Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

We now need to address this question: is Australia a first mover? On the various reforms that I have described, Australia was a first mover and has benefited greatly from being so. The then Prime Minister, John Howard, embraced the notion of Australia being a first mover in this area of reducing carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Indeed, he described the benefits of Australia being a first mover. Coalition speakers in this debate will say that Australia is a first mover; in fact, that is untrue. Australia is not a first mover. Around 89 countries, accounting for more than 80 per cent of global emissions and more than 90 per cent of the global economy, have pledged to reduce or limit their carbon pollution by 2020, and around 32 countries and a number of US states already have emissions trading schemes in place. Those countries include New Zealand, led by a conservative Prime Minister, and the United Kingdom, also led by a conservative Prime Minister. So much for the desire to reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere being some extreme left conspiracy. You would hardly describe former Prime Minister Mr Howard, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Mr Cameron, or the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Mr Keys, as extreme leftists. They are conservatives and they supported introducing a scheme to reduce carbon emissions—indeed, an emissions trading scheme.

China has been identified as a country that purportedly is doing nothing to reduce emissions; in fact, it is introducing an emissions trading scheme in some of its larger cities, including Beijing and Shanghai and is reported to be preparing a nationwide emissions trading scheme for 2015. It has also the world's largest renewable energy generation capacity.

The coalition contributors to this debate and in question time have asked questions of this government along the lines that reports have claimed that for every green job created three traditional jobs have been lost and would this be the case in terms of the emissions trading scheme that the government is determined to implement. What that actually betrays to the Australian people through the parliament is a belief that renewable energy should not be supported, that we should not be creating jobs through wind energy, solar energy, wave energy or geothermal energy, that we should remain totally committed to coal and LNG as energy sources well into the future and that any embrace of renewable energy will cost three jobs for every job created.

There is an important role for LNG and coal in a low-emissions future. LNG is regarded as the transition fuel to a lower emissions future, to a clean energy future, and we have loads of it. Businesses are voting with their wallets by investing in LNG in an environment where they know that a price will be put on carbon. So too with coal production; we hear that the destruction of the coal industry is nigh. Well, why is it that one of the first commercial decisions made after the announcement of the emissions trading scheme was that Peabody, a major coal producer—I think the largest in the world—made a takeover bid for Macarthur Coal amounting to $4.5 billion?

Why is there a massive pipeline of coal production and investment coming through? It is because there is a future for LNG and coal in a low emissions economy. But, of course, the emissions intensity of coal will have to be reduced.

There is a debate about the two plans. He has said that the science of climate change is 'absolute crap' and declared that carbon dioxide is weightless and odourless and tasteless and therefore completely harmless, but if we were to believe just for a moment that Mr Abbott—

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