Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In my contribution to the debate on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2015-2016 and the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2015-2016, I would like to start by remembering that, this week, we commemorate the 18th anniversary of the passing of the great economist Julian Simon. I will start with two of Julian Simon's quotes. The first is on what our most valuable resource is. He said:

The ultimate resource is people—especially skilled, spirited, and hopeful young people endowed with liberty—who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefits, and so inevitably they will benefit the rest of us as well.

Another of Simon's quotes is: 'Our species'—the human species—'is better off in just about every measurable way.' Just about every important long-term measure of human material welfare shows that there has been improvement over the decades and the centuries. Raw materials have become less scarce rather than more. The air in the US and other rich countries is irrefutably safer to breathe. Water cleanliness has improved. The environment is increasingly healthy and there is every prospect that this trend will continue.

I would like to set out the reasons behind Simon's prediction that our air pollution and our environment will continue to improve—by an error of logic that we are currently making here in Australia and that is being made across many parts of the world. When it comes to air pollution, we are actually targeting the wrong enemy. In doing so we are making our air pollution worse and we are taking steps that are costing lives in Australia today. I am talking about the lack of focus in this nation on what is called particulate matter pollution. Particulate matter is the mixture of solid particles or liquid droplets found in the air, such as dust, dirt, soot and smoke—often large enough to be seen by the naked eye. We hear about carbon pollution from many so-called environmentalists and those who supposedly care about the environment. They stand up and they rant and rave about carbon pollution. What they are generally referring to is carbon dioxide—that clear, odourless gas. If the member sitting at the table had sparkling mineral water rather than still water, those little bubbles coming out of it would be carbon dioxide. What I am talking about is the dust, the dirt and the soot that comes out of our diesel trucks, wood fires and also burning coal.

We should be most concerned about this because the World Health Organization has confirmed that fine particulate matter is carcinogenic. It causes cancer. That is the carbon pollution that we should be worried about. The World Health Organization confirmed that it is from diesel exhaust and it causes cancer in humans. They say the decision was unanimous and based on compelling scientific evidence. The pollution they talk about, from diesel trucks, buses and other diesel engines, is technically called 'particulate matter'. This is why we should be concerned.

There was a very interesting paper prepared by the National Environment Protection Council, authored by three most distinguished gentlemen: Associate Professor Geoff Morgan, Dr Richard Broome and Professor Bin Jalaludin. They found that, in 2008, 1,586 deaths were caused by fine particulate matter pollution in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane. That is more than 1,500 people a year who are dying in our major cities from fine particulate matter pollution. And yet we have this irrational concentration on carbon pollution being carbon dioxide. We need to refocus on what is killing people—thousands of Australians every year—and that is the real carbon pollution, which is fine particulate matter.

They also found that the figure of 1,586 deaths is based on an average fine particulate matter reading of 6.7 micrograms per cubic metre. They estimated that if we go from 6.7 to 10 micrograms per cubic metre it would lead to a 48 per cent increase in deaths. That is an extra 760 potential deaths from air pollution in our major cities. If we are to have emissions reduction schemes, they should be focusing on the reduction of emissions of particulate matter first, because that is what is causing deaths in our country today.

The figures for Sydney are just as dramatic. In Sydney, the learned professors and doctors estimated that 520 deaths occurred in the year 2008 based on 6.7 micrograms per cubic metre. The years of life lost are estimated to be 6,300. That is a reduction in longevity of 10 years for those people who died from exposure to fine particulate matter. By focusing our guns on carbon dioxide, we have implemented policies that have pushed up the price of electricity. So when we think that all these renewables are wonderful—which actually push up the price of electricity—what do consumers do?

In Western Sydney, in a cold winter, if a consumer finds that his electricity price is too high, he has options, and one of those options is to light a log fire—to simply burn wood. We know that the burning of wood to heat homes is the largest source of fine particulate matter in Western Sydney. So it comes as no surprise that, if we look at the fine particulate matter readings in Western Sydney, in Liverpool, we see that, since we had these large increases in electricity prices, the levels of fine particulate matter have increased. I note that, for the first time ever, in the last couple of winters there have been companies advertising on the radio selling wood. If you go to any garage in Western Sydney, they have bags of firewood lined up to sell.

So what do we see from the readings at Liverpool? These are the readings in micrograms per cubic metre. In 2010 the annual average in Liverpool was 6.4. In 2011 it was 5.9. These figures can bounce around a little bit, depending on underlying conditions—bushfires and things. But in 2012 we had a jump to 8.5. In 2013 we had a jump to 9.4. In 2014 that high level persisted at 8.6. And in 2015 we were at 8.5. Those levels above eight for Liverpool are actually above the standards that we have recently set through our national air pollution guidelines. We have set a limit: that no Australian should be exposed, on an annual average basis, to any greater than eight micrograms per cubic metre. Yet in Liverpool, for all of the last four years, coinciding exactly with the increase in electricity prices, we have been above that level of eight.

If we continue on the rate that we are going, as shown in this report, as the learned professors have said, and if we lift the level from that 6.7 average up to 10, we are going to get a 48 per cent increase in deaths from fine particulate matter, from lung cancer and cardiovascular disease, in Western Sydney. We should be declaring a national emergency over this. There are more deaths from this than from the road toll. Yet this is something we can do something about. We should divert some of the funds—the multiple billions of dollars' worth of funds—that we are putting into reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and put those funds into reducing emissions of particulate matter, because particulate matter kills and it kills thousands of people across Australia. It kills over 500 people a year in Sydney.

That brings me to the intermodal project—one of the most flawed and poorly-thought-out pieces of infrastructure in our country at the moment. What they are proposing is this wonderful plan: 'Let's take the containers off the road and put them onto rail.' That's wonderful! But what happens? On the current locomotive fleet that we have transporting or shuttling containers around Sydney on that Southern Sydney Freight Line, there are no pollution controls whatsoever. So if you take a litre of diesel fuel that you would have burnt in a modern truck engine—a post-2007 truck engine; almost any truck that is less than 10 years old—and you burn that litre of diesel fuel in one of these locomotives, you will get something like 20-plus times more particulate matter spewed into the atmosphere. And that is the plan of the so-called environmentalists: 'Isn't this wonderful! We're going to take the containers off the road and put them on trucks.' That plan is flawed anyway, but I do not have the time to go into that. But they are saying: 'It is wonderful! We will produce less CO2 because we will need less diesel fuel because steel on steel, on the rails, is more effective than rubber on the road.' And yes, you will get a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by doing that, but this plan will see an increase in particulate matter, not of 10 per cent, not 50 per cent but 1,000 per cent. For every container that we move from Port Botany out to Moorebank in Western Sydney, we are going to have a 1,000 per cent increase in particulate matter—a carcinogen that kills people—when we are already at a level above our national standard. That should not be an option.

If we are going to do this—if this is such a wonderful plan—then we must implement pollution control standards on those diesel locomotives that travel through our cities. There should be no alternative. They should have exactly the same pollution controls as trucks. Otherwise, it is completely counterproductive to try to do what is planned with the intermodal project. So I call on our environmental ministers, state and federal, to get together and introduce the protection standards on diesel— (Time expired)

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