Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

Tonight I rise to contribute to the debate on the Climate Change Bill 2022 and Climate Change (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2022. The Climate Change Bill legislates the Albanese Labor government's nationally determined contribution change under the Paris Agreement of 43 per cent emissions reduction by 2030. In their words—I've been listening to the debate today—this bill is either unnecessary, if you listen to some, or, as the Greens say, it's largely symbolic.

Just to be clear, this isn't a debate today in this chamber about the science of climate change. It's actually a debate about the bill before us, which is to legislate that target. The Albanese government won the last election and have already changed our nationally determined contribution under the Paris Agreement, as they were able to do as the government of the day. They've made some changes to that document that we took to Glasgow last year, and I also am foreshadowing amendments to insert back some of the mechanisms that we as a coalition government put in. The debate is actually about the concern that legislating the target will bring.

From my perspective as a proud National Party senator and a regional Australian, this bill fails to take into account the impact that legislating the target will have on regional Australia. It fails to appreciate that there are some Australians, some industries, which will be disproportionately impacted by this compared to others. One of the great myths and, I believe, one of the great follies of the public debate over recent years has been that somehow a move towards net zero by 2050 will be painless; it will be sweetness and light; no-one will have a change to their job or an impact on their earnings; and there will be no negative impacts—that, in the words of Helen Haines, it's only going to be upsides and benefits for rural and regional Australia. The fact is that, when we held the committee inquiry into this bill, fast and furious as it was, it wasn't just the National Party saying that rural and regional communities and industries were going to be disproportionately negatively impacted by this; it was the trade unions, one after another, acknowledging that workers in traditional industries like mining, agriculture and manufacturing would be significantly impacted.

We also heard that increased lawfare by vexatious green activists—such as we've seen overseas when they've legislated targets—was going to occur. In the UK, when Friends of the Earth took action against the Secretary of State for Transport over the Heathrow Airport third runway, it held up that project for an incredibly long time. In Germany we've seen this level of lawfare because they've legislated. This is what has happened in a raft of countries, as is outlined in the coalition's dissenting report. That is concerning, particularly as this level of public infrastructure is so essential for us to increase productivity, prosperity, security and safety for our citizens and our nation going forward.

Concerningly, during the Senate inquiry, when we asked environmental activist group after environmental activist group about this—'You're all in favour of legislating this target and putting it into law, and you want greater action on climate change, and you're signing up, so does that mean, then, that you will refuse to take the Albanese federal government or any future federal government of Australia to court using this legislated target?'—one after another they all refused to guarantee that they would not weaponise what we're doing here tonight: legislating a target which we've already agreed to as a country through our nationally determined contribution—I assume the government has a plan for us to get there; I haven't seen that yet—and which they have said is both unnecessary and symbolic. We're actually opening up that sovereign risk for their own government and future governments, thanks to green activists.

We also heard about the significant impact on regional jobs and industries. Unions, industries and researchers didn't take a backward step when asked the question. Absolutely, rural and regional communities are going to be impacted. Absolutely, agriculture, mining and manufacturing are going to be the areas of our economy that will be impacted. There were a variety of ways that these different stakeholders sought to address that impact. I'll leave that for another day.

The third issue that was raised was a lack of transparency, accountability and measurement of what that impact would be; lack of a road map underpinning the target; and lack of understanding of who was going to be negatively impacted.

As the shadow minister for infrastructure, transport and regional development, what I am incredibly concerned about is that the bill puts this overlay on 14 federal agencies to assess any given project on a methodology yet to be made public and understood. When we questioned these agencies, they had no idea how they were going to do this and what impact it would have. That raises justifiable questions: are public transport projects in major capital cities going to be prioritised over dams in Central Queensland, prioritised for federal public funding over roads like the Outback Way or the Inland Rail? Probably, but they couldn't tell me.

One of the things this chamber is supposed to do is actually hold government and executive to account, but you can't do that if they don't know what they're doing, and it was very clear to all those agencies from the north Australia authority, Infrastructure Australia and others that the methodology hadn't been determined, and they couldn't answer basic questions about how legislating this target and making their assessment decisions subject to it were going to impact the decision and who in this country, which communities, are going to benefit from federal government decisions into the future.

When it comes to regional jobs, throughout this debate industry bodies like the Business Council of Australia said we're going to get 195,000 new economy jobs to 2070, while other research providers like the IPA say 653,600 jobs are at risk in the regions. That's actually a negative shortfall of over 458,000 jobs. I want to see net zero impact on regional jobs and I want that guaranteed. One mechanism to future proof regional jobs in a future Paris pledge would be to insert caveats to protect the regions, to make it transparent what the impact of these pathways to net zero are on particular people, particular industries and particular places. And that's why, when our government updated the nationally determined contribution last year in Glasgow, we inserted the need for an independent socio-economic impact assessment for rural and regional Australia, something the Albanese government removed when they took power. They upped the target and took out the caveats of protection. They took out the caveats of accountability for future pathways to net zero. They took away the transparency that would ensure future governments take heed not only of the benefits that will supposedly come with this trajectory but also, to quote the mining council mayors, of the 'disbenefits'.

These mayors were very, very concerned that MPs were only talking about the benefits. Indeed, amendments moved in the other place only sought to assess and measure the benefits that this trajectory would bring for rural and regional Australia. Let's be honest about this: you can't just say we accept the science of climate change and then not accept the reality that some people are going to be more impacted than others. They haven't been consulted, these mining mayors. The Labor Party has not gone to these labour towns and actually had the conversation with them around the impact of legislating this target.

Only the National Party has entered the debate on carbon emissions concerned not with the electoral impact but with the actual impact. One benefit of belonging to a century-old party is that we've been around long enough to understand the impacts of the decisions of previous generations in this place. We've seen it, and the brutal truth is that the net zero path by 2050 will have losers and winners, and that's why last year we were able to secure, as a first tranche of investment, for our communities on that path, in excess of $20 billion of addition new funding into rural and regional economies to build that critical nation-building, future focused infrastructure, to diversify cities like Gladstone and places like the Hunter. We inserted that caveat around assessing the impact—the benefits and the disbenefits—for future governments to build on that $20 billion over the next 15 years. If you look at Europe, whence everybody likes to take their lead on action on climate change, they have over this time, significantly, put hundreds of billions of euros into their regional communities not only to help those communities take advantage of the opportunities but also to overcome many of the challenges that are coming with this pathway.

But we hear precious little debate about the impact of this legislation on actual people. There are a lot of self-congratulatory speeches and there's barely a reference to the reality that world carbon emissions will continue to grow, even as we do the right thing in this country and continue on a downward trajectory with our emissions profile. As I foreshadowed, we will be moving an amendment to the bill to establish a five-yearly assessment of socioeconomic impact by the Productivity Commission. That evidence is to be tabled in parliament every five years prior to future governments resetting that Nationally Determined Contribution target so that they can do it with eyes wide open of who's paying the price.

If you want to know why this is important, just check out Europe. It has led the way on global efforts to decarbonise its economy. Its member countries have also been confronted with and subsequently been forced to deal with unexpected and unforeseen geopolitical, economic and, indeed, climate realities that have resulted in member countries pausing their ambitions for the benefit of their citizens. Individual EU member countries have recognised that protecting their own citizens must come first to ensure adequate supply of the basics: heating, and reliable and affordable baseload power to sustain their national industries. Others, through the course of this debate, have highlighted what European countries—everyone from the UK to Germany—are doing in the face of unforeseen circumstances, and we must be prepared to do the same. We cannot be naive to the fact that we live where we live, nor, in particular, to some of those geostrategic considerations that may be coming our way in the future.

Our priorities have to include not only protecting our natural environment but also ensuring that regional jobs, regional communities and regional industries benefit from everything a government does. We heard evidence in the inquiry that the legislation will have significant economic and social consequences, including that all 89 coal, gas and oil projects currently in the construction pipeline must be cancelled. This is a direct quote from a submission: 'This will come at a cost of at least $274 billion across Australia, equivalent to 14 per cent of our annual GDP—480,000 jobs.' It's not ideology. It's not emotion. They're just the facts that we're all going to have to deal with.

I'll let others talk about the benefits of nuclear. It was great to see the AWU out in force, supporting a zero emissions baseload fuel source to keep their workers in high-paid manufacturing jobs into the future and ensure we can also do our bit to take down global emissions.

I didn't enter politics to help rich people get richer. I actually came into politics to help the marginalised, the vulnerable and the voiceless, and a lot of them are out where I live in rural and regional Australia. They are the people who provide the common wealth that we too often take for granted in this place: the truck drivers, the miners, the foresters and the farmers. As a proud National I will continue to stand by them, I will continue to stand up for them and I will continue to hold this government to account on their behalf.