I support the substantive motion that Senator Wong wishes to move, but I will not support the motion to suspend standing orders. I support the substantive motion, although a little reluctantly. I think we have to be clear here that all this really does is provide 60 minutes of debate for this. It doesn’t necessarily force the minister to do anything different. We’ve already had a minister explain the government’s position here for five minutes. I doubt that will shift all that much over 60 minutes. But it is important to stand up for transparency, so I will support that approach.
It’s particularly important in this case given there remain a lot of questions about the modelling behind the strategy, or at least the preference, of the government to move towards a net-zero 2050 target. As I said the other day, I had a small briefing on the modelling that saw some results, but I did leave the room thinking that I was being asked to marry a girl I hadn’t met. There was very little detail.
Senator Watt interjecting—
Senator CANAVAN: She probably would say no, Senator Watt, but we in the Nationals at least believe in chivalry! We believe that you should take her out for dinner or a drink or something before you sign the marriage contract. We in the National Party are definitely not ready to sign this contract at this stage. That is because, to some extent, the strategy from the government right now does ring a little bit like the old joke about economists: if you get an economist on a desert island with a can of tuna their solution will be to assume a can opener. That’s the way economic models work. What we’ve got here is an assumed can opener plan for net zero emissions. We assume that this hydrogen will come like manna from heaven, from nowhere; it doesn’t work right now, but we assume it works and everything will be alright. People in regional areas that rely on industries for their jobs deserve more than assumptions—because we all know that the assumptions are the mother of all.
It is very important too that we get modelling that seems to be inconsistent with modelling about net zero from other countries. Why is it inconsistent? Just yesterday the United Kingdom released modelling from the UK Treasury on their net zero plan. The UK Treasury’s modelling shows that to reach net zero emissions by 2050, exactly the same target that we are proposing, the UK would need a carbon price of AU$295 a tonne—AU$295 a tonne! So we in this place can glibly say we’re going to reach net zero by 2050, that it’ll be easy—the Greens want to do it by 2030 or some ridiculous date—but over in the United Kingdom the hard, cold facts show that this will be a mammoth cost on every single Australian. Remember, when the carbon tax was $23 a tonne—we had it there for a short period but the Australian people rejected it in no uncertain terms—electricity prices went up by 10 per cent. By how much are they going to go up when we impose a carbon tax of 10 times that amount! All Australians will be hurt by that and many Australian jobs will be lost.
There are also a lot of questions here about how different and important industries have been treated in this modelling. My understanding from the limited questions and information I got the other day is that, in the case of the coal projections—coal production is expected to fall in Australia under net zero 2050 emissions—the modelling does not differentiate between different types of coal. In fact, it treats Australian coal the same as dirtier and lower quality coal from Indonesia and South Africa. Why would Australian modelling downplay the greatness of Australian coal? Australian coal is the best in the world, it’s the cleanest in the world, and it’s most likely to remain in very strong demand even if the world moves away from coal. Even if there are massive reductions in coal demand around the world, countries in our region are likely to continue to want the high-quality coal that comes out of the Hunter region to power their stations.
We should be backing and supporting Australian jobs. In supporting this motion, that is what I’m doing. I’m standing up for the men and women in this country who do the hard work that pays our wages, that pays our bills. We are only here in this great place in Canberra thanks to the men and women who work hard and pay their taxes on Monday and Tuesday every day of the week—for the rest of the week they get to earn a bit of money for themselves, but the first two days of their week is for us. We should pay them back by at least being up-front and open with all the figures we’ve got on the table so they can see whether they want to support this at an election.
