Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I was discussing when we were interrupted in our previous debate on this bill, there are broadly two ways in which we can reduce the problems of not having sufficient supplies of liquid fuels. The way that the government is addressing it is to bring our supplies up to 90 days by having tickets on levels of fossil fuel stocks—oil stocks—elsewhere in the world. The other way—the much more significant, much more sustainable, much more strategic way—is to reduce our reliance on these oil supplies. If we can reduce our need to import oil, we are no longer as reliant on it. That is the way to achieve fuel security. By doing that, we're also, at the same time, tackling the huge issue of dangerous global warming. It's a win-win situation. It means that we are changing the types of fuels that we're using in the country and, simultaneously, Australia is doing its part to tackle global warming. It is significant because the transport sector accounts for three-quarters of Australia's liquid fuel demand and that sector is so ripe to have those fuels substituted.

There are two broad ways in which we can reduce the demand for liquid fossil fuels in the transport sector. One is to reduce overall the level of travel that's done in personal vehicles and in freight vehicles. The second is to substitute renewable fuels for fossil fuels. Reducing the amount of fuel-intensive travel overall means shifting some journeys away from personal car use and freight vehicles and to public transport and freight on rail and getting people to actively transport themselves by cycling and walking. All of these strategies are being used much more in other parts of the world. In other parts of the world, people don't have the huge reliance on personal motor vehicle travel that we have in Australia. Here in Australia, almost 90 per cent of our vehicle trips are done by motor vehicles where, basically, you've only got one person. Sometimes you've got two people, but, on average, it's only 1.1 person per vehicle. If we can just shift a small proportion of those trips to public transport or to walking and cycling, we will make a huge difference in the amount of fuel that we need to import.

Of course, there are other benefits. By doing that, not only are we tackling climate change and reducing our problems of being reliant on imported oil, we are also dealing significantly with congestion in our cities. The way you deal with congestion in the cities is to give people the choice of getting out of their cars. We're dealing with health as well. We know we have an obesity crisis in this country. We need to find ways to make our cities work so it easier and more straightforward for people to get exercise into their day. One of the most straightforward ways of doing that is to have active transport so that, when people are on their way to work, to the shops or to pick up the kids from school, they can do that by walking and cycling.

If, as well as investing in fuel substitution and paying money to have these fuel supplies in the world, we just invested a small amount in making it safe for people to walk and to ride bikes, this would have a very substantial and constructive impact on our overall fuel security. The thing that puts people off riding and makes them think, 'Oh, no, I'm not going to get on my bike,' isn't that it's something that they don't think that they could possibly do; it's that they don't feel safe riding. There is one sure-fire way to make people feel safe to ride their bikes, so that, once they've given it a go, they will give it a go again, and that is to give them safe cycling infrastructure. That's what's required. These are the sorts of initiatives that are required as part of a package, a suite of programs, to deal with increasing the resilience of our transport fuels.

The other big area, once you've shifted some trips away from personal vehicles and shifted some freight transport trips away from very polluting, high-fuel-use trucks to much less polluting, much more fuel efficient freight rail, is to look at the remainder of the vehicle trips. That's when you get into working out what the long-term future is for those remaining car trips and truck trips. How can we get the triple whammy where we've got fuel security, we're tackling climate change and we're dealing with air pollution in our country? The way to do that—all the evidence points to it—is to push to have much greater use of renewable fuels, much greater uptake of electric vehicles and a shift to the use of hydrogen in freight vehicles. These are the sorts of initiatives, the sorts of measures, that other countries around the world are taking up with gusto—but not Australia. We are stuck in the last century, stuck with this absolutely dogged attachment to oil, gas and coal.

We know why that is. The vested interests have got the government in their pocket. The government is just saying to the oil companies, the coal companies and the gas companies, 'Anything that you want, you can get it.' That's why we haven't had the initiatives to have electric vehicle uptake here in Australia. We're one of the worst performers in the world when it comes to electric vehicle uptake. We know all the benefits of electric vehicles. They're cheaper to refuel. They're much more fuel efficient due to the efficiency of electric motors. They're cheaper to operate and maintain. And, as I said, they're much better for the climate—but particularly better for the climate when they are running on renewable energy, which is the other part of the equation—and much better for health. There are so many reasons why we should be investing in electric vehicles, but we are lagging behind because of the government being wedded to the fossil fuel industries. If we just had some small initiatives to encourage the use of electric vehicles, then we would have that uptake in their usage. We could be in a situation like the UK, France and other countries, where they have said they are going to be phasing out fossil fuel vehicles by 2030 or 2040. They are planning for it. They know that it makes sense. But here in Australia we are just stuck in the last century.

There is another thing that we are not doing where we've got these existing fossil fuel vehicles. If we put measures in place so that we are increasing the uptake of electric vehicles, with all of the benefits that that's going to have, we know that in the transition period there will be ongoing use and ongoing sale of fossil fuel engines—petrol and diesel engines. At the very least, if we are concerned about reducing our reliance on fossil fuel and increasing our fuel security, we need to be doing something about emissions standards. In the world market, 80 per cent of light vehicles that are sold have standards when it comes to CO2 emissions, but Australia is falling behind. We are becoming a dumping ground for vehicles that have high emissions and low fuel economy.

These are the measures that we need to be acting on, which the government flagged a few months ago but now seems to be backtracking on, unwilling to take the action that's required by insisting that vehicles must have high-quality fuel-emission standards. Such action would we save people money as well. Vehicles with very high fuel efficiency don't use as much fuel, so you don't need to pay for as much petrol or diesel to put into your car. Yes, there's a small up-front cost for having more fuel-efficient vehicles, but the payback period is less than five years. It's cheaper for consumers, good for our environment, good for climate and good for our resilience and for having fuel security in this country. Having higher emission standards would reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by the same amount as taking every car and truck off the road for a year. By 2030, that's how much we would reduce our carbon emissions.

If we had a government that was serious about dealing with our transport sector emissions, fuel security and global warming, it's this package of emissions that would be adopted. But, instead, there's no plan. We've got a government that isn't serious about reducing oil imports, increasing energy security or working out how to decarbonise our transport system and move it away from oil, gas and coal. It's a package of measures that we need. If we had a shift into electric vehicles to seriously reduce the carbon pollution that comes from our transport system, those electric vehicles would need to be fuelled by renewable energy—clean, green solar, wind, geothermal and hydro energy. But, although it might be grudgingly dragged into electric vehicles down the track, the government is still committed to coal fuelling our power systems. We have a massive commitment to coal, as with the Adani coal mine, which the government and the Labor Party are still supporting, and now we've got the government talking about throwing a billion dollars at trying to maintain a dirty, polluting, coal-fired power station—the Liddell power station.

Just think: rather than trying to extend the life of a power station that is polluting the local area and polluting the globe, if you took the sort of money going into the subsidies that the government's now talking about and spent them on encouraging renewable energy, electric vehicles and other initiatives that are going to lead us to a clean, sustainable transport sector, that would create the win-win-win-wins that would drive our transport system in the direction that it needs to go. The Greens will continue to fight for this. We will continue to push for cleaner air, cleaner transport and more fuel security, and I ask the government and the Labor Party to look at the evidence and to look at what makes sense—what the transport planners around the country are saying and what the scientists around the country are saying—and let us shift to a cleaner, greener transport system.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I want to reaffirm Pauline Hanson's One Nation party's commitment to reducing pollution—real pollution: sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxide, particulates; these are real pollutants. We also want to make sure that we have energy—cheap, abundant, accessible and affordable energy—because energy is the key to human progress.

The fundamental driving force for human progress is our own creativity. That has blossomed in the last 167 years, since 1850, and the start of the industrial revolution, but the key slave that has powered this for humanity has been the relentlessly decreasing cost of energy. That is what has driven human progress: our creativity, implemented through cheaper energy, ever reducing in price, until 10 years ago. And now we see the Greens, aided and abetted by the deceitful Labor policies under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard and by the weakness under the Liberal Party, destroying that by reversing the trend in energy prices. We have now seen energy prices increasing for 10 years under the policies of both the Liberal Party and Labor Party. We see that as a retrograde step for human progress—a return to the Dark Ages. We see it as a retrograde step for the standard of living as things become more expensive.

The cost of energy is reflected in the cost of almost every single service, every single product across our community, across our nation. We see the Chinese using our coal and many other countries in Asia using our coal to produce cheap electricity, cheaper than we can sell it for here. We also see that as manifesting then in a reduction in standard of living and an increase in cost of living. These are the things that trouble not only young people but people in their retirement and people on low incomes. Energy has become an essential good. It is not a luxury any more. That means that people on lower incomes find this to be a highly regressive tax.

The Greens, fundamentally, want to reverse human progress. That is anti-human. Senator Rice has mentioned electric vehicles. Electric vehicles have their place, but in small quantities. If we went to widespread use of electric vehicles, it would lead to dramatic increases in the price of electricity because the demand for electricity would rise. Yet, the Greens give us no solution. They prevent hydroelectricity, they prevent the use of coal-fired power stations, they prevent the use of nuclear power generation. Those three are the only base-load providers of energy in this country and anywhere in the world—hydro, coal, nuclear. And the Greens are opposed to all of them. They want us to go on windmills, a product of the 19th century. Old technology indeed. How do we produce hydrogen? We produce hydrogen through electrolysis. That's how we produce hydrogen—more electricity. Senator Rice is advocating for yet more electricity while curtailing the supply of electricity. That's the first point I want to mention.

My second point about the Greens' charade is that they have never, ever produced any empirical evidence that we need to cut the use of hydrocarbon fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. No-one in the world has proven any human causation of global warming or global climate change due to the human use of hydrocarbon fuels. It is an ideology that contradicts science. Let's have a look at some of the empirical evidence. Temperatures have not risen for 22 years. There is no warming. Secondly, the longest temperature trend for the last 160 years was 40 years of cooling from the 1930s to 1976. At that time, the human production of carbon dioxide increased dramatically in the Second World War and in the post-war economic boom. Thirdly, temperatures in the 1880s and 1890s were warmer in Australia than they are today—warmer 120 years ago than they are today. In the United States, which has the best temperature records in the world for the last century, we see that the 1930s were warmer than today. Any changes in temperature are found not to be driven by changes in carbon dioxide. The reverse applies. What we see are changes in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere driven by the changes in temperature, which are entirely natural. That is due to the enormous capacity of the oceans to absorb 50 times more carbon dioxide. They currently contain 50 times more carbon dioxide than is in the entire atmosphere. Slight changes in temperature lead to slight changes in carbon dioxide levels. In the last 20 years, we have seen massive production of carbon dioxide from human activity, yet no increase in temperature. The whole thing is a scam.

The third point: even if we were causing warming, is it detrimental? No. Warming is highly beneficial. In fact, all of earth's past far-warmer periods are known by scientists as climate optimums. Why? Because they're beneficial for humans, civilisation, the planet, animal species and plant species. What we see here is the Greens wanting to control our future and wanting to put us back into poverty, stuck with failed technology. Without subsidies, the Greens' policies are dead, and that is the same for human activity.

We want to commend the government for bringing forward this bill, because the government has fallen down in this area. Previous governments have fallen down as well. We are very pleased to see this minor change, but we argue that we need a comprehensive approach to energy, a freeing-up of markets—getting rid of the energy market that is now governing electricity use and restoring free markets, not controlled markets. The problem with markets today is that they're not markets in energy. The electricity market is not a market; it's an energy racket controlled by subsidies, vested interests and politicised ideologies. What we need to see is a restoration of a free market so that people can make their choice. We are very pleased to see this minor change, and that's why we will be supporting this bill.

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move the second reading amendment standing in my name:

At the end of the motion, add:

"but the Senate calls upon the Government to work to minimise liquid fuel use in Australia, improve fuel security and lower the cost of compliance with Australia's 90 day stockholding obligation, by:

(a) introducing a mandatory vehicle emission or fuel economy standard;

(b) introducing measures to encourage the uptake of electric vehicles;

(c) introducing measures to encourage mode switching from private vehicle transport to mass transit or active transport options; and

(d) the development and publication of a comprehensive transport energy plan directed to achieving a secure, affordable and sustainable transport energy supply."

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank all members for their contributions to the debate on the Liquid Fuel Emergency Amendment Bill 2017 which, as the government's made clear, will enable it to work toward its goal of compliance with the International Energy Agency's requirement that Australia holds 90 days of oil stockholdings by authorising the Australian government to enter into oil stockholding contracts. I note a number of contributions in the debate. The government appreciates the intent from all senators, but appreciates in particular the general bipartisan approach to the handling of this legislation and support of the government's measures in this regard.

The government will not be supporting the second reading amendment moved by the Greens. The government has established a ministerial forum on vehicle emissions to consider possible reforms in three areas, namely fuel efficiency standards, fuel quality standards and noxious emissions standards. The government intends to encourage more efficient vehicles, which will reduce fuel use and mean cheaper petrol bills for families in the future. We are still working through the implementation of measures in all of these areas, particularly by consulting widely with stakeholders, which the government has done and continues to do, so as to ensure a balanced, evidence-based approach to this important area of public policy. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the second reading amendment moved by Senator Rice be agreed to.

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As there have been no amendments circulated and unless any minister wishes to move into a committee stage, I propose to call the minister for the third reading. Senator Xenophon, do you wish to move into committee?

Nick Xenophon (SA, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just very briefly, yes.