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

As I recall from our national greenhouse gas accounting publications, which I am quite sure are available on the internet, figures for forestry in Tasmania are available on the internet, and I would refer Senator Milne to those. I approved of the expansion of Hazelwood, which was a proposal that came from the Victorian government—so I have approved it. I approve of the idea of developing—as we are doing with one of the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund grants—technologies that reduce the carbon emissions from burning coal.

I believe that a substantial and very important part of the solution to meeting the policy balance, which I described in my first contribution in this debate, is to provide secure energy sources for the world and Australia and to maintain job security and economic security for Australian families whilst doing so in a carbon-challenged world which demands that we produce substantially larger amounts of energy, both here in Australia and around the world, but with substantially lower greenhouse gas emissions. To do that you need to address the emissions from fossil fuel. In the case of Hazelwood, you need to address the emissions from burning brown coal. Part of that process must be to seek to dry out that coal—to clean up that coal—before you burn it and, in future, gasify the coal to get it to a much higher energy coefficient level and then capture the carbon and store that carbon safely. That is the serious challenge.

How you achieve that in terms of balancing the investment in the up-front infrastructure with finding mechanisms to address the ongoing and increasing costs associated with running that additional technology—the additional plant and equipment you will be required to apply to a place like Hazelwood or, in fact, many other power stations around the world like it—is something that the government is addressing. The Prime Minister has recently indicated that he is going to appoint a task force which will look at the interaction of emerging global emissions trading systems, pricing systems and market mechanisms that can be established in Australia. I think that announcement by the Prime Minister is a very sensible step forward for the government. I expect that he will announce details of that shortly. It recognises the issues that were brought starkly to the world’s attention by Sir Nicholas Stern’s report. The important part of his work was to say to the world: there will not just be damage to ecosystems and potential damage to human habitation as a result of dangerous climate change if we carry on business as usual but, quite clearly, there will also be—as Senator Brown and Senator Milne would have recognised for a long time—substantial economic impacts. Delaying action will heighten those economic impacts, so there are benefits to acting early.

It is a hackneyed cliche to say so, but it is accurate in this case: regarding the course that Australia is setting—in the case of Hazelwood, in collaboration with the Victorian Labor government; in the case of another fossil fuel cleaning up and capturing project, in collaboration with the Queensland government; and, in the case of the Gorgon gas project in Western Australia, in collaboration with the Gorgon partners—we are providing substantial leadership in funding the sorts of breakthrough technologies you will need to stop carbon going into the atmosphere from fossil fuels. But that does not, in the mind of the government, provide the only part of the answer. You will need pricing signals and market mechanisms. The challenge that the world needs to address is: how do you do that in a way that does not push the carbon into another jurisdiction? That is the challenge the world has not substantially answered yet and it is a challenge in which the Australian government wants to play a positive part.

The announcement by the Prime Minister about addressing the need for a comprehensive post-Kyoto agreement, which we have called new Kyoto, allied with his announcement about a business and government task force to address the need for an appropriate market mechanism working globally and within Australia, was very well received by people around the world, particularly our European friends. It demonstrates the continuing commitment of the government to innovate in the area of climate change policy.