Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

You were listening. Excellent. Well, you would have heard Senator McLucas point out the step forward on greenhouse gases at Bali, and, yes, we all said that was a great thing, but then she said that we could not question the commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions because this government was at some stage going to do an extension of the mandated renewable energy target, and we welcome that—there is no reason why it should not start tomorrow instead of having to wait till 2009 or 2010, however. But the point is that that is about electricity. MRET is about electricity; it is not about transport, and that is principally what we have been debating for the last hour or so. Senator McLucas also mentioned emissions trading. Again, emissions trading is about electricity and industrial processes and the like; it is not going to cover transport. So we are still searching, Minister, for a commitment from the government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through infrastructure, and as we all know the biggest slab of the Infrastructure Australia agency’s work will be related to transport.

I would have asked Senator McLucas, who mentioned this, but I put it to you, Minister, that the only initiatives that this government have seriously made a commitment to, are MRET and the emissions-trading system. We still do not seem to be having a greenhouse trigger in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act anytime soon even though, as I recall, Senator Lundy in 2003 moved an amendment to that effect. So the amendment is there; it is ready to go. Turn it into a bill, Minister, and put it before us. You will find that there will be widespread support for putting that trigger in place. It is in your policy. You have moved in the past on putting it into bills. Let us have a government bill that does that. Then we will be satisfied that there is some mechanism by which we and the rest of the population can challenge decisions that have enormous implications in terms of greenhouse emissions. There will be a law there.

Minister Carr made the mistake of saying that there will be an EIS on anything to do with greenhouse. That is not so. We all know that is not so. The federal law does not cover greenhouse, which is crazy because the federal environment laws are about matters of national significance. There is no more significant matter than greenhouse. I am getting fed up with saying this, Minister, because it is clear that these amendments will go down. As has been said many times before, that is an unfortunate signal because, like Bali, this was an opportunity for the government to say: ‘We mean what we say. Greenhouse is important, and we will act on it.’ This is the first chance to do it and there has been a failure on the part of government to do that. Minister, I would be grateful if you could acknowledge that emissions trading and the mandate of renewable energy targets have nothing to do with the vast bulk of the work that is likely to come through Infrastructure Australia, which is transport.