The private member’s Bills under consideration by the Committee seek to address a damaging policy vacuum that has been created and maintained by the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Government, namely the absence of a plan to address climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions in line with the science, in step with the international community, and in response to the steepening environmental and economic impacts of inaction.
This vacuum commenced with the election of the Coalition Government in 2013. Australia previously had an effective economy-wide framework for tackling climate change and supporting the necessary energy-sector transition—the Clean Energy Future scheme—but this was irrationally disassembled by the ‘slogans not solutions’ Abbott Government, making Australia the only jurisdiction in the world to adopt and then abandon a systemic approach to decarbonisation.
While the structure and measures outlined in the Member for Warringah’s Climate Change (National Framework for Adaptation and Mitigation) Bill 2020 and Climate Change (National Framework for Adaptation and Mitigation) (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2020 are not precisely the way Labor in government would tackle this critical policy challenge, Labor members of the Committee nevertheless recognise that it presents a considered proposal and should be debated in the Australian Parliament.
To some considerable degree the Bills follow the United Kingdom’s approach of legislating an emissions reduction target for 2050 (e.g. net zero emissions), establishing an emissions budget framework to guide progress within five-year periods, and creating an independent Climate Change Commission to advise on science and policy, and to monitor and report on outcomes.
Labor members support the need for the Australian Government to adopt a commitment of achieving net zero emissions by 2050 (NZE50). As made plain at the recent G7+ meeting, Australia is presently marooned as a distant outlier on this question. Indeed, the federal Coalition Government stubbornly represents a singularly out-of-touch and out-of-date position, isolated between international peers on the one hand, and state and territory governments on the other. What’s more, every significant business and industry stakeholder group, from the National Farmers Federation to the Business Council of Australia, supports a commitment to NZE50.
That extraordinarily strong consensus was reflected in submissions to the inquiry.
Not surprisingly, submissions from stakeholders with scientific and economic expertise in the areas of climate and energy policy were virtually unanimous in their call for the Government to make a commitment to NZE50 and to adopt some kind of framework by which that can be staged, even though many submissions suggested ways in which the Bills could be improved.
For example, the Climate Council noted:
The rest of the World is moving. Australia's major trading partners - China, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and the European Union - have set net zero emission targets, and the United States of America is primed.
Australia is unprepared for worsening extreme climate events and the Federal Government is unwilling to admit that much more mitigation action is needed. Australia's climate record is woefully inadequate and ranks among the worst of G20 nations (Climate Transparency 2020).
In terms of ‘peak body’ submissions from the business sector, the evidence provided by the Australian Industry Group is instructive:
We regard the importance of enhancing our action on climate change as very high. Climate change is a substantial threat to Australia, to our economy, to the operations of our members, and of course to the wider community. Equally, successful action on climate change can be, if we match it well, a big opportunity, including to re-establish a competitive advantage in energy, which has historically been an important part of Australia's economy.
This was a consistent theme in evidence to the inquiry. Its elements are: (1) action on climate change is vital and Australia is not doing enough; (2) there are clear economic and trade benefits of being a proactive and cooperative part of decarbonisation through the global energy transition; (3) further inaction puts Australia at serious risk, and the longer we delay the more the costs and risks grow; and (4) there is a huge opportunity for Australia to benefit from our advantages in innovation, energy minerals, synergistic industries, and high-quality renewable energy resources of every kind.
Any consideration of the evidence to this inquiry will drive home the realisation that the Morrison Government’s policy paralysis and wilful blindness is consigning Australian households and businesses to harm, costs, and risk.
For all those reasons, Labor members supported six alternative recommendations to the Chair’s draft report. It is disappointing that these recommendations, which went to sensible further steps like a full assessment of the costs of climate impacts across sectors and that the Bills be allowed to be debated in Parliament, were voted down by Coalition members of the Committee. Labor members abstained from a seventh alternative recommendation which called for the Bills under consideration to be passed, doing so on the basis that the Bills shouldn’t be prejudged en bloc but rather should be debated in Parliament and subject to the usual scrutiny by individual members and party processes.
It is worth noting that in the course of the report consideration the Liberal Member for North Sydney, Mr Trent Zimmerman, was successful in moving the following amendment:
The Committee notes that the Australian Government has committed to achieving net zero emissions as soon as possible, and preferably before 2050, and that DISER is undertaking ongoing work on how long term emissions reductions can be met as part of the forthcoming long term emissions reduction strategy.
For the sake of accuracy, the Labor Member for Macnamara, Mr Josh Burns, moved to replace ‘Australian Government’ with ’Prime Minister’, as there has been no decision taken by the Morrison Government in relation to what is described as a ‘commitment’. Indeed, we note that since the return of Mr Barnaby Joyce to the leadership of the National Party, the minor Coalition partner, has made it clear that no such agreement of Government on this position has been reached.
The reality is that the Morrison Government’s only present commitment is to reach net zero by the second half of the 21st century—in other words, by 2099. The assertion that there is a commitment to achieve net zero ‘as soon as possible, and preferably before 2050’ is yet another example of hollow, tricky, political wordplay. While the so-called ‘Modern’ Liberals and the climate-denialist Nationals argue over a meaningless non-commitment, the Morrison Government has squibbed the real task of responding to climate change and taking advantage of Australia’s potential to become a renewable energy superpower.
Finally, Labor members note that to a large extent the policies, programs, and supporting agencies referenced during the inquiry as being effective in the twin task of decreasing emissions and increasing renewable energy and energy efficiency were of course established by the previous Federal Labor Government.
These include the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, the Clean Energy Regulator, the Climate Change Authority, the Renewable Energy Target (RET), and so on. All of these programs and agencies have been variously attacked, deformed, or de-funded during the course of the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Government, and some, like the RET, have been abandoned altogether.
The bottom line is that under this third-term Coalition Government Australia continues to suffer by having neither a national energy policy nor a national commitment to, and framework for, achieving the greenhouse gas emission reductions necessary to protect Australia from the acutely harmful environmental, economic, and social impacts of climate change.
Labor members of the Committee acknowledge the work undertaken by the Member for Warringah and her staff in formulating the Bills which were the subject of the inquiry, and we thank the thousands of Australians who took the time to make their views known, the vast majority of whom called on Parliament and Government to do better in addressing the most pressing and all-encompassing challenge of our time.
Mr Josh Wilson MP Mr Josh Burns MP
Deputy Chair Member