Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

There is some considerable irony in having to argue against the Abbott government's repeal of one of the very few halfway-meaningful initiatives of the Howard government in the area of energy efficiency.

This is a program that has saved the organisations to which it applies—essentially large power users—more than $300 million dollars by encouraging the adoption of energy saving measures. In so doing, it has of course reduced the emissions that would otherwise have resulted. The Energy Efficiency Opportunities Program was an early step towards requiring large energy users to identify and assess energy-efficiency opportunities, and to report outcomes of those assessments to government and the wider public.

It was a step in the direction of a lower carbon economy, and its removal shows just how total and absolute the Abbott government's abandonment of responsible policy in this area will be. It is a scorched-earth approach to policy—and I use that term advisedly, because it is an approach that is blind, passive, and utterly sanguine in the face of the deadly serious heating and drying of our continent.

The Climate Council released a report yesterday that shows Australia has just experienced its hottest two-year period on record—again highlighting the need for our concerted participation in global action. Council member Professor Will Steffen, commented as follows:

We have just had an abnormally warm autumn off the back of another very hot 'angry summer'. … The past two-year period has delivered the hottest average temperature we have ever recorded in Australia. … Climate change is here. It's happening and Australians are already feeling its impact.

This sits in a kind of absurdly bizarro-world contrast to the results of the GLOBE Climate Legislation Study of 66 nations released in February that found Australia to be the only country taking retrograde legislative action in the area of climate policy.

After the incredibly important progress and structural reforms of the previous six years—reforms that were initially a matter of bipartisan policy, and only later became a bitter contest—Australia is now jettisoning everything we have won, everything we have achieved.

The Abbott government is turning away from an emissions trading scheme just as the hard work of getting us to this point is virtually complete. This government is undermining the creation of large-scale renewable energy production just at the point when Australia is becoming a serious player in one of the most critical and valuable 21st century industries. And it is all so unnecessary.

In the name of sticking to slogans, the coalition could still have taken the responsible path, presiding over the removal—or 'abolition', if it wanted to use that term—of the carbon tax as we made the transition to the emissions trading scheme that the Minister for the Environment himself has previously endorsed. In the name of cooperation the Labor opposition would have happily supported this outcome. Instead we are seeing everything that has been achieved torn away—including the policy gains in this area, however minor, that were established by the Howard government.

The repeal of the Energy Efficiencies Opportunities Program and governing legislation takes away a mechanism that addressed a market failure in relation to the availability and use of energy efficiency data. Putting awareness or ignorance or even wilful blindness of climate change aside, it is strange that the supposedly small 'L' liberals and free-marketeers opposite are so averse to ensuring that markets operate as they should. Indeed, this applies to the whole area of climate change policy—and it really must be emphasised time and again that the failure of the global and national economies to price carbon emissions, when such emissions have a clear and serious cost, is probably the greatest market failure of all time.

Of course many things change when you change the national government, but the black-and-white flip from Labor to the coalition in relation to climate change and low-carbon energy policy is perhaps the sharpest change of all. Labor's commitment to reducing carbon emissions; to participating in concerted global action on climate change; to increasing renewable energy and energy efficiency; and to transforming the Australian economy for our future social, environmental and economic needs is in the process of being reduced to nothing. It goes to the question of what kind of country Australia wants to be. Are we an innovative nation? A country that stands among the leading nations in exploring the way forward in the face of a growing global population and growing energy needs that are balanced against a finite store of hydrocarbons whose CO2 emissions are trapping heat at a rate that will bring widespread devastation to life as we know it.

Sadly, in a year when Australia holds unparalleled multilateral leadership positions on the UN Security Council and as Chair of the G20, the GLOBE Climate Legislation Study marks us out as a singular climate change reprobate. As the shadow minister for climate change has noted, China and the US signed a statement in February this year recognising the 'overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change' and the 'urgent need for action'. They believe this year's G20 meeting needs to address the issue of coordinated global action on climate change.

On the basis of our nation's record between 2007 and 2013, no country would be better placed to have the chairing role for such a critical discussion. Alas, since September last year we have gained a government and a Prime Minister whose real position is denial and whose policies are destructive of progress. So now on this issue that is critical for the entire planet, and in relation to a danger which we stand to be affected by more than many other nations, our place as chair of the G20 is a puzzling embarrassment and a liability. And this is at a time when, as my colleague the member for Charlton has just noted, the United States has announced significant and groundbreaking new measures to sharply reduce carbon emissions from existing new power plants, including a 30 per cent national target by 2030.

The Energy Efficiency Opportunities Program newsletter from late last year is heartening and sad at the same time. Heartening because of the progress it reports and sad because the very next communication from the EEO was to announce its own demise. The November newsletter included the following observations on the value of the guided pursuit of energy efficiency:

Savvy corporations can save three times as much power as their less energy-conscious competitors.

… … …

The most dramatic energy savings were reported by corporations that regularly collect and analyse their data, include energy policies in their operational guides, and have strong support from senior management.

The newsletter also noted:

The IEA [International Energy Agency] estimates that for 11 member countries, (including Australia), investment in energy efficiency since 2005 resulted in cumulative avoided energy consumption of 570 million tonnes of oil-equivalent over the five years to 2010.

This is the kind of achievement that we need to build upon and take further as part of a comprehensive suite of policies and programs designed to deliver a smarter and more sustainable energy profile, and to give Australia a low-carbon and sustainable climate future. On that basis the repeal of the EEO is yet another backward step by a government whose neglect when it comes to climate change will likely mark its greatest failure.

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