Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

May I congratulate the member for Reid on his most significant contribution in this House since the beef stroganoff incident. Let me begin by making this point. As desperately as the government seeks to make this an issue about either the science or the targets, there is not a dispute between the parties over the science or the targets in this House. There is a strong dispute as to what is the best mechanism to deal with this issue. The great question facing this House is not one of science, is not one of targets—both parties have official agreement on that. It is simply about whether or not we use an enormous impact on electricity pricing and the cost of living on mums and dads and pensioners and seniors as the mechanism to deal with the crisis, as the government would put it, or whether or not we use direct action in the form of abatement purchasing as a means of taking immediate steps. Our approach would begin on 1 July 2011. Our approach would have $300 million in the first year, $500 million in the second, $750 million in the third and $1 billion in the fourth, all identified, allocated, with clear, express dates and mechanisms. At that stage, for all of the talk from the government, there is no date for commencement, there is no policy to implement, there is no choice even between the carbon tax which the Prime Minister ruled out on 20 August or the emissions trading scheme which the Prime Minister had her predecessor drop in late April of this year. And there is no express policy other than an undetermined desire to drive up electricity prices. That is the reality of what this debate is and should be about.

Let me speak to the essence of this motion for a moment. It is inelegantly structured. Anybody could look at this motion and determine that they could support it on the basis that they believe that changes in the climate were 100 per cent caused by humans, although, as the member for Fraser repeatedly set out through qualifications in his statement, he was not saying 100 per cent; or 0.1 per cent caused by humans even if one were not to agree with, as I do, the theory of greenhouse gases having an impact on climate. If one were to agree that urban heat islands have an impact, however minuscule, on global temperature, one could happily support this motion even if one did not agree with the notion that there is a greenhouse gas effect. So this motion has a breadth of potential meaning. On our side our position as a party is very clear. We support the concept of a need to take action to reduce our emissions, and that is why we share the same targets as the government.

But I would also put in an important point here, and that is that none of us in this place should ever use our own positions as a means for clamping down on free and open debate in our society. People such as David Suzuki take a contrary view on this debate. I happen to disagree with him but I recognise that he is a far better credentialled scientist than I am. There are at least four million Australians who take a different view, and they should not be demonised, attacked or pilloried. They should have a right to make their argument free of attack or demonisation. I think that that is fundamental to what we are here for. Let us debate that element on the merits. Let us not denounce, as I am sure the member for Reid would not want to do, people who come to a good-faith conclusion on the basis of their own research. Our position is not to argue on the science, not to argue on the targets, but to put forward a very different mechanism.

This debate in reality is about two different approaches. Firstly it is about the electricity tax approach of the government. Let us be absolutely clear that the scope, nature, purpose and intent of what the government is putting forward involve a massive hike in electricity prices for mums and dads. The reason they have used this form of debate on this day is to attempt to walk away from the issue of electricity pricing. Let me run through the evidence. First, let us start with the Garnaut report, which rightly and properly stresses that the very purpose of a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme is to pass through the costs of additional carbon pricing on electricity to consumers. Professor Garnaut at page 387 says:

… a major part, if not all of the costs faced by electricity generators will be passed down the chain from electricity generators, through distributors and retailers and finally to households [through] higher prices for electricity.

But that theory can also be quantified in terms of the costs, because in this House at this dispatch box on 3 February the then Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, citing Treasury modelling, said that in 2011-12 electricity prices would go up by seven per cent and that in 2012-13 they would go up by 12 per cent. That is a 19 per cent increase in the first two years of the government scheme on electricity pricing over and above every other impact.

The New South Wales Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal went further in March of this year with its determination on electricity price rise approvals. What it said was that there would be over three years an additional 25 per cent price increase approved not just for mums and dads and pensioners but also for small business owners. This was additional. So there can be no doubt and no debate and no dispute that the mechanism which the government is ultimately proposing is an electricity price hike for mums and dads and pensioners. If they believe in that mechanism, they must argue for it. They cannot pretend that the very mechanism which was designed, intended, constructed, developed to increase electricity prices will not increase electricity prices. To do other than that is a sheer fabrication, lie and distortion. So the mechanism they have chosen, but for which they have not set a structure or a date, will increase electricity prices by 25 per cent over the first three years over and above all other elements.

I will go to a fourth piece of evidence on this, and that is the Port Jackson Partners report which was prepared last year for the Business Council of Australia. On page 122 it sets out a structure and a chart that shows the contributing elements to price rises in electricity over coming years. It shows that, yes, there would be non-ETS components: the cost of networks and the cost of increases in fuel. But it says that the additional element, on top of networks and fuel, that the emissions trading scheme proposed by the government would contribute would be a 60 per cent increase in wholesale prices and that would translate to a 24 per cent additional impact on consumer prices over three years. The evidence is clear, strong and unequivocal that the government’s approach would have a 24 to 25 per cent impact on consumer prices over and above all other elements within the first three years. Over an eight-year period we are looking at a doubling effect on consumer electricity prices for mums and dads, for pensioners, for seniors, for small business owners and for farmers as a direct consequence of the mechanism that the government has chosen.

Again, as was said by the member for Wentworth in relation to the NBN at this box last week, the government is confusing the ends and the means. By arguing for an end they say that only their means can be validated. That is false. There is a far different approach. Our approach is very simple: we believe that instead of chemotherapy there should be laser surgery. We want to put in place an abatement purchasing mechanism. It is a mechanism that has as its genesis the not perfect, but highly successful, New South Wales Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme. It is a scheme that seeks out the lowest cost abatement and is currently producing abatement at approximately $7.15 a tonne. It does that by finding abatement rather than by raising the price of every other element in our society. That is the scheme that we propose. That is the scheme that can directly reduce emissions and that is why there is a real debate in this country. It is not the issue that the government wants today. That is not at issue between the two parties. It is an issue between massively higher electricity prices and direct abatement.

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