Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts. Will the minister outline the importance of supporting renewable energy as part of a comprehensive approach to tackling dangerous climate change?

Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Brisbane for his question. Can I point out again to the House that the Rudd government is strongly committed to supporting renewable energy technologies, knowing that they will deliver clean energy jobs in the regions of Australia from now and into the future. This week we saw more evidence of the urgent need to address dangerous climate change and encourage investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency with the release of a very important report. This report, Global climate change impacts in the United States, was released by the White House and it represents a consensus of some 13 agencies on the potential impacts of climate change in the US. I saw Dr John Holdren, who is the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, speaking to this report on television recently. It makes compelling reading and listening. It observes that climate changes are already under way in the US and that thresholds for our climate and our ecosystems will be crossed. On the United States marine environment the report says:

Coral reefs sustain fisheries and tourism, have biodiversity value, scientific and educational value, and form natural protection against wave erosion.

The report goes on to say:

The loss of income by 2015 from degraded reefs is conservatively estimated at several hundred million dollars annually.

As the Prime Minister has just pointed out to the House, this is a risk the Australian government understands very well, with the Great Barrier Reef, our own coral reef system, providing over $4.9 billion in tourism revenues and employment for around 60,000 people. The US report says:

… choices made about emissions in the next few decades will have far-reaching consequences for climate change impacts.

That is something that the Rudd government take very seriously, and so we are making positive choices: a commitment to a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a commitment to an expanded renewable energy target and solar credits which will provide up to $7,750 for a 1.5 kilowatt system for solar panels in some sections of Australia—in others not quite so much.

We have chosen the policy position which will grow clean energy jobs—some 26,000 jobs recently identified by the Climate Institute, based on projects that are planned and committed. That is 26,000 clean energy jobs. But what do we see from the opposition today? We see the serial behaviour of delay—a decision to delay the passage of the renewable energy target, no commitment to renewable energy or to Australia’s solar industry. I think it is extraordinary that the coalition cannot understand how important this is for Australian industry and for Australians. We have the potential to increase our renewable energy target some four times—solar energy, wind energy, wave energy—renewable energy of the future—and the coalition just simply will not go anywhere near supporting it.

Perhaps we should not be so surprised about this, because they refused to increase the renewable energy target when they were in government and they refused to take up the recommendations of their own review. I was wondering why this was the case and, of course, I came to the member for Flinders. The member for Flinders said in parliament in November 2005 that the renewable energy target:

…was always intended as a start-up scheme to get renewable energy underway in Australia.

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We set a target, we achieved it and now it is time for that industry to be able to produce and proceed on its own merits.

So four years ago the coalition rolled out the ‘mission accomplished banner’ on renewable energy. They said it was all over. They said they did not want to increase the renewable energy target and they were prepared to leave Australia’s fledging renewable energy industry on its own. Today, they have dusted the ‘mission accomplished’ banner. They have taken it out of the attic. They have pushed past the pink batts that the government is putting in the roofs of Australians to help them reduce their energy costs and their greenhouse gas emissions. The coalition have just confirmed again, with this serial behaviour, that they are not serious about climate change. It is all about delay. It is all about confusion. It is the same old coalition—walking away from renewable energy, walking away from clean energy jobs that thousands of Australians are ready to embrace and walking away from the investment possibilities that this industry can bring forward to give some economic sustainability to our economy. It is time the Leader of the Opposition showed some leadership on this issue.