House debates

Wednesday, 3 June 2009

Questions without Notice

Climate Change

3:19 pm

Photo of John MurphyJohn Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, will you outline the need for action on climate change and why business certainty is important?

Photo of Kevin RuddKevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Lowe for his question. The latest national greenhouse accounts released on Monday demonstrate that we need to turn Australia’s emissions around. Over the four quarters to the December quarter of 2008, Australia’s national inventory was estimated at 553 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. That is an increase of 1.1 per cent compared with the corresponding period for the previous year. Emissions from the energy sector have increased by 42 per cent from 1990 to 2007 and by another 1.5 per cent in 2008. To start to reverse this growth into the future, we need to drive investments in renewable energy and clean technology. That is what we are seeking to do through the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

We have read today that even the Australian coal industry is telling the coalition that they must work with the government. Mr Ralph Hillman, Executive Director of the Australian Coal Association said today that in Australia we need a scheme that can be passed with bipartisan agreement, urging the coalition back to the negotiation table. He said, ‘The Opposition is ultimately going to have to be at the negotiating table on this.’ We wait for the opposition to demonstrate a positive approach to negotiations. We have also read today analysis from Malcolm Turnbull’s own investment bank, Goldman Sachs JBWere.

Photo of Malcolm TurnbullMalcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | | Hansard source

Not very kind; if only it were true.

Photo of Kevin RuddKevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | | Hansard source

They seem to be doing okay, mate. The Leader of the Opposition’s former bank, Goldman Sachs JBWere, have calculated the earnings impact of the revised CPRS on the S&P ASX 100 and shown that, far from putting companies in the financial trouble that the coalition would have you believe, the CPRS would have a negligible financial impact on Australian companies in the early years.

The Chairman of the Investor Group on Climate Change, which represents investors with about $550 billion under management—including AMP Capital, Colonial First State, Goldman Sachs JBWeir and Merrill Lynch—said the following:

“Investors see no material earnings risks for emissions-intensive, trade-exposed companies from the early years of a … (CPRS),”

He went on to say:

The Government’s proposed CPRS has sufficient compensation to ensure that company profits and existing investors will not be impacted over the short to medium term,”

So said Mr Frank Pegan of the Investor Group on Climate Change, and that is reported today on the front page of the Australian Financial Review.

Photo of Greg HuntGreg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Water) Share this | | Hansard source

Ask Martin Ferguson who he met with this morning.

Photo of Kevin RuddKevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | | Hansard source

The member for Flinders continues to interject. I would say the member for Flinders actually needs, together with the Leader of the Opposition, to summon some political courage to finally take on the climate change sceptics in the Liberal Party—led by the member for O’Connor up the back there—but also, most acutely, to take on the climate change sceptics in the National Party, the home of all climate change deniers in the Australian parliament.

The Sydney Morning Herald tell us today what sort of a rabble we have in the opposition on this question at the moment. The report says that the right wing of the party are bristling at the Leader of the Opposition’s new-found commitment to an emissions trading scheme on Sunday. The quote I will read to you is:

Conservatives and Nationals who oppose a trading scheme thought that when the Coalition voted last week to delay a scheme, it was implicit the Opposition would never support one.

That is what the Sydney Morning Herald says today. It also reports an outrage on the part of the sceptics in the party room, and our old friend the member for O’Connor, and Senator Boswell. Again, the SMH revealed that the member for O’Connor, who is smiling at the gallery—they must have got this one right, Wilson—complained that they had been locked into a new position, and Senator Boswell complained that just one week before ‘he had never consented’ to supporting a trading scheme of any description. So, obviously, there is an outbreak of party unity on their part on the question of the future of the CPRS.

But how do we know these reports out of the party room to be true? Again, we turn to reports, this time by Annabel Crabb and Tony Wright, who have alerted us to the fact that the coalition has had to ban mobile phones from its joint party room meetings. There’s a measure for you! As the member for Farrer reportedly said in the party room yesterday:

“In the interests of not having it leaked, I am now not going to say what I was going to say,”

What was the member for Farrer going to say? I would be rather taken by that. But this is hardly a well-kept secret. Of course, we have had Senator Joyce—he was back at his best yesterday at the doors—contradicting the Leader of the Opposition comprehensively on the emissions trading scheme debate. Just three days earlier, on 2 June, he said the ETS ‘is an absolutely ridiculous, stupid scheme’. This is the ETS that the Leader of the Opposition says that we must have.

The Leader of the Opposition said on one of the weekend programs, I think it was Insiders, that he supports an emissions trading scheme. Have I got that right?

Government Members:

Yes.

Photo of Kevin RuddKevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | | Hansard source

Senator Joyce, the leader of his coalition bosom buddies over there in the Senate, has said that the ETS is an absolutely ridiculous, stupid scheme. How do these two positions reconcile? We even have Liberals who have reverted to being public apologists for the flat-earth crew. The member for Mayo, who staffed the former Prime Minister through his years of inaction on climate change, said yesterday, ‘I think that Wilson Tuckey and Barnaby Joyce are entitled to their view.’ We have a bit of collegiate support there from the member for Mayo within the Liberal Party, out there supporting Wilson up the back and Barnaby over in the Senate to make sure that the climate change sceptics’ voice is kept out there alive and well.

So, while the Leader of the Opposition might be out there spruiking in support of a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme on the one hand, we have the Liberals split right down the middle, and we have the Nationals split completely from the Liberals and the future of a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. It is impossible, therefore, to know whether they are Arthur or Martha on the question of the future of an emissions trading scheme.

Why is this relevant? It is relevant to whether or not the CPRS will actually obtain passage in the Senate. That is why it is important. There are national interest questions here. Business certainty is necessary. The future of our regulatory environment as it affects the emissions-intensive trade-exposed sector of the economy and other sectors of the constitution is of vital relevance for future business certainty. Those opposite cannot even organise a common position within their party, and cannot organise a common position across their parties, and the business community and the future of the renewable energy sector in this country more broadly is being held to ransom because those opposite cannot forge a common position among themselves.

So again I would say to the Leader of the Opposition on climate change: will the real Malcolm Turnbull please stand up? Is he a climate change sceptic or is he going to support action on climate change—or is he, like the member for Flinders, simply going to disappear into the corner in the hope that the nation at large does not notice? The national interest actually demands some action on the part of the Leader of the Opposition. Take some leadership. Take on the sceptics in your own party. Actually forge a position on behalf of the coalition. Show some leadership on climate change. Instead, what we have is them hauling up the white flag in the face of the climate change sceptics. We need business certainty for Australia’s future.