Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This motion on net zero emissions, on the last day of the 2021 sittings, highlights the top agenda item for Senator Lambie, and it's the extreme-green agenda. You can't pretend to be the champion of the worker and those doing it tough whilst you're in cooee and put forward an extreme jobs-destroying green agenda when in Canberra.

The call to legislate a net zero emissions outcome by 2050 is a glib, shallow approach, devoid of any analysis or consideration for our fellow Tasmanians. Legislation means it would be illegal not to reduce emissions, irrespective of the cost. We all have a common vision, and that is for as clean an environment as possible. To legislate targets may sound good, but it has job-destroying, livelihood-destroying consequences. The extreme-green ideology embedded in Senator Lambie's motion has consequences—job- and livelihood-destroying consequences. It will hit the poorest hardest, and our manufacturing jobs. Legislating targets is exactly the same as saying you support a carbon tax—something the Australian people, quite rightly, comprehensively rejected in 2013. Handing over control of our economy—our Australian jobs—to courts and activists, which would occur if this was legislated, is something the coalition will never do, but Senator Lambie champions it. It is irresponsible. A bit of research tells the story, but of course doing research might mean a bit less time for dancing for TikTok.

Where climate targets have been enshrined in legislation in the last two years alone, the people have been the losers. Look at Germany. Look at France. Look at the United Kingdom, where extensions to Heathrow Airport, under this type of legislation in the proposal of Senator Lambie, were delayed. The motion would usher in a new era of green lawfare. But, of course, Senator Lambie voted recently to protect the Bob Brown Foundation, to enable it to continue its un-Tasmanian work.

On this side, we have never legislated emissions targets—and for a good reason: it destroys jobs for everyone other than for green lawyers. On this side, we make calculated, balanced commitments, and then we get on with meeting them and beating them. We beat our 2020 target. We're on track to meet and beat our 2030 target. The only time an emissions target was legislated in Australia was the carbon tax. And that didn't end very well, did it? The people repudiated the Labor-Green carbon tax, without hesitation. They will do so again, even if Senator Lambie is used as the stalking horse for the Labor-Green alliance. It really does seem that Senator Lambie has been sitting between Labor and the Greens for a little too long, and the colour with which she started off her political branding—namely, yellow—seems to change to green when she hits Canberra.

But let's be clear: emissions are already more than 20 per cent below 2005 levels, while our economy has grown 45 per cent. We're on track to meet and beat our 2030 target. We've set out a credible plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Here I have the comprehensive book setting it out, with over 100 pages—and of course, that is so much more hard work than a glib two-line motion before the Senate. We've set out a credible plan, preserving jobs in existing industries, taking advantage of new economic opportunities to grow jobs, ensuring our regions grow even more jobs and establishing Australia as a leader in low-emissions technologies.

We do this through technology, not through taxes, and by empowering choice and delivering affordable—a word never mentioned by Senator Lambie—reliable energy to all Australians. We achieve this by getting the cost of clean energy and low-emissions technologies down, not by driving up the cost of meat, fuel or steel, or of aluminium and other goods that use intensive energy. We need to protect the cost of living—something of which Senator Lambie's contribution was completely devoid. Those doing it tough rely on us to have the calibration of our policy position to ensure that they can make their household budgets balance. That's what we are on about. A carbon tax, albeit by a different name, and sector mandates, favoured by supporters of this motion, would shred affordability.

Australia will achieve net zero emissions by 2050 in the Australian way, and that isn't through an expensive, job-destroying, ham-fisted, mandated, one-size-fits-all legislative fix, which is being promoted by the Australia Institute—of which Senator Lambie, in recent times, seems to have become the ventriloquist's doll. We will act in a practical, responsible way to reduce emissions while preserving Australian jobs and taking advantage of new opportunities for industries and regional Australia. Our plan is not a plan at any cost. It will not shut down manufacturing production or our exports. It will not impact households and jobs. There's a very straightforward message: you can either adopt this flawed, glib, green motion, or you can be clever and clean, which is our Liberal-National Party practical approach in this policy area.