Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the coalition, I move:

That—

(1)

The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2010 and 10 related bills be referred to the Economics Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 11 May 2010.

(2)

In undertaking the inquiry, the committee should consider.

(a)

the package of amendments announced by the Government on 24 November 2009 and incorporated in current proposed legislation, including the impact of the bills on the Australian resources sector, Australian exports, the competitiveness of Australian industry, employment levels and electricity prices;

(b)

the modelling underpinning the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) including the lower projected carbon price and the cost of the CPRS package over the current budget period to 2014-15;

(c)

the outcome of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held in Copenhagen in December 2009;

(d)

the current state of progress of other countries in implementing emissions and abatement measures to meet non-binding emissions reduction targets; and

(e)

the status of, and likely prospects for, the United States of America’s emissions trading legislation.

(3)

The committee should seek evidence from, but not limited to, the Productivity Commission, Frontier Economics, the Minerals Council of Australia, the Australian Coal Association and the Energy Supply Association of Australia.

In moving this motion, the coalition strongly believes that there is a need for these measures to be fully examined. That is the historical role of the Senate, and it has done so, if I might say, exceptionally well. Even when the blood rushed on the very rare occasion to the Howard government head and we did not want Senate inquiries into legislation, it was amazing when the Senate did so vote how certain things were exposed to us which made us say quietly behind our hand, ‘Thank goodness for that Senate inquiry because it did expose a few things that had not been taken to account.’ Those of us who have been here a few years know the importance of Senate committee inquiries and the great benefit that they provide. I trust that there is no honourable senator in this place who thinks that the probing, the testing and the inquiring by Senate committees of proposals is something that should be rejected out of hand. I hope we all support that. Indeed, we have a Prime Minister who allegedly supports evidence based policy.

The bill that we are seeking to submit to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee, very interestingly—if people listened closely they would have heard this in the title—is the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2010 and the related bills. This is new legislation. This is different legislation to that which we have debated in the past. What it seeks to do, and I think quite appropriately, is incorporate a lot of the amendments that the Senate wanted passed last time around.

What do those changes involve? They involve a significant change to the CPRS, the big new tax on everything, of $114 billion. This is a huge scheme, the most significant scheme ever sought to be legislated by a Commonwealth government. This is a massive issue, whether you like a CPRS or you do not like it. In a bid to try to get Senate support, Labor moved a host of amendments. Those amendments have never really been fully tested, fully exposed, fully considered by a Senate inquiry. The differences in the packages and how the money is spread around are at the thousand-plus million dollar mark. This is a lot of money. The compensation being paid to families changed in this legislation.

Can I just stop on that one. We remember the debacle of the Leader of the Government in the Senate, when we asked him about the compensation scheme under this legislation, so cockily telling us: 92 per cent of Australian families would be compensated—and how dare we as an opposition ask questions like this because it was all debated previously and we should know and we should be ashamed of ourselves. Two days later the Leader of the Government in the Senate was in this place and, like Labor always do—they can never apologise and say they got something wrong—he said he ‘misspoke’. The 92 per cent figure, if I recall, evaporated down to about 51 per cent of families getting full compensation. Even the Leader of the Government in the Senate does not fully understand the legislation and the compensation package.

Also, there are huge changes in relation to the power-generating sector, which is very important. Mr Rudd told the Australian people that there would be an increase in power prices, but when we asked for the modelling and all of the detail we were not given it. When Mr Rudd is asked how this new scheme, this different scheme, would impact on the cost of a loaf of bread or a litre of milk, he cannot tell us. I think the people of Australia want answers, and we are entitled to explore those issues courtesy of a Senate inquiry. We as a coalition are proposing that the inquiry take 2½ months and report on 11 May 2010. A scheme of this magnitude and one which has had wholesale changes now made to it I think is worthy of an inquiry of that length. It is not very long, given the significant nature of the package we are dealing with.

At the time of the last election this issue was described as the ‘greatest moral challenge of our time’. That was said 22 times during the last election campaign, yet in the Australia Day speeches by the Prime Minister it was not mentioned at all. The government itself has shunted this legislation down its list of priorities. It is no longer the greatest moral challenge of our time. Indeed, according to the government’s own agenda in this place, the greatest moral challenge that it faces is breaking an election promise on private health insurance. But I am distracting myself from the main argument.

This legislation will come into force on 1 January 2011. If all the evidence comes back that everything is hunky-dory and good then the Senate can consider and explore these issues further in debate and the legislation can still be put in place, one would assume, by 2011, so there is no rush for this legislation. Indeed, the Labor Party itself changed the commencement date from 2010 to 2011. It did that of its own volition. The nauseatingly moralising Prime Minister, who just talks and talks, and who said that this was the greatest moral challenge of our time, all of a sudden has said that it is that great a moral challenge that we can just defer consideration and implementation for 12 months. We are not changing the commencement date; all we are doing is saying let us have a look at the detail of this legislation.

This legislation has had a lot of precursors. There was the exposure draft by Senator Wong, then Mr Combet was called in to bring in a completely different bill, then there were the substantial amendments at the end of last year and now we have a newly drafted bill. Underpinning all of those manifestations of the legislation were certain propositions, certain givens, that we were told the modelling was based on and, of course, the greatest of those was that there would be world action at Copenhagen, that the world would come together. That was one of the underlying principles of the modelling and the considerations. We now know why the Prime Minister felt so at home at Copenhagen—it was a talkfest with no action. It was all talk and no action—that is why the Prime Minister revelled in it, loved it and identified with it. Now that we know that there is no world action, one of the supporting pillars of this legislation has been taken out, because of the consequences for Australian jobs, Australian industry and the security of Australian power supplies.

Another underpinning was that carbon capture and storage would be commercially viable by the year 2020. I genuinely hope it is, but a lot of the advice I am getting is that, as we move closer to the year 2020 and since those pronouncements were made about two years ago, people are now questioning whether it will become commercially viable. I think it is appropriate that we explore that.

Another underpinning of the so-called modelling—the bits and pieces we did get and we were told about—was what the Australian population was going to be by the year 2050. Within 12 months, from the first introduction of the legislation until the end of last year, that figure changed considerably—by millions of people. If I recall, it was by either two or three million people. When you are dealing with a population of only about 21 million, that is 10 per cent. That is a huge discrepancy.

Why can’t we be told what the outcome would be if the new figures were imported into the modelling? What would be the pressures on our power generators to provide the electricity to these people? What would be the pressures on our community in providing all the community services that those extra two or three million people would anticipate to be their birthrights? There would be a huge impact on our carbon emissions. There is no doubt about that. We as a Senate are entitled to know the answers to those sorts of questions. I could go on at some length about the modelling and what is underpinning it, which the government has sought to sell to the Australian people, but these are just some examples of what we on this side of the chamber believe needs to be explored.

I know that there are also some who would say that the science may well have shifted in recent times. In this religiously defined debate, I have declared myself—also in religious terms—an agnostic and I will not enter into the science of the debate, other than to say I have noted that some of the IPCC considerations are now being modulated or remodelled. But I will not go there, because our motion does not seek to re-explore the science, despite the huge embarrassment I think the University of East Anglia is in, as well as a few other institutions and people. As far as we are concerned, that is to the side. We believe that there are matters of graver importance to be considered. Let us make no mistake: this would be a massive, big new tax on everything. It would impact every man, woman and child in Australia today and every man, woman and child in Australia for generations to come.

One of the reasons we need to explore the documentation that the government has given us is that new information has come to light—substantially new information. For example, the New South Wales Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, IPART, have said that electricity prices will rise by up to 62 per cent over the next three years, a third of which will be as a result of Mr Rudd’s big new tax on everything. Now, why would the New South Wales state government allow that information to get into the public domain? Because they dispute Mr Rudd’s modelling in relation to electricity prices. Let us make no mistake about that. IPART are an independent body; I am sure they did not leak it. They provided their report to the New South Wales Labor government and, magically, it appeared in the media. I wonder how that occurred! New South Wales state Labor do not trust Mr Rudd’s modelling. There is similar information for Victoria. There is the Morgan Stanley report on the impact of the so-called CPRS, this big new tax on everything, about how it would impact and devastate the power-generating capacity in Victoria. That report—or the snippets we have got from it, because federal Labor refuse to release it although it is within their power to release it; deliberately they refuse to release it—indicates that Victorians would suffer a similar increase in electricity prices as people in New South Wales, once again debunking the modelling by the federal Labor government.

What is clear is that, as the debate on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme—this big new tax on everything—has progressed, more and more holes have been found in the Labor government’s arguments, underpinnings and modelling, as a result of which their CPRS Bill is significantly different to their draft exposure and then bill of 2009, because of course now we have the 2010 version. So this has been through three manifestations, and this third manifestation is worthy of a very considered and detailed inquiry. In addition, although this would in rough terms be a 2½-month enquiry, the only time that the parliament would be denied consideration of the bill would be the next sitting fortnight of the Senate—only two weeks—because the report would be ready for the Senate on 11 May, which I understand is budget week. So the actual delay in considering the legislation is only two weeks from the point of view of parliament. When you are considering a document that would submit Australia to a $114 billion big new tax on everything, I think it is worthy of inquiry.

I also say in relation to the failure of Copenhagen—and what a dismal failure it was; a big talkfest, with 114 people from Australia over there, those that the Prime Minister loves, but no world action—that if we go ahead with this suggestion we will in fact contribute to a worse world environmental outcome. Allow me to explain: through carbon leakage, the world would be worse off. In my home state of Tasmania we have a Nyrstar zinc works, as does Senator Farrell in Port Pirie—and Senator Wong. They produce one tonne of zinc for roughly two tonnes of CO2, which is pretty clean in comparison to the rest of the world. China does it for six tonnes of CO2 per tonne of zinc produced. If we price ourselves out of the world market, people will not be buying clean, Australian zinc; they will be buying polluting, Chinese zinc, and as a result the world’s carbon emissions will be even greater. That is the perverse outcome of Mr Rudd’s ill thought out scheme. It is the reason that we in the coalition believe that there is a very real need for a lot of these issues to be tested, especially the huge movement as a result of the failure of Copenhagen. President Obama himself seems to be walking away from an emissions trading scheme. Canada said, ‘If the US are in, we’re in and we’ll adopt their system.’ That is no longer so. The US is walking away; therefore, Canada is walking away. And so it is unravelling around the world.

Just for the record, we as a coalition believe in a no regrets policy in this space, and that is why Mr Abbott has provided a very exciting direct action plan to deal with these issues without the need for a $114 billion big new tax on everything which would devastate jobs, devastate our economy and devastate electricity supplies around our nation. So I say to all honourable senators, irrespective of your views—whether your predisposition is to support or oppose this legislation, whether or not you believe in the science, whether or not you believe the modelling is up to scratch—these are all issues worthy of consideration, and I commend the motion to the Senate.