Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I'm calling out the moral hypocrisy of the net zero zealots. I do this on behalf of regular Australians, who are the ones bearing the cost of Labor's reckless climate and energy policy. But tonight I'm not just calling out the Prime Minister; I'm calling out the hypocrisy of the UN climate chief, Mr Simon Stiell of Grenada. For regular Australians, that's the bloke who travels the world, presumably on planes powered by fossil fuels, on behalf of the United Nations, demanding radical climate targets from countries who are signatories to the Paris Agreement and who have signed up to net zero by 2050. 'What is net zero?' you might ask. Net zero commits Australia to holding the increase in global average temperatures to well below two degrees of warming and to pursuing efforts to keep warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius. If you have further questions, many people do as well.

To achieve that, Labor has committed to a radical decarbonisation of the Australian economy. That's why they have introduced a tax on our heavy industry—the safeguard mechanism. That's why they're transferring massive subsidies—your money—to inefficient foreign-backed renewable projects. That's the Capacity Investment Scheme. That's why there's a tax on utes and four-wheel drives—to make diesel and petrol powered vehicles more expensive and move you to electric vehicles. That's the new fuel efficiency standard. That's why a tax on farmers is also coming with the obligation for them to report indirect emissions in their supply and value chains. All of this will have huge economic consequences, and no-one is really being honest about the true cost of net zero. If you question this, people are quick to call you a climate denier, but everyone knows that the price of electricity keeps going up. Everyone knows the price of gas keeps going up. After all, you're the ones who get the bills.

Labor's objective is to have 82 per cent of the electricity grid powered by renewables by 2030. So what they're going to do is move from cheap, reliable Aussie coal-and-gas-fired power stations to Chinese made, industrial-scale wind and solar farms that destroy our fertile farming land and our environment and will be very expensive and unreliable. It's a pretty bleak picture. Today we heard from Ross Garnaut, a long-time adviser to Labor governments, that Labor is not on target for 2030. In fact, they're going to miss their goal or objective by a big margin. To recap, Labor is driving our country into the ground chasing radical and unrealistic climate targets. The Australian people are paying the costs in power prices, in dropping living standards, in jobs moving offshore and in our national prosperity. The net impact is that we are less secure and less sovereign as a nation.

Now, onto the stage in Sydney yesterday walked the UN climate boss, Mr Stiell, and he urged Australia to go big on targets, saying we must avoid 'bog-standard' targets or the world will overheat. Given that Australia produces only 1.1 per cent of the world's emissions—last year we only increased our emissions by 0.3 per cent—my question for Mr Stiell would be: 'Have you asked China, India and Indonesia the same question?' Last year, China accounted for 30.7 per cent of the world's emissions, and they grew by 1.2 per cent. India accounted for eight per cent of the world's emissions and grew by 3.7 per cent. Indonesia accounted for 2.2 per cent of the world's emissions and grew by 6.3 per cent.

Has Mr Stiell asked Australia to halt the export of coal and gas to India, China, Japan, South Korea and other Asia-Pacific countries? Last year we exported 25 per cent of the world's coal and 20 per cent of the world's gas. No, he hasn't. So he can't really be serious on climate change. We are literally fuelling the world's largest and fastest-growing emitters with our exports. That's a reality they won't admit. But Mr Stiell has the gall to come down here and lecture the Australian people on climate goals and demand that we further weaken our economy, de-industrialise our country and transfer wealth from some of the poorest Australians to the most wealthy Australians. Here's the real kicker: that money is used to subsidise foreign energy interests.

Australians can't stand hypocrisy, and hypocrisy lies at the heart of the net zero economy that this government is building. We see hypocrisy from this Labor government, and we've seen from the UN climate boss. Who is going to stand up for regular Australians? Who is going to stand up for our families, our seniors, our workers, our small businesses and heavy industry, who bear the cost of Labor's net zero policies? Mr Stiell should come to my electorate, look the 3,000 Alcoa workers in the eyes and explain to them the true cost of net zero.