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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-07-26 Daily Xml
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Climate Change

The Hon. J.M. GAZZOLA (15:08): My question is to the Minister for Climate Change. Could the minister update the chamber on South Australia's climate change policy, including recent public commentary?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (15:08): I thank the honourable member for his most important and very sensible question. Last month, we recorded another climate record. It was the warmest June in the 21st century, I am advised. This means that each month of this year has set a monthly record for global temperatures and I think it is important that we all acknowledge that climate change is now beyond controversy. It is real and we have an obligation to act.

South Australia is, of course, proudly leading the nation and the world in our action on climate change. The state has an ambition to make Adelaide the world's first carbon neutral city and a showcase for renewables and innovation. We have set a zero net emissions target for 2050, a target consistent with the expert scientific advice to limit global warning to at least 2° Celsius.

Each region of the state is preparing adaptation plans to deal with the changes that global warming may be bringing to us. Our efforts are recognised, of course, nationally and internationally, perhaps best captured by a senior IKEA executive standing up and telling the world's businesses gathered at Paris at climate negotiations last December that:

…to build a low carbon growth and jobs we need common sense, long-term policy making, such as we see in South Australia…

Common sense and much of the expert economic opinion tells us that we need a national emissions trading scheme. A national ETS is something this government has long called for but we were not the first ones, of course, to propose a national ETS, neither was it a federal Labor government that did that. It was, of course, a Liberal who first announced the national ETS. I am advised that it was not Malcolm Turnbull. It is timely that we discuss in this place a national ETS and celebrate the foresight of this Liberal because on 17 July 2007 a very clever Liberal announced a national ETS. In making this announcement this person said—

The Hon. J.M.A. Lensink interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! The minister has the floor.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: In an address to the Melbourne Press Club at the Hyatt Hotel Melbourne this person said:

Being among the first movers on carbon trading in this region will bring new opportunities and we intend to grasp them. The Government will examine how to ensure that Australia becomes a carbon trading hub in the Asia-Pacific region.

He also said in this speech:

Now we must position Australia for a low carbon future. We face a major new reform challenge in designing an emissions trading scheme and setting a long-term goal for reducing our emissions in the absence of a global carbon scheme. These decisions will be amongst the most important Australia takes in the next decade.

He then went on to say:

Today I announce key decision features and administrative arrangements for this crucial piece of national economic architecture.

Who was this Liberal, Mr President? Who was this very clever Liberal? It was none other than the prime minister John Howard. When you contrast the leadership shown by the prime minister John Howard at that time with how our own state Liberal leader has marked this anniversary, how did he do it: not by rising to those lofty leadership heights shown by prime minister Howard at the time, but more embarking on a Tony Abbott style scare campaign.

Rather than grapple with the failures of the national electricity market and the need for reform he decided to attack renewable energy and put on show the failure of his leadership. Instead of acknowledging the failures in federal gas policy and the impact this is having on manufacturing in this state, he went after wind and solar energy. He has joined forces with the Murdoch media to preach doom and gloom about renewables and, as I said, instead of aspiring to that lofty leadership shown by a former National Liberal prime minister, Mr Howard, he has slipped into that scaremongering mould that is all too easy for people like him and the ilk of Tony Abbott.

He even parrots the likes of Judith Sloan from The Australian and echoes the right wing conservative ideological tripe that comes out of the Menzies Research Centre and the IPA. Just to give you a taste of how outrageous this propaganda is let me just read to you a few quotes from around the country—they are coming from a certain style of media. This one is from The Sunday Telegraph Sydney dated 10 July:

Power shock. New South Wales families pay highest electricity prices in the world.

Australian families are being slugged more for power than any other developed nation.

Here we go again, the Sunday Herald Sun from Melbourne:

Electric shocker.

We pay world's top prices.

Victorians are not just paying more for electricity than consumers across Australia—it's more than any developed nation in the world.

There you go: the Sunday Herald Sun from Melbourne. What do we have from TheCourier Mail dated 9 July 2016? It states:

Queensland electricity prices are rising faster than anywhere in the nation and now threaten to become more expensive than anywhere else in the developed world.

I guess in this modern day of communications and the internet they do not assume that people are going to go around reading different copies of papers from that stable from different parts of the state. I will spare you what they said about South Australia. I think the worst they could say about South Australia was that we are second to Victoria and, indeed, Western Australia had a similar sort of publication.

I just point this out because of the outrageous nature of this propaganda and the view that we will just swallow it and that we do not have any critical thinking capabilities whatsoever. Clearly, those members opposite certainly do not. In fact, and this really saddens me terribly, it has been reported that the Liberal Party made up figures for the Murdoch media. I can go to another article that I think I kept a clipping of because it was so much fun. It states: 'Coalition "fed" dodgy numbers on wind energy to Murdoch media.' This was published by reneweconomy.com by Mr Giles Parkinson. The article states:

It appears that South Australian conservative opposition may have been the original source for the dodgy numbers that form the basis of an erroneous front page story on The Australian this week about wind generation in the state. RenewEconomy understands from several sources—

because they leak like sieves over there—

that the South Australia opposition Liberal Party, a big opponent of wind energy, obtained data from the Australian Energy Market Operator and then 'stuffed the numbers up' quite spectacularly, and passed its mistaken conclusions on to The Australian.

I think The Australian might even have published a retraction at some stage, or a clarification. They go on to say:

RenewEconomy noted in its article that the errors were so bad that they might have been funny, were it not for the fact that so many in the conservative side of politics, and mainstream media too, accept them at face value. It's somewhat ironic, then, that the numbers could be sourced from the Coalition. In the frenzied attack on renewable energy, the Coalition and the Murdoch media across Australia appear to feed off each others myths and mistakes.

So that is a bit of mirth, Mr President. It just shows you, once again, the depths the opposition will plunge to when they are trying to use the mainstream media to get a false view to the community. It just shows you what the media will do around the country, in terms of the headlines, to scare people. They are saying the same thing to different populations and think that nobody will compare and contrast them.

I have to say it is indeed ironic to read that into Hansard, and I am very pleased. But who is this mysterious Liberal opposition member who could have got it so wrong? Who is the person who actually, I think, 'stuffed-up the figures'—was that the quote? I will be corrected by Hansard when they check the actual quote from the paper. Who was it who did that? I will quote again from Mr Richard Denniss, the Chief Economist for the Australia Institute, in an article that he headlined 'There's no fun in energy facts':

The folk who predicted the carbon price would give us $100 legs of lamb, that China's demand for coal will keep rising and that NSW will run out of gas are at it again. Wind energy, we are now told, is ruining the economy. Run for the hills!

That is Mr Richard Denniss in the Australian Financial Review, not a paper well known for its support for people like the Labor Party. He goes on at great length and I could quote this and take up the rest of question time, but of course I will not be so insensitive. I will just quote another paragraph.

In 2014 Tony Abbott commissioned climate sceptic Dick Warburton to lead an inquiry into the Renewable Energy Target (RET). Embarrassingly for all concerned, the report found that investment in wind and solar was pushing down electricity prices and that cutting the RET would drive up energy costs. Whoops.

That is in the Australian Financial Review. The bluster from the opposition is incredible, but what is even more incredible is that they can't even read the figures. They can't even get it right. Once that was exposed, the Leader of the Opposition in the other place had to walk back—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Minister, take a seat. We only have 17 minutes left. Order! Seventeen minutes. Order!

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: There are a number of crossbenchers who actually want questions. Would the Leader of the Government please desist and set a reasonable example. The minister has the floor and there are a number of crossbenchers who want to ask questions and will not get a chance if you keep on interjecting. Minister.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Without interjections, I could wrap this up pretty quickly. Once the Leader of the Opposition in the other place was made aware of this incredible stuff-up, he had to, of course, walk back his attack. So let's have a quick look at some of the facts. A proper analysis of the data from the Australian Energy Regulator shows that large spikes in the national electricity market were commonplace, occurring nearly once every second day in summer, and that South Australia was the worst affected because of its reliance on just a few companies and on gas.

However, as analysts have shown in recent weeks, most of those daytime peaks in the South Australian market are no longer present because of rooftop solar and wind in the state. Another fact that the media will not tell you about is electricity retailers' profit margins. Bruce Mountain, Director of Carbon and Energy Markets, looked at the retail price offerings of Australia's three biggest electricity retailers—Origin, AGL and EnergyAustralia—in the New South Wales, Victorian and South Australian markets. He found that these three companies cover 90 per cent of the South Australian small customers and that our state is the most profitable market for those retailers. Another factor, as a media outlet has written:

…the AER has repeatedly underlined, the principal causes of the high electricity prices over the last few weeks [in South Australia] has been record high gas prices and supply constraints to the main link to Victoria.

This of course was the cause of our immediate problems in the recent weeks. But we also need to address the failings in the national electricity market, something that many experts have called for but that the opposition just sadly does not get. For example, Mr Hugh Saddler, Senior Principal Consultant at Pitt&Sherry said in The Guardian

It was designed in the 1990s—

that's the NEM—

when the assumption was the energy supply would mostly be coal…[in the case of] a system with a large penetration of renewables [such as] South Australia—you need a completely different system.

These calls have been echoed by other analysts, community groups, environmental groups, as well as business groups. The reform of the NEM and greater interconnection is something that this government has been advocating—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Reform of the NEM and greater interconnection is something that this government has been advocating for some time. While those opposite sat silent—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! Minister, please take your seat. Most of the interjection at the moment is happening from the two people who should be setting examples in this chamber. Please desist and show some respect not only to this chamber but also to the people of South Australia by allowing the minister to answer your question. Minister.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Thank you for your protection, sir. Whilst those opposite sat silent during the election campaign, the Premier wrote to both the Prime Minister and the opposition calling for these issues to be addressed. Both the energy minister and I jointly wrote to our respective federal and state colleagues making similar calls, and in addition this government is providing funds towards the study on a new interconnector because we recognise that this is necessary under the current NEM before an interconnector can be built. We will continue with these programs. The need to decarbonise our electricity grid is clear and, as Mr Tony Wood and David Blowers have written recently:

Refusal to tackle climate change is not an option. The weight of evidence that human behaviour is leading to catastrophic global warming is overwhelming.

And the Leader of the Opposition is laughing, Mr President. He does not get climate change. The question for policymakers—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! Minster, take your seat. We have 13 minutes left. I am sure there are about four or five other questions that could be asked. There shall be no further interjections.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: The number of interjections from the Leader of the Opposition, he might be the secret Liberal mole—

The PRESIDENT: Just answer the question, minister.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: —who leaked those stuffed-up figures, Mr President.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! Minster, take a seat. The Hon. Mr Maher, as Leader of the Government in this house, I think it is your obligation to set the example in this chamber. You are not doing that at this stage. So I ask you to set the example.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: Point of order. He referred to me as a mole and I would ask him to withdraw.

The PRESIDENT: Yes, minister, it is inappropriate language.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: I did not refer to him as a mole; I said he might be the mole. That is a different thing altogether. The person who leaked the figures.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: Point of order. This is a disgraceful contempt of the Legislative Council. I ask the minister withdraw whether I am a mole or the mole. I ask him to withdraw.

The PRESIDENT: Before you get up minister, I think what is detestable and contemptible in this place is the behaviour of the two leaders of the respective parties. Minister, whatever you said, I will have to check Hansard, but I do think it is appropriate that you withdraw the comment.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: Yes, Mr President, I do withdraw any reference to Mr Ridgway being a fluffy creature at all. Perhaps I will just say that he might be the person who leaked this dodgy information to the media instead, on the basis of this incredible red flush to his face and the surprise that we have this information before us. I will finish the quote:

The question for the policymakers is not whether we act to reduce emissions but how we can do so in a way that will make the transition to zero emissions as smooth as possible.

It is time to call out this propaganda campaign. The misuse of statistics, hysterical headlines and distortion of facts to levels that would have done Pravda proud during the height of the cold war, that is the fact of the matter. That, of course, is a quote from another very clever person, the former climate change minister of a few years ago. It is still very relevant today to their current situation, but they still do not get it. There is no doubt that, when you refuse to acknowledge the facts, you end up misleading people. Let's face it: the Leader of the Opposition has form when it comes to misleading South Australians (that is the Leader of the Opposition in the other place). In the past few weeks he has been at it regarding waste policy, and now he is at it again with climate and energy policy.

He has no plans, no ideas, no solutions whatsoever. He is simply not fit to lead, particularly when you look at the rabble opposite: why would you even want to? He is not fit to lead them, he is not fit to lead the state. It is time those opposite found a real Liberal to lead them, a real Liberal who takes them back to their roots, a Liberal like John Howard, who understands the challenges of climate change.

The Hon. T.J. STEPHENS: Mr President, this is an obscene abuse of question time. How long has the minister been going on with this rubbish? For goodness sake, sit him down and let's get on with question time.

The PRESIDENT: Minister.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: It is this mob opposite who deny the facts, who deny the science, who go out there to mislead the media—that is all they are good for! They go out with dodgy figures and dodgy facts.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! The Hon. Mr Parnell.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Mr Parnell has the floor.

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