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

Mr Chair, I think what has happened here is that the government has conned the Palmer United Party into thinking these provisions apply all over the place, when they do not. The government knows that this is all over the place and will be subject to legal challenges. When the legal challenges come, the whole lot will fall over. The government will have got what it wanted, the abolition of the carbon price, and the Palmer United Party will look stupid for having made a complete mess of it. But the government does not care because they have got what they want. That is why I want answers to these questions.

So: if a household has a solar panel on their roof and they are selling their electrons back to their retailer, and therefore have to comply with division 2A, they are committing a strict liability offence of between $65,000 and $85,000 for not providing substantiation notices. The same thing will occur to a hospital with a co-generation plant it feeds into the grid or another building. Minister, is it true that, if they are 'another entity that produces electricity in Australia'—if you have a solar panel on your roof or a co-gen operation that sells into the grid—you are going to be subject to a fine of between $65,000 and $85,000 if you do not provide a substantiation notice? That is a specific question.

My second question is: is there a difference between 'synthetic gas importer' and a 'bulk synthetic greenhouse gas importer' in the definitions? Or, is it anyone who holds an import licence? How many holders of import licences are there in Australia? How many customers do those licence holders have? What volume of expected greenhouse gas emissions do these licence holders control?

The threshold for the ACCC to bring a legal action under proposed section 60C is that price exploitation must be 'unreasonably high'. Can the minister outline what sort of exploitation, in terms of carbon gouging and pricing, is going to be deemed or classed as 'unreasonably high' for the purposes of the ACCC being able to bring legal action? Does the minister agree that, by definition, price exploitation can occur if it is 'high' but 'reasonable'? What is the difference between 'unreasonably high' and exploitation that is 'high' but that the government or the ACCC deems to be 'reasonable'?

What is envisaged in section 60C of an 'indirect cost saving attributable to the carbon price'? Why is it needed beyond a 'direct cost saving'? All of these provisions refer to 'direct costs' and 'indirect costs', but 'indirect costs' are not defined. So I would like from the government the definition, the understanding, of what 'indirect costs' attributable to the carbon price are, for the purposes of all these substantiation notices and documents and the like? And why is it there? Why isn't it just the direct cost saving which should be able to be measured?

Further: are there any synthetic greenhouse gas manufacturers in Australia? If so, why don't they have to comply with these provisions? Why is it only people who are importing? Why isn't it people who are here manufacturing?

In section 60CA, how was the 250 per cent figure arrived at? Is the government concerned it will be an inadequate penalty for a company? For example, if a pensioner is ripped off by $200 and somebody makes the assumption that that is an 'unreasonably high' rip-off, then they will have to pay the Commonwealth $500. In that scenario, would the Commonwealth pay the pensioner $200 or $500 or nothing? There is no legal obligation to actually pay anything.

An electricity retailer will commit a strict liability offence if they do not inform their customer of the expected cost savings. Do they have to inform all their customers directly? Or is putting something on their website sufficient to fulfil the requirement of 60FE? People want to know that. People want to know: does this mean they have to directly send something to every one of their customers, or do they only have to put a notice up on their website, or one circular at one time and that is deemed to be complying with the regulations? These are serious questions that people want answered. I can tell you that people out there with solar panels on their roof have been onto me, saying: 'Why are we captured by this? Do we have to put in a substantiation notice?' That is why I have an amendment; to clarify that. I will be going to that shortly.

I want to go back to the issue of how an electricity retailer might commit a strict liability offence if they do not inform their customers of the expected cost savings. If they have to inform them, what happens if, say, an envelope packing machine failed to put that notice in a customer's bill? Will that trigger the strict liability offence? These are serious questions, and I would like the minister to respond to them.

Before I sit down to get those answers in relation to this, I think this will show that next to nothing will be forced to be passed on by anybody. We have seen a great huff and puff, a lot of hot air, a lot of legal challenges, a lot of frustration and nuisance, but nobody in the end will be any better off in terms of anything passed on.

As the amendment that is before us is on an emissions trading scheme, I want to finish by saying that the Palmer United Party said it supports an emissions trading scheme. The Greens have compromised by saying: 'Right, we have an emissions trading scheme. The Palmer United Party don't like the fact that it is a fixed price of $25. We will compromise and move flexible pricing immediately, which would bring the price down to $7 or $9.' I do not like doing that, because the whole point here is to keep the price high to drive the transformation but, nevertheless, we are prepared to do it.

This is a test for the Palmer United Party. They say they support emissions trading. Mr Palmer stood up with Al Gore, the former Vice President of the United States, and said he supported an emissions trading scheme. But then the conditions started to roll in. Initially, it was when our major trading partners had one. There was some discussion about whether that meant national or subnational, and then this week it was blown out of the water by the added issue of: now it is India that has to be in this position. Everybody knows that, if you are going to say it is to be all trading partners, all national schemes, including India, this is a mirage that keeps moving further and further away as you get nearer to it.

What happened in this place was only a mirage to give cover to the fact that Mr Palmer and his Palmer United Party are Liberals to the core. They want to govern for the big end of town, and the charade we are going through here with the PUP amendments that the government has incorporated—albeit with some help fixing them up from the government's legal team—has left this country with a mess on its hands. Ultimately, self-interest has outed here: Mineralogy and Queensland Nickel are going to benefit by multibillions of dollars over time by this abolition. I want serious answers to serious questions.