Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Amendment Bill 2008 follows legislation previously introduced by the Howard government. It is legislation that is connected with the government’s promise that it would introduce, if elected, an emissions trading scheme, of which this is a precursor. The opposition therefore does not oppose this legislation. However, it gives me the opportunity to raise the many matters of concern that I have with the progression of an emissions trading scheme as a solution to the problems being experienced throughout the globe in climate variation and, of course, the issue of energy security for future generations of Australians. I have grave concerns about the efficacy of an ETS to deliver those outcomes. Governments of Australia over a long period of history have set the energy policy of Australia. The government now turns upon the community and tells them it is their personal responsibility to fix the problem and/or to pay very significant premiums—taxes, if you like—to continue in the lifestyle to which they have been used. I think this is a very important issue. I am not disputing that something has to be done.

During this speech I will propose what governments today could do without ripping the heart out of our industry or imposing unnecessary cost on the people the parliament has just discussed—age pensioners and others. They have enough financial problems and certainly do not need to experience electricity increases of between $250 and $300 per household, as was predicted by the Australian Conservation Foundation in a publication it prepared in conjunction with ACOSS and Choice. The Conservation Foundation put the argument that that would be too big a burden to bear and that government should compensate those people. I am sympathetic to those people but I must ask: if you are in the habit of using carbon based energy to heat or light your home, you have an increase in your electricity account of $300 and a kindly government says, ‘Here is the $300 back,’ what incentive is there for you to reduce electricity consumption—that is, to reduce the amount of coal being burned in a nearby power station for that purpose? Of course, this matter goes much further than that.

For the people who will read this speech in Hansard, let me point out what an emissions trading scheme is. Basically, it is a process by which, as I said earlier, a government handballs to the general population a responsibility that should be its own. It says: ‘Progressive governments have messed up; they have burnt the wrong sorts of things, taken the wrong energy options—something we have only just discovered—and you must pay.’ If you are a businessman in the export industry and your purchaser overseas is not prepared to pay, you are obliged to either close your business or move it overseas. We have an example of that in the present environment. Fisher & Paykel in Queensland has just moved overseas and 300 workers have been retrenched. Boeing, with 500 workers, has just announced its closure. As an international company it will obviously be passing that employment to people in other parts of the world. Then we have Ford, which is reducing its workforce but presently staying in business. Mitsubishi closed down. It is still selling plenty of cars in Australia, just not making them here anymore. Why the sudden exodus? In the case of Boeing I can announce one reason: it knows what is coming.

The Business Council of Australia was a great proponent of the certain wonders of emissions trading and the profits that were going to accrue to its members in the finance industry. I happened to note on radio one morning a New South Wales state minister salivating over the profits that Sydney would accrue from conducting carbon trades. If profits are made, somebody loses; somebody pays. Here we have this system with all these costs, and suddenly the Business Council, having heavied government before the election for this miraculous means of reducing carbon emissions, is saying the carbon plan is a ‘company killer’, according to the Australian of 22 August.

What are the government doing? They are saying: ‘We’ve got the answer for you. Come and see us and we will either exempt you or compensate you. Don’t worry too much; we are only going to start selling you carbon credit certificates.’ I noted in other media coverage that the tax office is already factoring $11 billion of revenue for the government into its calculations for future tax policy. That is one certainty of an ETS: the government is going to take a very large chunk of money out of the community.

It has also been reported that the emissions trading scheme could be a flop. Unfortunately, the problem for Australia is that it does not matter how successful it is in reducing emissions in this country. I believe we should make a realistic attempt, but the fact is that if we were to evacuate Australia and close everything down then that effort would not change the climate of this continent for the next 50 years, because we are 1.4 per cent of the global emissions footprint. Ministers have come to my electorate and told the farmers, ‘If you don’t take the pain and suffering it is going to be worse.’ The fact is that, whatever the level of pain and suffering, the climate will be whatever it is going to be unless man-made CO2 emissions are the one and only determinant of current global weather conditions and unless the major polluters are also party to these arrangements.

Of course, in their anxiety to get into the business of carbon trading, the financial industry has employed a true expert. The lady’s name is Liz Bossley. She has had 30 years in this business. She is a noted author and is highly respected. Some pretty interesting comments of hers were reported again on 4 August in the Australian. Ms Bossley said:

… the indicative carbon price of $20 a tonne—the so-called “soft start” to the scheme—would not create incentives for new clean technology.

Yet that is what is proposed. In other words, in her view, people will pay the tax but will not clean up their act. She goes on to say:

The low-carbon technology that we really need to get going will not be incentivised at $20 a tonne.

Then, of course, as I have already mentioned, there is the problem of getting the rest of the world to participate and save this continent. What does she say about that?

We will see the Kyoto talks collapse unless we start thinking out of the box, because to bring the US in, to bring China in, to bring India in, and try to get them all capped is just not going to happen. The longer we think that it might happen the more time we’re going to waste in trying to find alternative solutions.

So here we are. The government have gone to the people and said: ‘We have a miracle. We’re going to fix it. It’s called an emissions trading scheme—an ETS.’ They are progressing it with green papers and white papers. The business community are getting increasingly frantic. I understand that Woodside in the north-west of WA is not even renewing contracts with its subcontractors—their service and shipping contractors and things of that nature—at the moment. I do not know why, but until they know more their boards are not going to meet and carry on with the massive investments that Australia needs to maintain the prosperity we enjoy today.

What is the purpose of tracking and delivering the reduced carbon emissions that come from a trading scheme? We know one thing for certain: it is going to put up the cost of living and the cost of doing business. We cannot legislate to tell people that they have to maintain their business in Australia or open a business in Australia. It is a so-called market solution, and the market gives them the right to close down or leave town. I think there are two reasons why Boeing walked away from Australia. One of those is probably the 12-month strike. A small percentage of their workforce participated—with picketing and that—but Boeing resisted. Of course, they know that resistance will be futile once this government introduces its new labour laws—and that is the wonder of it. Fairness, we used to say, is in having a job; fairness now is having a job in a trade union.

But that is outside the realm of my problem today. My problem is that you cannot fix carbon emissions with a trading scheme that most of the world appears not to be interested in. You cannot fix it if people just pack up and leave. You cannot fix it if companies which have a captive market, such as with electricity, just put up the prices. If you go down the road of exemptions and compensation, you must clearly defeat the purpose, which is, of course, to increase the cost of carbon based products and consequently encourage people to reduce their use of them. On those two issues, Ms Bossley tells us it ain’t going to happen unless you make it really tough and very painful.

So, having told you why I think an ETS will not work, let me return to the solution to the problem. I have said that government created this problem over the last 100 years. Why can’t government—from either side of this place—fix it, not by handballing the problem to the general community and business but by investing some of those magnificent surpluses that we keep hearing about into new infrastructure that will connect one of the world’s greatest perpetual, renewable energy resources to our general network? Anybody who wants to consult my website, www.wilsontuckey.com.au, and go to ‘Securing Australia’s energy future’ will find my proposal there—and costed.

We can save the coal industry by partnering it with the tidal industry. They are extremely compatible because tidal movements are entirely predictable. Arguably, we can interconnect these two industries using the same technology that is crossing Bass Strait and delivering coal-fired power into Tasmania during the day and hydro back into the mainland during the night on the same set of HVDC bipolar wires. We can interconnect the tidal energies of the Kimberley—CSIRO informed me years ago that it has six times the capacity of Australia’s presently installed electrical generating capacity—and we can produce in my $10 billion package 10 per cent of that figure from a totally renewable resource. Because of its predictability, the manager of a major coal-fired station could take his fishing box with him to work and calculate when his station has to make a major contribution. I might add that this government wants to lock up the wonderful resources of the Kimberley in a heritage order and deny Australians an energy resource currently equivalent to all our energy consumption. I have this proposal on the best advice; this is not some made-up scheme. I have talked to ABB Australia—Asea Brown Boveri—which is one of the biggest electrical companies in the world, and I have talked to people with new tidal generating technology that has been approved by the David Suzuki Foundation.

It is a magnificent and very simple concept. Of course, it is difficult to describe it here in this House, but it was proposed for a major project of 2.8 gigawatts. That is a huge amount of electricity. Let me say, that amount proposed was estimated by the World Energy Council. The Kimberley of Western Australia is a continuous area of fjords and bays. The World Energy Council, quite independently, selected Walcott Inlet and Secure Bay and identified them as having the capacity to produce what is, in fact, 120 per cent of the presently installed capacity of Western Australia.

Furthermore, when you bring that power down the line to Perth and then across to intersect with the eastern states’ grid at Roxby Downs or Port Augusta, with minor deviation you can certainly pass through Mount Newman, which creates the opportunity to electrify the entire region that is producing such wonderful export revenue. Imagine converting all the railways in that area to electrification founded primarily on renewable energy. Of course, with 12 per cent of the world owning a motor car today, which will increase to 16 per cent with an additional two billion population by 2020, the price of fuel, whether available or not, will continue to escalate. We need that renewable power to manufacture hydrogen so that people can start and run those cars.

You can run your existing car on hydrogen. CSIRO have already developed a little hydrogen generator. It is the size of a microwave oven. You can put it in your garage and produce enough hydrogen to fuel your new vehicle to travel 1,000 kilometres a week. That is not Fuelwatch; that is a proposition to take people to the next generation and guarantee that future Australians will not be locked into the Middle East or anywhere else for their fuel and energy supplies. Why take a dud trading scheme when you can—(Time expired)

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