Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much. I say to those opposite: just go back and look at what you were doing then, because, in all the documentation that was produced on nuclear power, nuclear power was only seen as economically viable if the tax on coal fired power stations was set at $40 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent—four times what we are proposing now. And you think we are job destroyers and you guys are not. But the nuclear power debate is for another day—and it is interesting to note that it may be a debate sooner rather than later, because Mr Switkowski is going on his merry way at the moment.

In this package of bills, the government proposes a number of things to assist industry and to support jobs, including permits for emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries, the Electricity Sector Adjustment Scheme and the Climate Change Action Fund. Treasury, the experts, tell us that the longer we wait before we do this the more it is going to cost. That is what Treasury say; that is what Professor Stern says; that is what Professor Garnaut says; but members opposite say, ‘Let’s wait.’

Carbon capture and storage is possible—it is happening now. Carbon reuse is possible. We have been doing that with sulphur for years. Members opposite would remember the acid rainfall in North America and Europe. It does not happen anymore because we have been able to remove the sulphur emissions from the smokestacks and still create saleable products. My colleague the member for Deakin, Mike Symon, told me that on a recent trip to China he visited a plant that is removing the carbon dioxide from the emissions and using that carbon in the manufacture of soft drinks—though I hope there are one or two processes in between! It is happening now in China. It has happened before. The world signed up to the Montreal agreement in relation to ozone-depleting gases and we now no longer have those gases entering the atmosphere.

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