Senator BIRMINGHAM: (South Australia) (4:35 PM) —I am pleased to speak on the matter of public importance raised by Senator Siewert and Senator Milne, and in particular to acknowledge Senator Milne’s continued advocacy in this area of feed-in tariffs. I have had the opportunity of serving on numerous Senate committees with her and other senators who have assisted with this and related matters, and I know of course that in addition to this motion she has previously introduced legislation into this chamber that has been discussed but not brought to a vote and still stands on the Notice Paper.
The issues we face with regard to this, some of which have been canvassed by a number of the previous speakers, are partly of the government’s own making. Senator Feeney spoke before me. He addressed some of the approaches of the government, not just to the renewable energy sector and the development of more carbon friendly technologies; he also spoke in particular about feed-in tariffs. It is worth looking back on the government’s approach to feed-in tariffs. Back on 30 October 2007 the then shadow minister for the environment, Mr Peter Garrett, said:
… Labor believes it is important that there is a consolidated and consistent approach across jurisdictions to renewable energy policy. A Rudd Labor government will work through the Council of Australian Governments to develop a consistent, national approach to feed-in tariffs.
That is, the type of national approach that Senator Milne is calling for through this MPI and through the other work that she has done.
Then, in the early days of government, Minister Garrett sounded like he was holding his ground on this. On 2 August 2008, he stated:
Through the next COAG meeting in October the Government plans to work towards a harmonised approach to renewable energy feed-in tariffs.
So we have a desire for a consistent national approach and a plan to work towards a harmonised approach. This all sounds very much like the type of national feed-in tariff that Senator Milne and others have aspired to. But we did not have to go too much beyond that October COAG meeting for Minister Garrett to admit, on 18 December last year:
… there will be guidelines, national guidelines, but there will not be a national feed-in tariff.
He also said on that day:
The fact is that there will be feed-in tariffs that operate in different ways in different states.
He is acknowledging that, whilst there would be national guidelines—and Senator Feeney mentioned that the COAG had agreed to principles around feed-in tariffs—such a system and such principles would operate in different ways in different states. There would be nothing national about it whatsoever. There go out the window those promises from October 2007 and from August 2008, that there would be a national, consistent, cohesive, coordinated, harmonised feed-in tariff. They were all thrown out the window for a system that operates in different ways in different states.
That is not to say that a national feed-in tariff is entirely the way to go. Others in this place have already, in this debate, canvassed the cost of such a policy and canvassed the impact that it will have on Australian consumers. I want to look, equally, at the impact it has on climate change policy overall. Right now Australia, like other countries around the world, is developing a raft of climate change policies and, in doing so, risks sending a whole lot of mixed and conflicting messages, within the marketplace and elsewhere, by clutching on to every single idea.
We have the proposal for an emissions trading scheme which has been debated in this place once. I am confident it will be debated again. It is a scheme which clearly needs fixing. The government has brought it forward, but brought it forward with numerous holes, such as the way it treats agriculture and the potential for carbon leakage to other markets and other environments offshore from Australia. These could cost Australia jobs and be of little or no practical environmental benefit.
The coalition firmly believes that we need to get an ETS right and that, in getting one right, we can hopefully deliver for Australia the type of outcome which will reduce emissions without costing Australia jobs. The best way to get it right to start with would be to wait until after Copenhagen and design something that meets the requirements of the rest of the world—that actually works in with what the United States and other major emitting countries agree to and commit to, that does not jump ahead of the game as the government seems intent on doing.
We have the ETS as one option. We then have the renewable energy targets, the renewable energy targets that were increased from the level introduced by the Howard government to the now 20 per cent by 2020 which passed through this Senate only a few weeks ago. That is the second bow. Again, it was regrettable that efforts by the coalition, the Greens and others to try to ensure that, within those targets, there was some recognition of the importance of the development of renewable baseload technologies were not successful. The opportunity was there for Australia to try to start making the transition to a renewable baseload future—and not just putting in place further incentives for some of the very good renewable technologies which are currently well developed but which lack baseload potential, such as wind and others. We would have hoped to see changes there; however those changes were blocked by the government. In the interests of seeing the RET passed and providing incentive for the renewable energy sector, the coalition allowed that legislation to pass.
So we have an ETS proposed by the government; we have a mandatory renewable energy target in place; we have a raft of other encouragements and technologies that exist—for example, the replacements to the solar rebate scheme which provide higher incentives for the types of small home-constructed or home-installed solar units that Senator Milne has been talking about in this model—and, across a number of states, we have different programs operating, including gross feed-in tariffs. So there are numerous different things that are in place at present or that are planned, which are all trying to encourage, and provide extra incentive for, the development of renewable technologies.
The problem is that they are not all consistent. They do not all send the same overall message to the marketplace. In sending different messages, you will actually be imposing additional costs on consumers and businesses. They potentially work against each other, rather than being part of the design for the type of correct, integrated system which needs to be in place.
If there is one thing going for Senator Milne’s approach, it is the call for a national system. Then, at least, this Senate, the House of Representatives and the government overall could consider how a feed-in tariff would work as part of an emissions trading scheme, how it would fit in with mandatory renewable energy targets and how it would fit in with all of the other different smaller programs and incentives that are in place. The problem is that we have so many of these proposals at present that there are serious risks of them falling over one another.
I want to turn, for a little bit, to some of the wording in the motion on the matter of public importance that is before us. It talks about:
The overwhelming benefits of a gross national feed-in tariff for renewable energy for creating jobs, revitalising regional communities and reducing greenhouse emissions.
We hear a lot about job creation when it comes to the renewable energy sector. Job creation is absolutely, fundamentally important, but it is also important, when talking about the energy industry, to note that we should not be looking at, as a country, encouraging job creation in the energy industry in and of itself. It is not about direct jobs in the energy industry.
The energy industry should be, for Australia’s long-term benefit, supporting indirect jobs. It should be supporting them by ensuring that Australia continues to enjoy, wherever possible, comparative advantage in the supply of the lowest cost power possible but noting that it needs, over time, to be shifted to the lowest emissions base as well. What is fundamentally critical when debating how we transform Australia’s energy industry to a low-emission economy is not the number of jobs that that creates within any one energy sector but the number of jobs that supports by providing low-emission and low-cost energy to the rest of the economy. For these reasons we urge the government not to rush in adopting the Greens’ proposal but to apply consistency across its environmental objectives and energy policies so as to give Australia the opportunity for a low-emission but low-cost framework into the future.