Climate Change

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (15:01): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation a question on the topic of vision and leadership on climate change and divestment from fossil fuels.

Leave granted.

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS: I am sure that the minister is well aware that the Australian National University has recently decided to divest shareholdings in seven resource companies, including Santos. There have been many who have supported this move and vocally so, and the Greens are proudly part of that grouping. The ANU decision, however, has also been met with criticism from some, including the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, and our very own Treasurer, Tom Koutsantonis, who added his voice to the debate, telling the Asia Pacific Oil and Gas Conference that he thinks the decision is 'humiliating for a research university' and that it represents a 'return to the dark ages'.

He went on to say that 'the ANU prides itself on being a celebrated place of intensive research, so to base this decision on nothing more than a symbolic box-ticking exercise is humiliating for an institution of this kind', adding that 'the state government will always base its resources policy on science and fact rather than emotion and scaremongering'. He then told the conference that the state government would stand by the oil and gas industry. My questions to the minister therefore are:

1. Does the state government truly think that continued investment in the oil, coal and gas industry is economically and environmentally sound, and how does this demonstrate vision and leadership on climate change?

2. Does the minister stand by the Treasurer's words, and does he similarly criticise the ANU decision to divest or does he support that decision?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation) (15:03): I thank the honourable member for her very important questions. In regard to vision and leadership, of course it is South Australia's role in this federation to provide the vision and leadership in terms of climate change because the federal government, of course, has walked away from that responsibility continuously, and no greater example of that is to see, which I somehow managed to do on social media, pictures of Julie Bishop addressing the United Nations, and there was barely a soul to be seen.

If that is not a reflection on the standing of this country around the world in terms of how we are dealing with climate change, I do not know what it is because we have, at a federal level, nothing to say, unlike the rest of the world, where, in fact, at very, very high levels, you will see an absolute commitment to the understanding that climate change is real and that it has been with us for some time and that the time for action was probably a decade ago. Yet here we are still debating, in this country at least, and in one or two others, whether we actually do anything about this. Well, this state won't stand for that. South Australia will lead in climate change areas, if the federal government will not, and that is exactly what we have been doing.

You will note that, in recent days, the state government has been upbraiding the federal government about its hand-picked review of the renewable energy target—hand-picked using people who have self-diagnosed as climate change sceptics. How anyone could think that would be an independent approach to climate change or renewable energy, I don't know.

It is clear from everything we know that we in this country, in this state and around the world will need to de-carbonise our economy. That is what South Australia has been leading on with our renewable energy targets, which have gone from 20 per cent in recent times to 33 per cent. We have now surpassed that with our target of 50 per cent. Just this last month we have heard that, in fact, our renewable generation in this state is now tipping the scales at 39 per cent, so it won't be too long, I think, in the future when a future government will be thinking about how we increase our renewable energy target to another level even greater than the 50 per cent that our Premier instigated in September.

I am not ashamed of the vision and leadership that we show in this state. As I say, there will be other states that will come along with us on this. I know, for example, that the province of Quebec is in discussions right now with the state of Vermont and the state of California about a state-based carbon price and trading mechanism—a state-based one—because the federal government of Canada has similar views to our federal government here in Australia on renewables and on carbon pricing.

The one big call that is almost universal around the world, which we don't hear about too much here in Australia, is that the time to act is now. We must put a price on carbon. We must set up a carbon trading scheme to allow the private sector to do what it does best, that is, to run a market around carbon that actually encourages investment in renewable energy.

But you don't go cold turkey on oil or coal overnight; that is a way of actually destroying your economy. You can't do that. You need to divest yourself slowly off a carbon market into renewables. If you tried to do it straightaway, your economy would collapse, leading to all sorts of untoward problems that we would then have to try to fix.

You can't do it, it's not possible, but you can use economic settings and policy to drive a preference towards renewables, and that's what we have done with the renewable energy target. That's what we have done in this state by passing the pastoral land management act in the other house just this week to actually make it easier for renewable energy companies to come to South Australia, set up their businesses, employ South Australians and drive a new renewable energy economy, which will be the economy of the future.