Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to start by commending the contributions of my colleagues, the members for Macquarie and Grayndler. They have set up many excellent points. I want to focus on two aspects in my contribution: the targets embodied in the Paris Agreement and the just transitions clauses in the Paris process, which are quite revolutionary.

On the targets, as previous speakers have noted, Australia's official target of 26 to 28 per cent is grossly inadequate. Independent experts, both in Australia and around the world, have made the point that if other developed nations lodged similar targets, we would be on a trajectory for a four degree warming of the globe, rather than the two degree or, ideally, 1½ degree trajectory that the Paris treaty aimed for. This would lead to very extreme climate change events. This would lead, as Ross Garnaut in the Garnaut review has pointed out, a loss of the Murray-Darling irrigation area and a decimation of Australian agriculture—something that the National Party should consider. It would also endanger the Great Barrier Reef, a tourism attraction that drives $9 billion of GDP and employs 60,000 Australians—something Queensland Nationals MPs should consider. Our targets are wholly inadequate. Yet again that Liberal-National coalition's actions on climate change expose us as being international pariahs when it comes to taking action on climate change. That is why I am so proud of the Labor Party's commitment to a 45 per cent reduction on 2000 levels by 2030. It is a target that is wholly within the bounds of the Climate Change Authority's independent recommendation of what Australia's target should be. This is a policy we took to the election and a policy I am very proud of.

Even when we look at the government's targets, the way they seek to achieve them is through smoke and mirrors. The government's official target for 2020 is minus five per cent on 2000 levels and they will only achieve this through methods that are, quite frankly, almost fraudulent. In 2008 the Department of Climate Change estimated that the cumulative abatement task for Australia to 2020 would be 1,335 megatons of carbon dioxide abated. That has since been reduced over time to 236 megatons so it has gone from 1,300 megatons to 236 megatons of cumulative abatement to hit the minus five per cent.

Why has this abatement task been reduced? It has been reduced because of four events in the projections. First off, a very significant drought led to lower emissions from our agricultural sector. Secondly, there has been lower electricity demand over the last few years as Australian consumers have actually responded to the price signals. We had this giant furphy from the then Prime Minister Abbott and his farcical climate change minister, the member for Flinders, who said that Australians would not respond to price signals in the electricity sector, that people would not reduce their electricity consumption if prices went up. The facts are in and the facts are that, like any other market, when there is a price signal, consumers respond to it. We have got lower electricity demand driving fewer emissions in the economy.

Thirdly, we have got a very significant reduction in manufacturing emissions because we have seen significant job losses in the industrial sector. Most particularly that is driven by the destruction of the automotive sector, a sector that was sustainable as long as we had Holden and Toyota still in this country. But the Abbott-Turnbull government drove those companies offshore which means lower emissions from our manufacturing sector. Fourthly, weaker than expected coal prices compared to original projections mean less coal production which in turn means less fugitive emissions. None of those four factors are within the government's control other than driving Holden and Toyota overseas.

With a reduction in the abatement task from 1,300 megatons to 236, if you add in carry over Kyoto protocol permits and add in the impact of Peter Beattie's visionary land clearing laws, it will mean that only 92 million tonnes of carbon need to be abated by the government to hit the minus five per cent, something they will claim to do through the Emissions Reduction Fund—the direct action dog we talk about. There are still real questions about this fund because this fund is paying farmers to not cut down trees they have already committed to not cutting down under state laws so there is a real question about additionality. Let me repeat that. This fund is paying taxpayers' money to farmers to commit to not cutting down trees they are already prevented from cutting down by state based laws. So I have real questions about whether this 92 million tonnes of abatement is legitimate.

We will probably hit the minus five per cent target but we will do it with an economy in 2020 that will actually have emissions three per cent above 2000 levels, not five per cent below. And that means our economic structure will be baked in at a higher level than it needs to be to then flow on for the 2030 target. On the 2030 target, the abatement task on the government's own figures is 2,200 megatons. The government claims they will only get 900 megatons from their policies but most of the reductions will come from detailed policies around the National Energy Productivity Plan and the Emissions Reduction Fund going forward.

Most farcical of all is that 200 million tonnes will come from 'unspecified technology improvements'. The government's own policy paper says: 'We are going to claim 200 million tonnes of abatement from 'unspecified technology improvements' that we have no idea about. We have no idea of what they are and we have no idea how we are going to achieve them, but we are just going to put that in our papers. We are going to claim this to the UNFCCC, that we are going to get 200 million tonnes of abatement from some magic pudding of technology abatement.' This does not bode well for hitting the 26 per cent target that the government has lodged. It is magic-pudding economics at its best.

But it still leaves a massive 1,300 megaton gap between what they claim they can achieve and what we really need to achieve to even hit the 26 per cent target. This will lead to either one of two things: us not hitting our targets, which will have massive international costs, or, secondly, a massive fiscal cost as we try to buy additional abatement—if we can—through direct action.

Let me summarise where we are on the government's own policy: (a) hitting minus five through policies that are not the government's; and (b) a wholly inadequate 2030 target of 26 per cent that we probably will not achieve, but which if we do by some miracle achieve through the government's policies it will be at a massive fiscal cost. So I have real questions about this government's commitment to reaching these wholly inadequate targets.

In the time remaining I want to touch on one of the most important parts of the Paris agreement, and that is the commitment to just transitions—a commitment which says that we recognise that modern economies will need to change. Modern economies will need to decarbonise if we are to hit these abatement targets. That will affect regions in different ways. In capital cities—in CBDs—there will not be much change; there will be a bit around energy efficiency. But for resource-intense regions, such as mine in the Hunter Valley, or in the Latrobe Valley or in parts of Queensland, this will be a real challenge to industry and communities. But we cannot put our heads in the sand; we cannot pretend that change is not coming. That does not avoid the change, that just means that change will hit us like a locomotive in the middle of the night.

We need to plan for the future. Hazelwood announced its closure last week, not because of any climate change policies but because the plant was nearly 50 years old and the company could not see a rosy future in a climate-constrained economy. They were not prepared to reinvest in one of the most polluting energy power plants in the world.

What we could have done was planned for that closure and put in place real economic diversification—put in place policies so that communities and workers were not the first targets of this process. Instead, this government stuck its head in the sand because it is dominated by climate change deniers and dominated by the rump of the National Party—mostly out of Queensland, other than the Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce. He is stuck in the 1900s, if not the 1800s! Because of this lack of commitment to our future and because they refuse to take action, this community in the Latrobe Valley cannot plan for the future. There is not sufficient investment in the economic diversification of that region. There is no commitment to pool redundancies, which would mean that workers at these plants would not have to lose their jobs if they do not want to.

That is why I am so proud of Labor's policy of pooled redundancies. That means that when an energy station has to close because of climate change we pool the redundancies amongst other power stations in that region so that instead of the 30-year-old fitter who has a mortgage and a young family and who wants to continue in the industry having to lose his job, instead it might be the 59-year-old worker down the road who is happy to take a package.

I am proud to commit to just transition. I am proud to be part of a political party committed to embracing the future, rather than those dinosaurs on the other side who just stick their heads in the sand and hope for the best, because that is betraying our future.

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