Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

It's such a pleasure to follow the member for Fenner because I wanted to pick up on a few of the issues that he raised in his address. As the member for Fenner said, according to the Bureau of Meteorology we have just lived through our hottest year since that organisation began to collect records in 1910. It was also the driest year on record, which came at the end of the hottest decade on record. So, we have the hottest year and the driest year at the end of the hottest decade—three records broken, all within the space of a few months. There's never been a stronger case for action on climate change.

To keep global warming below two degrees, scientists have told us—again and again—that we must pursue ambitious pollution reduction targets now. Thankfully for this country, with climate action comes great opportunities. If Australia is smart, if we actively plan for the future, if this government ends its obstruction and finally shows some leadership on climate change, we can maximise our natural advantages as we move into a lower carbon era. We can both reduce emissions and flourish economically.

Australia is a land with abundant potential for renewable energy. We live on a large and open continent bathed in the crystal blue light needed to power solar farms. Our coasts are long and gusty, perfect for shifting wind turbines. Australians readily understand this. Most people don't see investment in renewable energy as in any way controversial or a matter for politics or ideology. They have been voting with their feet for years. When we came to government in 2007, there were a few thousand homes with rooftop solar panels. We are now at two million homes with rooftop solar panels. It is an industry which has grown at an amazing rate over the last decade. That's more than one in five households reducing their electricity bills and cutting their pollution, saving money while they're helping the environment.

You also see this in business. Wesfarmers, of course, owns the Bunnings stores. They've got dozens of Bunningses now that have rooftop solar, reducing the electricity bills in those Bunnings stores and doing their bit for the environment. Some of these store will have batteries as well, so they'll go towards taking care of the majority of their electricity needs from their panels and their batteries.

The proportion of Australian households with the solar panels on their roofs is higher than any other country in the world, and with that comes a great opportunity for installers of panels, the technicians that work on them. Of course, those large-scale renewable projects come not just with the jobs in installation but also the fact that lowering energy prices supporting other types of businesses as well. This offers particular opportunities for rural and regional towns, which have the space needed to house these massive projects. With proper government encouragement and leadership, renewables can really help drive our regional communities.

Port Augusta, South Australia, a town which was built around coal power generation, is now home to over a dozen renewables projects, including the largest solar farm in the Southern Hemisphere. Developments in that area have attracted 3,000 jobs during the construction phase and an ongoing 200. But it's not just the renewable energy jobs; there are the spin-off jobs and, for example, the cheaper energy produced by these projects being used in other sectors like local vegetable producers, who are growing tomatoes and using solar power for the greenhouses and for the desalination they need to water those tomatoes. You see the jobs in a traditional area in agriculture also being empowered by this vestment in renewables. That region can now reasonably claim to be the renewables capital of Australia, and it's proof of what we can achieve when government, industry and workforce work together.

Queensland has prospects that are just as strong. In the past couple of years Queensland has led the country in renewables construction, with more than a third of our country's commissioned projects. With so much space and light and some of the best renewables resources on earth, much of this is happening in the north of the state. Queensland's largest project is located 60 kilometres south-west of Townsville, where the Haughton solar farm is installing over one million panels—enough to power 170,000 homes.

These success stories can be found right around the country, with workers in Geelong building turbines in the same factories that once built the Ford Falcon, with wind technology supplying extra income for farming communities across New South Wales and with hydro power already generating the vast bulk of Tasmania's energy.

Renewables offer huge upsides for regional communities: jobs in construction, jobs in maintenance, jobs in generation, and, of course, as I mentioned, the greatest supply of cheaper energy. That's even before we look at initiatives like carbon farming or tree planting. Unfortunately, this growth in investment in renewable energy has occurred in spite of the federal government rather than because of it and has occurred despite a bizarre ideological resistance to the sector.

Under this Prime Minister, the coalition has left all of the heavy lifting to the states and territories. The states and territories have all chosen to adopt a policy of zero net carbon emissions by 2050. Every state and territory, every part of Australia, already has this target. Really quite bizarrely, the Prime Minister has said he supports the New South Wales target but he doesn't support having a national target that is the same. It is quite odd. We want to help the states and territories achieve this zero net emissions target. We want to support them in the work they're doing. They are setting goals. They are sitting pathways to zero net carbon emissions. Why wouldn't the federal government partner with the states and territories to achieve that goal?

Our biggest airline, our biggest mining company and our biggest bank support this target. The Business Council of Australia and the Australian Industry Group support this target. The National Farmers Federation and the meat and livestock corporation support it. The government talk about the problem for farmers, but the farmers representative organisations adopted this target. States and territories and business have adopted it. Actually, the people who are looking increasingly isolated in not adopting a zero net emissions target by 2050 are those opposite. This is a mainstream position across our economy and, for the most part, across politics. The Liberal and National state MPs have also signed up to these targets.

It is extraordinary that those opposite can't get it together to do the same. Government decisions, or a lack of decision-making, I suppose you'd say, are placing a handbrake on investment. They're sabotaging the future of the renewables industry, and the sector really is crying out for some leadership at the federal level. Investment in new industries requires policy certainty, and that's the one thing that we truly have not had at the federal level. It requires a stable environment to attract finance. The government is simply refusing to give that certainty, to give the stable framework that will allow greater investment in this area. This obstruction absolutely must end. This is not just a little error of judgement; this is a deliberate sabotaging of the opportunities to invest in our future. It is vandalism, a very deliberate act of vandalism.

A recent survey of renewable energy executives found the lowest level of confidence since the survey began. This comes at the same time that new investment in clean energy projects collapsed by more than 50 per cent between 2018 and 2019. Solar farms are being told not to put the energy they're generating into the grid because the grid can't cope with the amount of energy they're generating. This is truly an absolutely disastrous bungling of the situation by the government. This kind of uncertainty and obstruction is an investment killer, and that means it's a jobs killer. Imagine what Australia could achieve if, instead of blocking progress, the government joined the states and territories or led the states and territories in helping them achieve their zero net emissions targets. Imagine what Australia could achieve if the whole country were pulling in the same direction instead of having state governments moving ahead and the federal government slamming on the handbrake, wasting time with 19 different energy policies. Imagine if the federal government had actually been leading the way on greater investment in renewables.

The government is spending a lot of time talking about the cost of action, but we're now staring at the cost of inaction. This summer has been the most tragic example of the cost of inaction—lives lost, homes lost and massive loss of animal life. The rebuilding task is monumental and it will take years. Years after the cameras and journalists have moved on we will still be rebuilding after this horror summer. But this is a glimpse of our future if we are not prepared to act—not just Australia but of course the whole planet—in addressing the dangerous impact of climate change. Even the Prime Minister admits that our summers are getting longer and hotter and drier and that this means worse natural disasters. What he doesn't have is any plan to deal with that. As a recent report by Deloitte Access Economics found, the annual cost of natural disasters alone is forecast to double to $39 billion by 2050. And it's not just emergencies, of course, that will cost us more. As the Climate Council said:

Rising temperatures, increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, and declining water availability in some of our most important agricultural regions pose significant risks for the nature, distribution, quality, and affordability of our food …

The Prime Minister should tell the truth about the cost of inaction—the cost of inaction for Australian families. He should admit that this cost of inaction—Melbourne University has calculated it at $2.7 trillion—will hit Australian family budgets.

What happens to the cost of insurance as these natural disasters become worse and more frequent? What happens to the cost of food as we live through drought and flood and fire? What happens to the cost of our power bills as the uncertainty of this government's energy policy means a freeze on investment in the new energy that would otherwise be built? A responsible Prime Minister would not hide from these questions. As economist Ross Garnaut argues in his new book, Superpower: Australia's low carbon opportunity, if Australia rises to the challenge of climate change it will emerge as a 'global superpower in energy, low carbon industry and the absorption of carbon in the landscape'. We should be recognising the threat that climate change poses to our nation, and we should be arguing for stronger action globally on this very dangerous phenomenon.

For the last six years, instead, we've had a federal government that has refused to rise to this challenge. The opportunities are there waiting for us to grasp, if only this government were prepared to see them. Australia cannot afford three more years of squandering our future.

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