2015-11-25
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — I was just reading motion 195, and I think a couple of words have been omitted from its long list of matters. I am not sure if it was an oversight, a typo or — heaven forbid! — an error in transcription in the preparation of the notice paper. Amongst the many failures of the government in its first year across health, education and the economy, I was expecting to come to the words 'climate change'. I will not be moving an amendment to this effect, but I will write myself a little note at the bottom that I hope it is not the proposition of the mover that it is okay to get it right on the economy but fail on climate change or vice versa. I suppose the mover's difficulty is that her thesis was that the government promised certain things and it has not delivered them, but in the area of global warming the government in effect did not promise anything substantive, so to say it has failed its own test would not really fit with the thrust of the mover's argument.
All members and all modern political parties should understand it is impossible to move forward with an economic agenda without seeking to deal with the biggest and what will be for a long time the most challenging global issue — that is, global warming. We cannot have an economic agenda on a separate track. The two must be integrated, and it is quite notable how this government has failed to articulate how it intends to do that.
This motion writes off the government as a complete failure. I do not know that the ordinary citizen in the street would necessarily agree with that sentiment. My feeling is that what people out there know of the government's agenda is pretty minimal. It involves the removal of a bunch of level crossings basically and stopping the east–west link. The public seems to be aware that it has done those two things. What it is that they think the government might get on with for the next three years I am not too sure.
But it is hard to describe the government's efforts on global warming as anything other than a failure. First of all, it has extended the life of various unconventional gas drilling licences and then announced an inquiry into that. It has approved ongoing coal exploration permits and then announced an inquiry into that. It has cut the feed-in tariff paid to a large proportion of solar owners by 20 per cent and then announced an inquiry into that, which is in fact being conducted by the Essential Services Commission into the commission's own decision to cut the solar payment. It has got a review going on into how well the Climate Change Act 2010 itself is functioning, when in fact the Climate Change Act is not functioning. The Climate Change Act does not have a target in it and therefore it is ineffectual. Nevertheless the government has announced an inquiry — not into what its aspiration on global warming ought to be but into whether its neutered Climate Change Act is in fact functioning.
It has also got underway a process — you could call it an inquiry if you like — into what it ought to be doing about renewable energy. It has announced a 20 per cent renewable aspirational target. Anybody who understands the energy industry, as green energy market traders such as Ric Brazzale have pointed out, knows that it requires the government to do exactly nothing. It is like writing yourself a to-do list of things in the morning that you have already done, and then with great satisfaction scrubbing them off and giving yourself the rest of the day off. So much for action on renewables, but more fool us who accepted a promise from Premier Dan Andrews, as Leader of the Opposition, that, if elected, he would tell us what his renewable energy policy was. That was the promise. It was not to take action on renewables but, if elected, to develop a policy for renewables.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER — Mr Drum, one could roll through the list of superlatives and play a political bingo card. It does get a bit wearing after a while for those of us directly engaged in these issues. 'World-class public transport' is another one that sends people off their rocker when they are hearing about more signal faults and know that the project to upgrade signals was cancelled. But it is surprising that, with a political party that has had four years in opposition to think about it and 12 months with all the resources of government to do something about it, we do not actually have an agenda on global warming.
The government has, however, done one thing that I applaud. It has increased the Victorian energy efficiency target. Having locked that in, we can now expect to see further examples of the phenomena we have been seeing — that is, either the mothballing, downgrading or in some cases foreclosure of coal-fired power stations connected to the south-east Australian grid.
The government has also got a number of grants it inherited from the previous government, offered to various people who have got various wacky, out-there ideas of what to do with coal now that no coal-fired power station is ever going to be built again. The government has had those sitting in its in-tray for 12 months, and at the end of 12 months it has decided what it ought to do is have an inquiry into it. At the same time there is the perpetual idea of allocating coal from the Latrobe Valley peripheral areas where coal is not currently allocated to a coal-fired power station. That expression of interest process was kicked off by the previous government. It has been sitting in the in-tray of the Minister for Energy and Resources over the past 12 months, and last week she announced an inquiry into it.
The government loves talking about what the federal government should do or might do. It loves talking about global action on climate change, and it seems to be revelling in the almost immediate Paris summit that is going to occur. I am not sure whether any state government representatives will be attending the Paris summit or what it is that they might actually take in their state of Victoria show bag that they could distribute.
One thing the government could do immediately, which would certainly get it noticed on the global scale, is protect Victoria's forests from continued logging and woodchipping. These are the most carbon dense ecosystems on earth. A cessation of logging in those forests would immediately start to draw down CO2 from the atmosphere and replenish those carbon banks.
Who knows? Greg Hunt, the federal Minister for the Environment, may even put his hand up to buy those resulting carbon credits from the state of Victoria in return for a pledge to permanently protect the forests, so there would be a win-win there. But I am not aware that the government is moving in that direction. In fact the policy it took to the election was that there would be an inquiry into it — or, I should say, to set up a stakeholder working group. Twelve months have gone by, and only just now have the terms of reference for that working group been established.
Amongst all that — take out all the good feelings, the great enthusiasm with which they announced that, budding off numerous reviews into every aspect of the energy market and action on global warming — it has been a completely wasted 12 months on a crisis issue, where there is absolutely no time to waste. At least on that particular aspect of governmental performance, that ought to be a standard plank of every single jurisdiction on earth — federal, state and local — the government really has very little to show, except for bits of paper moving around.
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