Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to make my contribution on behalf of the Australian Greens on this bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Prohibiting Energy Market Misconduct) Bill 2019. Right up-front, let me be very clear: the Australian Greens oppose this bill because it won't lower electricity prices and, in addition to not doing that, it will make global warming worse, as this government will use the powers in this bill to keep coal-fired power stations operating for longer—and we know that the longer coal-fired power is produced, the harder and longer it's going to be for us to get global warming under control.

As I stand here tonight, I do so in the midst of what we know is a horrific scene unfolding across the country, with bushfires burning across Western Australia, New South Wales and Queensland, and now, just in the last few hours, there have been a number of very serious warnings in my home state of South Australia. In fact, just three hours ago, we had an emergency warning for Port Lincoln in South Australia—and I will read this, because I think it is really important. The South Australian Country Fire Service issued a warning this afternoon. It says to the people of Port Lincoln and Lower Eyre Peninsula:

You are now in danger. Take shelter in a solid building. Do not leave or enter this area in a vehicle or on foot. It is too late to leave as the roads will not be safe.

Conditions are dangerous and firefighters are now unable to prevent the fire spreading. Shelter before the fire arrives as heat can kill you well before the flames reach you.

That is the official warning from the South Australian Country Fire Service in the last couple of hours in relation to Port Lincoln.

SA Power Networks has issued a statement:

Due to the rapid escalation of weather and fire conditions we're now disconnecting power to Port Lincoln to ensure community safety.

So the power has been turned off in Port Lincoln as the fire rages. I convey my thoughts and concern for everybody facing these disasters, and urge people to listen to the advice of emergency services and personnel. Follow their advice carefully and stay safe.

These fires are supercharged by the climate crisis we are facing and are being fuelled by the record drought we are experiencing. Firstly, Prime Minister Scott Morrison must bear some responsibility for the situation we are confronted with today. He has not only continued to make the climate crisis worse with bills such as this one before us tonight but also failed to bring down global warming pollution across the board. Secondly, the Prime Minister must take some responsibility for his refusal to heed the scientists and fire officers who have been warning that Australia is unprepared for extreme fires exacerbated by the climate emergency. Tonight I call on the Prime Minister to apologise to the communities that are being impacted by this fire, especially after refusing to heed the warnings of fire chiefs only a number of weeks ago.

Scott Morrison needs to apologise to the Australian people as a whole for putting their towns and their lives at risk by making global warming worse. He must apologise, and then, more importantly, he must act. He must act to deal with the climate emergency that we are facing. Bills like this one before us tonight do nothing to help the towns and communities who are suffering. All this bill is going to do is make climate change worse. It's going to do that by keeping open the very power plants that contribute to climate change and make it more and more damaging. It is more harmful to keep these coal-fired power stations open for longer, and it makes it harder and harder for us to transition.

Of course the Australian Greens, along with the rest of the country, are devastated and deeply saddened by the loss of life in these fires. We heard many contributions in this place earlier today. Our hearts go out to all the families and communities impacted. As I mentioned, I'm thinking particularly, as I stand here right now, of friends and colleagues facing the threat in Port Lincoln in South Australia. But words and concern are not enough. Thoughts and prayers are useless without action. In fact, thoughts and prayers from our leaders—well, I would prefer that our leaders dealt with brains and policy. That's what we need as we face this crisis and this emergency. Unless we lead a global effort to quit coal and cut pollution, these terrible, horrific scenes will only continue and get worse in the years to come. Just this month, former fire chiefs warned the Prime Minister on national television that the climate crisis was making a catastrophic bushfire risk worse and that Australia was unprepared.

Greg Mullins is a firefighting veteran and a former head of Fire and Rescue NSW. He appeared only last week on the ABC, in a 7.30 story. He said:

My whole career as a fire chief was trying to calm people down …

When you have people like me who have been around for half a century doing this work getting frightened—and I'm frightened—it's time for everyone else to be, particularly politicians in Canberra.

That was a direct warning to not just the Prime Minister but every single one of us in this place and in the other to take seriously the concerns that scientists and those on the front line are raising. Filmed while he was visiting the fireground in California, Mr Mullins said:

The most fire-prone parts of the planet are burning more and more …

Here in California, 18,000 homes last year, 9,000 the year before. Previously 3,000 was the biggest they'd think of. They're just shaking their heads saying, 'What the hell is round the corner?'

Mr Mullins said the Australian fire services are dangerously unequipped to deal with the 'new normal' of catastrophic fire weather fuelled by the climate crisis. He led a delegation of former fire chiefs and fire professionals and experts in writing to the Prime Minister, seeking action. But the Prime Minister, in Mr Mullins's own words, just 'fobbed them off'. He says:

It's up to the retired fire chiefs who are unconstrained to tell it like it is and say this is really dangerous …

People are at risk, we need a game changer in how we deal with these catastrophes because they're going to get worse and worse.

He's angry that the government wouldn't even talk to them, saying:

We were fobbed off to Minister Taylor who is not the right minister to speak to …

We wanted to speak to the Natural Disasters Minister and the PM. We asked for help with that, we never got a reply.

You had 23 experts willing to sit down with a PM and come up with solutions, but he's just fobbed us off.

What does it take to wake these people up in Canberra? I don't know.

It's time we all woke up. It's time we all took the very serious and dire warnings of not just Mr Mullins and the fire experts but of course the scientists as well.

It is outrageous that 23 former senior emergency figures have been trying to get the Australian government to listen to their concerns about climate change and the missing capacity to fight fires in the new era, and the government has failed to listen to them. Just this morning we heard the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr McCormack, attack those fire officers, fobbing them off once again and suggesting perhaps this was all part of some climate-change conspiracy. It is simply insulting that individual officers like these 23 fire experts and former fire chiefs would be treated with such disrespect by the Deputy Prime Minister. These are people who have put their lives on the line for others, for their community; people who are watching and helping and out there today, risking their own lives. And we have the Deputy Prime Minister saying that the reason no-one responded to their letter is because they didn't know if it was real. It is an insult and it is absolutely galling that this could come out of the mouth of our Deputy Prime Minister.

One of the key issues that Mr Mullins and fire experts have warned about and wanted to discuss with the Prime Minister was the lack of aircraft for fighting fires here in Australia. He said:

The Erickson sky cranes, the Elvis helicopters, 737s with 15,000 litres, C130 Hercules with 15,000 litres. We don't have them in Australia …

He was saying this as he was reflecting on what it was taking to battle the fires in California. It is a major problem that the seasons in Australia and California are now overlapping. The same equipment, the same aircraft, are going to be busy on totally opposite sides of the planet. Mr Mullins, speaking of those in California, said that, for one fire service—one fire service—they had 23 fixed-wing water bombers, and here in New South Wales we have only one. He said:

As each of the states and territories in Australia, their fire seasons heat up and start early, they won't be able to share trucks, people, incident-management personnel, so it's going to be harder and harder to fight these fires and we need a national response …

Scott Morrison, as Prime Minister, does not have the climate crisis under control. It is not even summer yet and already firefighters are running out of adjectives to describe the fires that are burning across the country. Bushfire seasons are longer, the country is drier and the fires are worse. Instead of pursuing a piece of legislation like this before us tonight that is going to make climate change and global warming worse, the government should be dealing with the climate emergency. The failure of successive Liberal-National prime ministers to accept and address the climate crisis has led to higher electricity prices.

Since the Abbott government's abolition of the Greens-Labor carbon price, pollution has increased year after year and electricity prices have continued to rise. They are now higher than they were when the carbon price was put in place. We have gone backwards when it comes to electricity prices being on the rise. They are getting higher and higher. I have no faith that this bill will do anything but make that worse. Why? It is because of the uncertainty about the carbon risk caused by the failure to put in place a new national energy policy with clear emissions reduction goals. This has continued to lead to a lack of adequate investment in new energy generation.

The Abbott government's war on renewables followed by the Morrison government's war on energy companies trying to manage the retirement of old, unreliable coal-fired generation and the transition to renewable generation has exacerbated the uncertainty for investors. We should be investing and helping the transition for new generation. Smart grids, demand management and storage are the elements that ensure we do not just have power prices come down but have a climate that is heading in the right direction and that will be safe—to reduce the pollution that we know that the current energy production is creating.

Instead of a clear timetable for retirement of coal fired-power stations, proper planning and investment in grid infrastructure, and a clear pathway to zero emissions in the electricity sector, the electricity market has a war of words, threats and ad hoc policy. If you want to know why power prices in this country are so high, have a look at the Liberal-National party room. That is why. They cannot get their own house in order. They have done nothing to reduce power prices. All they have done is have a war of words amongst themselves, a war of ideology—speaking tough out there while doing nothing in here. Meanwhile, pollution grows, uncertainty grows and investment declines.

This bill represents the latest round in the Liberal-National's ideological war on a rational energy transition to renewable energy. Dressed up as a bill to deal with electricity prices, it is absolutely crystal clear to anybody who has watched this debate, read the bills, listened to the speeches and listened to the arguments being made by the government, the opposition and those in the industry that this bill is designed to enable the government to bully power companies to keep unreliable, old and dirty coal-fired power stations open longer. That is what this bill is about. It is going to do nothing to reduce electricity prices, but it is going to do everything to keep pollution going up and keep those coal-fired power stations—particularly those that are on the brink right now—open for longer.

Contributions from government members during the debate in the House of Representatives were explicit on this point. They said the big stick of the divestiture of powers in this bill was necessary to stop AGL from retiring Liddell rather than selling it. We have members of the government who want to bully AGL because AGL have made a decision that it is time to transition away from coal—to retire their old clunker, the Liddell Power Station. The government says, 'No, we do not want you to retire it; we want you to sell it so it can stay open for longer.' That is what this piece of legislation is about. Do not be fooled. It's not about reducing power prices. It's not about putting Australia on track to a secure, clear, rational energy future. It is about propping up old clunkers of coal-fired power stations, because the coalition and the National Party are at war over climate policy. That is what this bill is about. We know that, when Liddell was listed for closure, AGL were very clear about the fact that it's an old power plant, that it's one of the dirtiest in the country, that it isn't meeting the efficiency standards, that it isn't effective any longer and that it needs to close if we are to get on with the transition. This government, rather than bullying, should be listening.

I'll be moving two sets of amendments tonight to this piece of legislation to try to at least reduce how bad this bill could be. The first will address the Liddell issue by inserting into the bill amendments that will prevent orders being made which would have the effect of inhibiting, delaying or stopping a planned closure of a coal-fired power generator. If the government and the opposition don't believe that this bill is designed to do that, then they should back in these amendments and make it crystal clear that this is not about trying to prop up a dying clunker of a coal-fired power station. The second set of amendments will ensure no public money can be used on propping up ageing, dirty and unreliable coal-fired powers stations. This is taxpayers' money, and it shouldn't be spent propping up the old technology that we must transition out of if we are to deal head-on with the climate emergency that we are facing.

This will not just be a test for the government, of course; this will be a test for the Labor Party. Prior to the election, the Labor Party said they would support this amendment because they understood that we have to transition. Fast forward a couple of months later and an election loss and now the Labor Party are saying they are just going to tick and flick this bill through. Will Labor vote for the future or stick with the past and aid and abet the government's plan to keep coal operating for longer? As we deal with this drought, when bushfires are raging across the country, when we've got communities in rural and regional Australia crying out for some leadership, the last thing we need is for the two big parties cuddling up—wink, wink, nudge, nudge—and saying, 'Let's just pass it, and we can keep our coal mates happy.' If you care about what is going on out there tonight in some of our regional towns, do something to start bringing down pollution and deal with climate change. Act tonight: knock off this bill and put it in the dustbin so we can get on with decent, genuine climate policy for this country.