Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

This is an incredibly important question because we do know that abating greenhouse gases and trying to mitigate greenhouse gas increases is the only way that the world, working cooperatively and effectively together, can stop dangerous climate change and dangerous rises in sea level and atmospheric temperatures. So coming up with effective policies to achieve just that has been a strong focus of the government.

Yes, some people do advocate trading schemes. Recently, the Premier of New South Wales put out a plan for a possible emissions-trading scheme. We found on that day that, because of the ineffectiveness of it from an environmental point of view and because of the fact that it would impose significant costs on industry in states like WA and Queensland, by lunchtime the Western Australian Labor government had withdrawn and by dinnertime the Queensland Labor government had withdrawn from the trading scheme that the senator is referring to.

That sort of national trading scheme in Australia would have perverse environmental consequences. A lot of people focus on the cost on jobs, as Mr Beattie and Mr Carpenter have done, because you are effectively bringing in a new tax which will drive up the cost of energy in Australia at a time when Australians are saying: ‘We don’t want the cost of energy to go up. We’re sick of paying higher fuel prices. We don’t want higher energy prices.’ At a time when the Australian people are saying that, Australia’s internationally competitive businesses are saying that and we are trying to make energy more efficient, you have the Labor Party federally saying: ‘Let’s put a carbon tax on. Let’s put a tax on energy. Let’s put a tax on jobs.’

As I said, the Labor Premier of Queensland, who cares about jobs in Queensland—and coal is an industry in Queensland—and the Labor Premier of Western Australia have said, ‘No, we won’t be part of that because of the economic consequences.’ But what Mr Beattie and Mr Carpenter have not said, and what I will say, is that it also has perverse environmental consequences. If you put up the cost of doing business in Australia and drive internationally competitive businesses to shift their operations offshore then you are doing a bad thing for the environment, because you are shifting the greenhouse gas emissions to Indonesia, China or somewhere else where they have less regulation of other emissions.

So what the Australian government have done is in fact to introduce a range of initiatives which will allow the corporate sector to engage in emissions reduction. For example, the Greenhouse Friendly program involves companies using a trading system and an offset system for their carbon. They are able, under the Kyoto rules, with the endorsement of the Australian government, to offset their carbon-creating activities with Greenhouse Friendly activities—with abatement activities—and they can go to the Australian people and claim that they are carbon neutral. We as a government have facilitated that because we think it is a very worthwhile thing to do. Through the Greenhouse Challenge program we have also engaged with over 700 businesses which have measured their greenhouse inventories and have put in place greenhouse reduction plans, and they have to report on them annually. So we do believe that an effective response to greenhouse gas reduction and climate change is required, but the Labor Party’s plan to put a new tax on energy and people’s power bills and to increase their petrol bills is not the answer. (Time expired)