Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. How is the Albanese Labor government working to ensure Australia is on track to meet our emissions reduction targets? Why is policy certainty so critical in this area?

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her question. I know, because she and I have discussed it, how important it was for her, in one of her first acts in this parliament, to vote with the government and the crossbench to pass our Climate Change Act, which enshrines our targets in the law of the land. And now the task is to implement those targets and get on with the job. An important part of doing that is the government's safeguard reforms, which cover around one-third of our emissions: our 200 biggest emitters across Australia. Our reforms will reduce emissions by 2030 by 205 million tonnes, which is very important to achieving those targets. Importantly, the House and the Senate will get a chance to vote on an element of those reforms, which is below-the-baseline crediting, the incentive for businesses to reduce their emissions even further than they are required to by the law by the government, and this is very important. The honourable member asked me about the need for certainty, and the need for certainty is very clear in regard to this—certainty on behalf of all members of the House.

In relation to the one matter on which the House will get a chance to vote in relation to the legislation, we've always been very clear that we give credit where credit it's due. This was a policy of the previous government as well, to reduce these baselines. In fact not only was it a policy they announced in government; it was a policy they announced during the election campaign—not just the Liberal Party; the official LNP coalition policy said, 'We will legislate the safeguard crediting mechanism.' That was the policy released on 24 April 2022. That was their policy, and there have been even more developments, we heard not so long ago from our old friend the member for Hume—always a crowd favourite on this side of the House. We look forward to his interviews with eager anticipation. It might not be unanimous across the House, but on this side of the House we look forward to them. He went further. He not only said it was their policy; he claimed they'd already legislated it when they were in government. On 7 February this year he said, 'We had a crediting mechanism that was very effective, and it worked.' He claimed they'd already legislated it when in fact they had not. Those opposite have gone from saying they would legislate it to saying they had legislated it to now say they're against legislating it.

This is the policy consistency we've got from those opposite. We know they had 22 energy policies in nine years. They've had three policies on safeguards in three weeks. If you're going to be the alternative government of Australia, you have to have some consistency. You have to have a little bit of logic. Under this Leader of the Opposition they have none of the above.