Questions Asked of the CARBON POLLUTION REDUCTION SCHEME BILL 2009 [NO. 2] in Committee

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Senator IAN» «MACDONALD» (Queensland) (11:16 AM) —I am very keen to get on with this debate after a one-and-a-quarter-hour delay on some procedural motions that should have taken five minutes. Because the government chose to filibuster with their speeches we have been denied one hour and 15 minutes to deal with this legislation that we have been told time and time again is superurgent and has to be dealt with. We had the spectacle of the Leader of the Government in the Senate wasting 15 minutes of our time in one instance and others from his side wasting more time. We have now lost one and a quarter hours which we could have used to proceed with the issues before us and which are of vital interest to the people of Australia.

I refer the Minister for Climate Change and Water to the domestic offsets program, which is the amendments currently before the chair. I ask that the minister correct me if my understanding is not correct, but I understand that we have to develop offset methodologies for the domestic offsets program. My question to the minister is: what internationally accepted principles will the government use to develop those offset methodologies? I particularly emphasise that I am interested in internationally accepted principles. The minister might indicate to me in what way these principles are ‘internationally accepted’. I would appreciate the minister addressing that query.

Senator IAN MACDONALD (Queensland) (12:08 PM) —Thank you for that. But, if it is good for the goose, it is good for the gander. If you need the advice of this expert committee—and I think it is a good idea—in one instance, why do you not if you are going to revoke it? The same considerations might apply. In a circumstance which I cannot quite think of at the moment, revocation might be attributed to what you referred to as a ‘politically influenced decision’. Were that the case, the same would apply.

We should bear in mind that this legislation does not come in for another 19 months—that is, until 1 July 2011, as I understand it. I acknowledge that this is not going to determine my decision on how I vote, and I am sure that it will not in the end determine Australian support for or opposition to the legislation, but it might just support the Australian majority view that we are perhaps rushing into this. I know that the minister will say that we have been talking about this for 10 years, two years or 18 months—I think that she said since March this year—but these quite substantial and on the whole very beneficial amendments that the government has, kicking and screaming, agreed to need some scrutiny, not scrutiny on the overall impact but scrutiny on the things that I am raising with the chamber at the moment. It seems contradictory. Therefore, I wonder why we are being asked to sit night and day to rush this through, bearing in mind that it will not take effect until 19 months from today.

Minister, I would appreciate your response to the technical question but also your comment on why it is essential to do this now when there are these little things to work through—and this is one that I happened to come across. I am only looking at the explanatory memorandum. I followed it through in the legislation, but that did not give me much help. It takes time to clarify these things. I hope that are able to work these things out. Perhaps if I sit down the minister can answer (a) the technical question that I raised and then (b) why it would not be appropriate for us to spend a bit more time going through these relatively minor issues. But they are things that relate to the operation of the scheme—which, once it is introduced in 19 months time, we need to have schmick and down pat. We do not want complaints in 19 months time with those affected saying: ‘Hey, the minister has revoked this determination without getting the advice of the domestic offsets integrity committee. Why did she do that? She had to get advice from this expert committee when she introduced it and when she amended it. We might be happy with it the way it is, but now she is going to revoke it and she is not getting the advice of this committee.’ It seems an inconsistency. Perhaps it is not. Perhaps the minister will be able to wave it away. But it causes me to worry that the actual implementation by the government of the day needs to be as good and smooth as it can be. This sort of inconsistency, from my experience, would make that difficult.

Senator IAN MACDONALD (Queensland) (5:24 PM) —Senator Barnett’s request is very simple and deserves attention by the minister’s department. The figures the minister reads out are reductions of different base figures of different calculations. I hope that, before we progress too much further, we can have the answer to Senator Barnett’s question so that we can all consider it.

I have risen to ask the movers of the amendment, the Greens, some questions, but I cannot help but follow on Senator Williams’s comment. The minister mentions all of these other countries—this is the bit that I cannot quite understand—but none of them, with perhaps two exceptions, have a legislated scheme. I heard the minister talking about the United States and President Obama’s commitment and how his media releases were pretty good—and I guess they are—but in relation to Copenhagen why isn’t Prime Minister Rudd’s media release as good as President Obama’s media release? I do not particularly follow American politics and their systems, but you do not have to follow it terribly much to know that congress is not going to determine a position by next week, when the climate change conference starts. They will not be determining a position. President Obama may believe that that is what his country should do, but it is a democracy and the President does not rule by decree. He requires approval by congress—by two houses of parliament. I would be happy to be told I am wrong on this, but there is no way in the world, as I understand it, that the American congress is going to make a decision before Copenhagen.

Similarly, in Japan the Prime Minister has indicated an aspirational target, as have many of the other countries, including South Africa. I keep mentioning South Africa because it is a competitor of Australia in the supply of coal to the world, as is Indonesia. They are aspirational targets announced by their leaders. None of those countries is going to have a firm resolve because until we know what the world is doing it is a bit hard to say, ‘We’re going to do what Japan is doing and reduce emissions by 20 per cent,’—although I think Japan’s target is 25 per cent. But to what does this target apply—and to whom and for what industry? And how is it going to operate? There are so many imponderables. What I thought Copenhagen was all about, and what we have been told for month after month, is that Copenhagen was going to bring the world together and arrive at a fairly common scheme so that everyone could go back home and say: ‘Are we in this or are we out? Once we’re in it we can have this world scheme going with world trading of permits, and the bankers will be very happy with all this.’ That is fine, but clearly Copenhagen is not going to do that. So why wouldn’t we take the benefit of what happens at Copenhagen in finalising the design of our own scheme?

Sure, we have agreements in principle. The coalition had nine principles which we sought to have adopted. And I am pleased to see that the Labor government—after severely criticising them and saying they were a waste of time and money, that they could not work, that it would not happen and that they would be pointless—has changed its mind on that. That is good. What is the necessity in the next three days—the dying days of this year’s parliament—of making sure we vote on these things? I pointed out an obvious error in the legislation this morning. It was obvious to me when I had a look at it. It is an error that has occurred because we are trying to rush something through for no purpose.

I again ask the following question. Australia produces less than 1.4 per cent of global emissions of greenhouse gas, and we are being told in this debate that, unless we vote for this in the next two or three days, Tuvalu and a lot of other Pacific island countries are going to disappear under the sea, suggesting that if we pass the Rudd government’s legislation, which will reduce world carbon emissions by 0.2 per cent, then that is going to save Tuvalu and that if we do not then it is the fault of all of us that Tuvaluans will be swimming above what used to be their homes. It just defies logic. So why don’t we wait and learn from and take advantage of what the rest of the world is doing? We would then come back and say to the Greens and the other people involved in this: ‘Look, that’s what the rest of the world’s doing. On this point they have a better idea than we have; on that point they have a worse idea. We’ll try and convince them.’ Why wouldn’t you do that? Why is it essential that in the next couple of days we have this legislated? Mr Rudd has already done what President Obama has done: he has issued a press release to the world saying, ‘This is our target.’ I think the coalition says, ‘Yep, we agree with those targets, but let’s see what happens.’

I am sorry to delay that—for a couple of minutes only, I hasten to add—because I do want to get on to the amendment before the chair, which I understand is from the Greens and relates to effectively charging for credits that, under the scheme as originally proposed and as proposed to be amended, will be given out free to emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries.

In asking this question of the movers of the motion, I again point out something that I have raised in this chamber before. I was cleaning up my desk and I again came across the front page of the Townsville Bulletin of 26 November, with the headline ‘Yabulu closure threat: PM asked to intervene to save 1200 jobs’. The spokesman for that nickel-refining company in Townsville has said that, if this scheme goes through, 1,200 working families in the Townsville area, where I have my office and hang out, will no longer have a principal breadwinner. I invited the minister, on several occasions, to say this was wrong. All we got was that the Yabulu people, the Queensland Nickel people, were going to talk to her department in the next couple of weeks. That is pretty good. If the minister has her way, in the next couple of weeks this will be legislated, and then it will be goodbye to the jobs of 1,200 people in my community. I feel for those people; I really do. I get emotional about those people.

This refinery, I might just add by way of explanation, was about to shut six months ago. A clever businessman came in, bought it and kept it going. There was huge relief in Townsville, because there had been a pall over Townsville when we thought that one of our three refineries was going to close. We have the nickel refinery that I am talking about, the zinc refinery that has also been prominent in this debate over the years and the copper refinery. They are the sorts of things that, if we do not get this right, could be a problem.

In the case of nickel, we used to get nickel ore from up the back of Townsville at a place called Greenvale. The nickel ore ran out so, rather than shut down a valuable asset and all the jobs, including port jobs, in Townsville that are associated with it, the then owners used to bring the nickel ore from Noumea or the Philippines, ship it into Townsville, refine it in Townsville and then ship it out to the world, keeping lots of jobs and wealth in the country. Most of the nickel ore now comes from the Philippines, where there was a nickel refinery. It was not a terribly efficient nickel refinery. It was one that operated without any restrictions on the amount of its emissions to the world. It was a real greenhouse disaster, but it is still there. It was not shut down or pulled to pieces; it was just put in mothballs. If the nickel refinery in Townsville can no longer operate, I guess that one would be un-mothballed and put back into production to use the ore that that section of the Philippines is currently selling to an Australian company to refine in Townsville. These things really need to be addressed.

I always get very annoyed when the minister looks at anyone who happens to disagree with her and Mr Rudd and says things like: ‘Ah, you’re a climate change denier,’ ‘Ah, you don’t want this scheme to go through; you don’t want to do anything’. That is simply an untruthful explanation of my position. I accept the climate is changing. I do not know whether man is doing it, but then 20,000 of the top scientists in the world do not know either. Half of them think they know and the other half think they know as well but they have a different view, so what chance do I have? I go along with the principle of taking out some risk insurance. Even if it does not happen we should take out insurance, but do not do it before everybody else and put Australia’s economy and jobs at risk just to swan over to Copenhagen and say, ‘I’ve got my legislation passed’.

I believe we should do something and so do the Australian public. In fact, I believe I am in the substantial majority. Yes, we should do something even if it is not true. You might recall the Howard government did a lot of things which reduced greenhouse gas emissions—the Greenhouse Challenge Plus and MRET, the mandatory renewable energy target. I could go on for longer than I have.

Senator Barnett —First greenhouse gas office.

Senator IAN MACDONALD —The first greenhouse gas office in the world, Senator Barnett. We did a lot of things to reduce emissions, and so we should have. I agree with the minister on that: we should be reducing our carbon emissions—but not legislating in this way, and putting at risk 1,200 jobs in my home town, for a scheme that may or may not achieve agreement. What would it matter if we waited until parliament resumed and say: ‘Okay, we’ve seen what everyone is doing in Copenhagen; we’re convinced everybody is going to do something, or at least everybody who counts to Australia; and if everyone who has an impact on the Great Barrier Reef is doing something, the people whose emissions do affect the Great Barrier Reef, then so should we’. I am very firm on that.

I have distracted myself, for which I apologise to the chamber, but I was coming back to the movers of the motion. As I understand their amendment, this will mean a massive price rise across the board for Australian industries, putting jobs at risk, as I have just said. I ask the movers what modelling has been undertaken to look at the cost increases that might result from this amendment being carried. If there are no cost increases, I would like the mover to explain how that could possibly be.

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