unsurprisingly, renewable energy investment collapsed last year—it
collapsed by 88 per cent in the large scale sector, which obviously led
to an increase in coal-fired power and an increase in carbon emissions
from the electricity sector, our largest source of carbon pollution. In
2014-15 alone carbon pollution increased by four per cent—four per cent
in one year alone in the National Electricity Market.
In the land sector as well, massive
reductions in carbon pollution were achieved because of the historic
land clearing laws that were put in place by Premier Peter Beattie, with
the support of Prime Minister John Howard—Prime Minister Howard
understood how important those reforms were to achieving our commitments
under the Kyoto protocol in the first commitment period. Unsurprisingly
the LNP government of Campbell Newman reversed all of those reforms and
we have started to see emissions rise again in that very critical
sector. I can go through other sectors where emissions have continued to
rise.
The parliament does not need to take my word
for this. As we pointed out in question time today, the Department of
the Environment's own official projections show that emissions will rise
from the time of the election of the Abbott government to 2020 by 20
per cent. Page 32 of those emission projections shows that in 2013-14,
when we left government, emissions were 548 million tonnes, and the
department's projections are that by 2020 emissions will be 656 million
tonnes—more than 100 million tonnes higher.
Mr Hunt interjecting—
MARK BUTLER, SHADOW MINISTER FOR CLIMATE CHANGE:
The Minister says I am behind the times, but these are the latest
projections published by the minister's own department. I will be more
generous to the minister and just refer to the RepuTex projections which
were published in August. The minister had a go, as is this
government's wont, at shooting the messenger; the minister had a go at
RepuTex yesterday but RepuTex's projections are much more generous than
his own department's projections. RepuTex says that by 2020 emissions
will only be 12 per cent higher than they were when this government took
office, or about 10 per cent higher than 2000. There is no surprise in
this, because this is what analyst after analyst after analyst said
would happen.
All through the five- or six-year history of
this policy being in the political marketplace, the policy that the
member for Warringah directed the now minister to go and cook up over a
summer in 2009-10, this is exactly what every analyst has said would
happen. We know the Emissions Reduction Fund is a waste of money. It
apparently bought 47 million tonnes of abatement in the first auction,
but the minister does not often say that three-quarters of that was from
projects that existed before the auction. Some of them were projects
that had been in existence for more than 10 years. There were landfill
and waste gas projects that had been established under GGAS under the
Carr government for more than 10 years.
This week RepuTex has confirmed that not one
single company—not one of the country's largest polluters—will be
obligated at all to reduce their carbon pollution levels by the
safeguards mechanism. Such is the headroom given to every large polluter
in Australia and such are the ways in which companies can renegotiate
their baselines under this safeguards mechanism that not one company
will be obligated to reduce their pollution levels. That is why Climate
Action Tracker, an international NGO that compares policies and the
nationally determined contributions that nations are taking to the Paris
conference, has found that Australia has the largest gap of any nation
between the target it is taking to Paris, which admittedly is a
back-of-the-pack target, and the policies that are in place.
That is why an emissions trading scheme is
the only policy that is going to deliver meaningful reductions in carbon
pollution levels in a country like Australia with a growing economy and
a growing population. That is why Labor will continue to advocate the
interests of an emissions trading scheme up to and during the next
election. But the Prime Minister knows all this. He has known it for
many years. He has just been willing to pay the price to assume his
lifelong ambition of becoming Prime Minister, and that is a terrible
shame.
ENDS
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