Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am not putting down the efforts of anybody. When I go around the world I point out that the leading solar technology in the world is coming out of the University of New South Wales and the Australian National University, and I talk at all times about the huge potential for improving the Australian economy by expanding the work in renewables.

But what I particularly wanted to address was fusion. I heard the minister talk about fusion. I too went down to the fusion laboratory a while ago only to discover that, whilst it is true that all of those other countries are putting a huge amount into fusion, Australia is not. In fact, the concern is that Australia is again going to lose some of its best and brightest because the excitement in physics around the world is in the fusion experiment that is being conducted by these other countries. Unless Australia has some role in that global fusion project, we will in fact hollow out the physics departments in Australian universities because there will be no excitement about physics here.

In fact, it was put to me that Australia would in no way realistically be able to match what other countries are putting into the fusion project. But it was argued that Australia should go into partnership with one of the countries involved in the fusion project so that we can develop a collaborative relationship, and Australian physicists and people in the physics departments would be able to benefit in that way. I think that is eminently sensible. I would be interested to know how the minister is going to advance Australia’s involvement in that particular technology and keep that university capacity that we have in Australia. I think that issue is important.

In terms of carbon capture and storage, I do not see the justification for taxpayers’ money going into subsidising the fossil fuel industry. It is the fossil fuel industry over 100 years which has made immense profits out of externalising the true cost. In other words, carbon dioxide pollution from coal and oil over the last 100 years has now resulted in greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, which is having a severe adverse impact and costing billions around the world. Those companies have benefited enormously by making profits without having to take into account the costs.

I argue that, if the coal industry wants to spend its own money on carbon capture and storage and if the oil industry wants to spend its own money, that is well and good. They can go and experiment all they like. But it should not be carte blanche to continue business as usual while the technology to capture carbon is unproven, because all you are doing is exacerbating the greenhouse gases and not reducing them over the years it might take. The bigger point here is that we have only 10 to 15 years to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We cannot wait for the coal and oil industries, with government subsidies, to prove up a technology. We have to put in place the technologies that we know can reduce emissions today and get those reducing emissions. Then the coal industry can go and spend its own money—the profits that it has made on the back of the community for the last 100 years.

That is where ABARE gets this so wrong all of the time. ABARE is still stuck in the old economics that externalises pollution and does not regard it as a cost. So it privatises the profits and socialises the costs. That is what the coal industry has done for 100 years. Now the coal industry continues to do it, wanting government subsidies.

I want an answer, as does Senator Bartlett, as to why the government will not pursue the notion of a trigger. We have an inventory, as you say. But why will you not pursue a trigger? What you are almost admitting to is the fact that you know and this chamber knows that coalmining does lead to the emission of a large amount of carbon dioxide and, if that were taken into account, you would have to not allow them to proceed. That is an acknowledgment of why it is a bad idea to be approving coalmines. You just do not want to be in a position to have to disprove them because you know that it is morally and ethically indefensible in a world with climate change.

While I am on my feet about the emissions, it would be very useful to the chamber if you could table documents on the volume of greenhouse gases emitted from forestry operations in Tasmania in particular, but certainly in Victoria and New South Wales as well. Also, it would be good to have that separated out in terms of regeneration burns and conversion from old-growth and native forest to plantations. That would be a very useful statistic for us to have. I would appreciate the inventory which can take us down to the very last gram, according to your explanation earlier, so as to have that on the record.