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

Member for Lindsay, Western Sydney is a classic heat island. There are not many trees in certain parts of it so they felt the full brunt of climate change in the hottest year on record. I see the member for Canning smiling over there, but it is a very serious issue. Nine out of 10 of the hottest years on record have been in the last decade.

The evidence is incontrovertible that global warming is occurring and it is man made. And that leads us to the conclusion that the world must take action, in concert, to dramatically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions if we are to combat and avoid the worst excesses of climate change. It is not just about losing great environmental items like the Great Barrier Reef, it is about the economic impact: 70,000 jobs and $6 billion of economic activity. It is the health impact. Heatwaves will lead to greater deaths. Unfortunately, Western Sydney is a significant example of that, and so is Melbourne. Heat waves lead to deaths of vulnerable people, and climate change leads to more extreme heatwaves. Therefore, climate change has a direct impact on the safety of Australian citizens, not to mention the bushfire risk and the risk of more extreme and regular cyclones.

Urgent action is needed. We need to be part of that. The Paris climate change treaty was groundbreaking in the level of commitment from around the globe and the level of concerted global action. Unfortunately, Australia's targets as lodged by this government were woeful. They are a joke. A 26 per cent reduction by 2020 is well below comparative efforts from other industrialised nations. Even then, if we look at the 2020 target for this government, which is minus 5 per cent, we will only hit that by accounting tricks based on the use of Kyoto carryover units that occurred due to the visionary policies of Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh around land clearing in Queensland. If we look at the 2030 target, the government's own woeful target of a 26 per cent reduction, the government's own figures demonstrate we will not achieve that target. There is a 1,315 megatonne gap, which, if the government attempts to meet it with their disgraceful and shambolic Emissions Reduction Fund, will cost at best $16 billion.

In contrast, Labor has a target that is scientifically responsible and that is, based on the best available climate change science, a responsible contribution from Australia. We have a mechanism to deliver it: a hard cap on our carbon pollution with an emissions trading scheme being used to deliver that—in the first instance, an emissions intensity scheme. It is an emissions intensity scheme that most of the community, certainly the environment and business sectors, have embraced. In fact, if I read the list of organisations supporting an emissions intensive scheme, they include the Business Council of Australia, BHP, AGL, EnergyAustralia, the National Farmers' Federation, Origin Energy, the Australian Energy Market Commission, CSIRO, Energy Networks Australia, the Chief Scientist, the Climate Change Authority, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Prime Minister's own former energy adviser Danny Price. State governments Labor and Liberal, like many other energy stakeholders, have all endorsed an emissions intensity scheme as put forward by the Labor Party. In fact the only people resisting it are the Turnbull government and One Nation. They are the bed partners of the current government, and that is a great tragedy because an EIS is essential if we are to deliver the investment certainty that will unlock the next generation of investment in the energy sector.

I now want to turn to the current energy crisis facing this nation. It is an energy crisis that this government has done nothing about in its four years in power. It is an energy crisis that they had denied until about three months ago and since then they have used it in a petty and cynical attempt to gain political advantage. They have done nothing. Now their solutions are either illusory or way off in the never-never, such as the Snowy Hydro's scheme, if it ever delivers. What we need now is urgent action. What we need now is an emissions intensity scheme that will not only provide investment certainty for a generators but deliver lower power prices than the business-as-usual model. The government's own modelling, commissioned by the Australian Energy Market Commission, has found an emissions intensity scheme will lead to energy prices that are $15 billion lower than with business as usual, which is effectively what the government is proposing. That is the way forward, that is what Labor is proposing and that is what we intend to do. On top of that, we will combat the sham and confected outrage of those opposite around the rise of renewables in this country. When we look at South Australia, the increase in renewables in South Australia has been driven by one policy: the bipartisan RET. The bipartisan RET has led to the construction of all but one of the wind farms in South Australia, so their opposition to wind farms is opposition to their own policy.

There are challenges when integrating renewables into the national grid, but these challenges can be overcome and, in fact, they are already being overcome by other countries around the world. Using simple tweaks, we can arrive at virtual inertia and virtual synchronicity, which are the two main challenges around integrating non-inertia renewables into the grid. Tweaks to the network rules can achieve that. In fact, EMO admitted that simple changes to the way wind farms operate, which have been adopted around the world, would have avoided a lot of the issues that people have drawn.

Unfortunately, for the government, if you look at the future of energy generation in this country, I cannot see coal-fired power being part of that unless it is in receipt of massive government subsidies. The fact is, if you look at the levelised cost of energy in this country, AGL is writing contracts for wind farms at $65 a megawatt hour. Bloomberg New Energy Finance has found that large-scale solar farms are being constructed at around $100 a megawatt hour. In contrast to that, a new coal-fired power station in this country will cost at least $160 a megawatt hour. Carbon capture and storage, if they are ever viable, will be at least triple that at $480 a megawatt hour.

Coal will not be part of the mix on current trajectories. In fact, clean coal—which is the latest fad from the government—is a lie. Clean coal is a lie. We saw a farcical position where the Prime Minister rabbited on about it in the National Press Club. We saw that joke of a Treasurer bring a lump of coal into question time, embarrassing and cheapening his position and the position of Treasurer of this country—and it is a lie. The cleanest coal-fired power stations in our region, the newest and latest, still produce 700 kilos of carbon dioxide for every megawatt hour. Let me repeat that: 700 kilos of carbon dioxide for one megawatt hour. Closed-cycle gas is around 370 kilos of CO2 for a megawatt hour, base load gas is almost half lower in carbon emissions and, obviously, renewables are completely carbon dioxide free. Clean coal is a lie; it is not the future for this nation. In fact, it is doing a great disservice to the coal communities of this country to dangle the prospect of future coal-fired generation in this country.

I have often said that there is nothing more disrespectful and low than to lie to workers. That is what the government has been doing. It is been going to coal communities around this country, including mine and yours, Madam Deputy Speaker Wicks, and saying: 'Nothing has to change. You can keep performing your job. Your industry can keep behaving as it has done for the last 40 years, and nothing has to change.' That is a lie. It is dishonest. It is disrespecting those workers and those communities that depend upon those jobs. Instead, we must have a plan for a just transition, and that is what Labor is committed to.

We recognise that, even without carbon pricing, the four Hunter power stations have use-by dates. The Hunter produces one-third of the coal-fired power generation in this country, and all four of them have dates for closure set by their owners: Liddell's owner has said 2022; Vales Point—most people have said 2028; Origin have said 2034 for Eraring, the biggest power station in the country; and AGL have said 2035 for Bayswater. All four power stations are going to close down in the next 20 years, regardless of any other government policy.

What they need is a plan. Those workers in the communities that depend upon those jobs need a plan for their future, and that is what Labor is committed to. We have a plan for a just transition that takes lessons from around the world—that looks at what Germany, for example, did in rationalising their coal mining industry, where you can do this properly and do not have to have forced redundancies.

I support and applaud the Victorian government's efforts to do that for the Hazelwood power closure. They have managed to redeploy 150 workers from the 550 affected by that closure to other power stations in that region. It is great news for that community. That means 150 families do not have to uproot their lives because of something outside their control. It is really good that Labor at the state and federal level is embracing that. We need to contrast that with the coalition's inaction on structural adjustment.

The coalition have an appalling record on structural adjustment in this country, and that is because they do not care about workers. They pay lip service to caring about workers. We had the Deputy Prime Minister rabbiting on in question time about support for labourers and everyone else but it is purely hot air. They do not care. You only have to look at their actions. Look at what happened last year when the Northern power station in South Australia closed down. When those workers lost their jobs there was virtually no assistance from the government other than a CV-writing course.

You only have to look at our region to understand what happens when large industrial establishments close down under the watch of the Liberal government. When the BHP plant closed down in the late nineties, guess what was the biggest piece of structural adjustment funding the Liberal government provided? Funding for renovation of the Newcastle yacht club. Let me repeat that: we had thousands of steelworkers put out of work, and what did the John Howard Liberal government invest in? A renovation for the yacht club. Madam Deputy Speaker Claydon, you have met plenty of steelworkers in our home town, and I do not think many of them are keen yachties. They certainly cannot afford to run a maxi out of Newcastle yacht club. But that is the vision of structural adjustment from the conservatives.

Urgent action on climate change is needed. We cannot put our heads in the sand. We owe it to future generations not just to ensure they have a better environment than we have but to ensure they have an economy that is able to compete in the 21st century, compete in the era of the clean industrial revolution and low-carbon jobs. You can only do that by having an emissions intensity scheme, by having an emissions trading scheme, by having a hard cap on pollution and by promoting jobs of the future in clean technology industries. But this government are committed to going down the other path, to putting their heads in the sand and saying nothing has to change, to bringing lumps of coal into question time, and to betraying not just future generations but the current generation. One-third of jobs in renewables have disappeared under this government's watch.

When I look at my kids in the future, I want to be able to say to them that this parliament acted in their interests; that this parliament acted to ensure they had a better environment and an economy, with cleantech, low-carbon jobs, that would be able to compete in the 21st century. Unfortunately, the appropriations bill that we are debating right now is yet another symbol of this government not taking action on climate change and not trying to solve the energy crisis we are currently facing. All they care about is pandering to the conservative reactionaries in the Liberal party room, pandering to columnists like Andrew Bolt—pandering to people so out of touch with science and economics—and betraying this country.

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