16-March-2009
Portfolio Media Releases, Emissions Trading Scheme
Topics: Emissions Trading Scheme, Government obsession with Coalition, Telegraph poll.
DAVID SPEERS: Andrew Robb, welcome to the programme.
ANDREW ROBB: Thanks David.
DAVID SPEERS: Let me first try to clear up what the Coalition’s position now is on climate change. Do you accept that the cost of doing nothing is greater than the cost of taking action?
ANDREW ROBB: Our view is that if you bring in a deeply flawed scheme it is worse than no scheme at all. The thing is you’ve got to get this thing right. We came to the last election with a detailed emissions trading scheme and we have said ever since that we will review that policy, that scheme which remains our policy but we are reviewing it in the light of what the government does, it’s green paper, its white paper, its exposure draft, the Garnaut Report, an independent review that we have had commissioned ourselves. Now we’ve got a two month senate inquiry which is broad ranging, for the first time looking at lots of issues that haven’t been looked at all. We will take all of that into account in reviewing the policy we put to the last election and we will put a firm position in front of the Australian people.
DAVID SPEERS: But the policy you put at the last election was for an emissions trading scheme. Do you still think, even if it is not the scheme you wanted, it is better than doing nothing?
ANDREW ROBB: Well it depends on the scheme. A deeply flawed scheme; if you take what the Government has put together; our examination of that now over several months is that it would cost tens of thousands of jobs, it would kill investment and it won’t deliver any CO2 reduction of any consequence. So it sort of fails on all counts. Kevin Rudd went to the last election and many times said before the election “we will bring in a scheme which delivers deep cuts in carbon emissions and will not disadvantage any of our export industries or import competing industries”. Now, their scheme fails on all counts, it is worse than no scheme at all, their scheme, and it will not get the support if they don’t make major changes.
DAVID SPEERS: But the Coalition does appear to have changed its position on this as well. Only last year Malcolm Turnbull was describing an emissions trading scheme as being a central mechanism, the biggest element in the fight against climate change. He is now saying it is not an essential tool, not a necessary tool. Why the change?
ANDREW ROBB: Well what we have said is that an Emissions Trading Scheme is one tool in the climate change toolbox, there are many other elements as we have looked through the Garnaut Report and our own investigations and further developments in this whole area around the world. Clearly there are a range of tools that need to be used. The Government, because it has focussed singularly on one thing, an emissions trading scheme, to the exclusion to all the other tools in the climate change toolbox, they have come up with a dog of a scheme. They have come up with a scheme that will cost tens of thousands of jobs if implemented. They have come up with a scheme which will kill investment; there will not be a project in Australia in the future that won’t get off the ground without companies coming cap in hand to get big slabs of free permits. Now that will kill a lot of investment and the thing is they won’t do anything of any consequence about CO2 emissions. It is just a failure on all counts.
DAVID SPEERS: Just clear up, will the Coalition still take action regardless of what the rest of the world is doing on climate change?
ANDREW ROBB: Well already, Malcolm Turnbull had a major speech in January, January 24th, where he laid out a whole host of other areas to do with soil carbon, capturing a lot of CO2, enormous scope for capturing…
DAVID SPEERS: But on an emissions trading scheme specifically, this was the position that you would take action without the rest of the world.
ANDREW ROBB: David, the objective is to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That is the objective. One thing that you can do is reduce the emissions, another thing you can do is capture more carbon in soil, you can improve energy efficiency; reduce energy requirements across the whole built environment, all of our commercial buildings. There is enormous scope to reach targets in the next 10, 15, 20 years at least what the Government is doing, even before you get to an ETS, so an ETS or some system of setting a price ultimately is necessary but there are many alternatives the Government hasn’t looked at on all these fronts.
DAVID SPEERS: But last year your position was that an ETS is necessary and Australia should do it regardless of what the rest of the world does. Now it sounds like you are saying it’s only a tool in the box, it’s not necessary.
ANDREW ROBB: Our position is that we must do everything possible to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The scheme the Government has come up with will be ineffectual.
DAVID SPEERS: But your own position..?
ANDRERW ROBB: And it will also... One; the Government they’ve been elected to bring in a scheme. They have a scheme on the books which is going to be voted on in two or three month’s time. The critical thing is to look at what are they proposing to do and how effective is it and are there better alternatives. We, as an Opposition seeking to keep the Government accountable, have already identified a whole range of alternatives and we have looked at their emissions trading scheme and it is a dog. It is not going to deliver. We want, with this Senate Inquiry, to look more broadly at alternatives. There are alternative emissions trading schemes, in North America there are emissions trading schemes which don’t kill the balance sheet of companies, which have a marked impact on CO2 emissions without killing jobs. Now that is the sort of focus the government needs. They have not consulted properly, they have been narrow minded, they have been arrogant about the way they have gone about this whole scheme and the Australian community will pay very dearly. You saw it with the Prime Minister’s comments today
DAVID SPEERS: Alright, I’m still just trying to clarify whether you have walked away from the principle of emissions trading.
ANDREW ROBB: No, we are looking at all the schemes including emissions trading, better emissions trading schemes. We want to look at all of the alternatives. One of the things is that Treasury was prohibited; they were told you cannot model any of the other major alternative schemes that are presented around the world. They just modelled a very narrow version and they assumed that every other country of the world was part of an emissions trading scheme basically from Day 1. Of course, how fallacious and ridiculous that was and now you have super imposed a world economic meltdown and the whole irrelevance of that Treasury work is now being properly exposed.
DAVID SPEERS: Andrew Robb, a lot of this debate of course is being consumed by focus once again over the last week or two on Peter Costello, what is going on there?
ANDREW ROBB: Before we just finish on this thing, David, the Prime Minister today in trying to defend a deeply flawed emissions trading scheme, a centre piece of their whole three year term, did not know perhaps one of the key elements of the Emissions Trading Scheme, he did not realise that coal was not to be given any assistance. Thousands and thousands of jobs, 5,000 jobs in Xstrata alone, and here he is on his feet, two months before we vote on it and the Prime Minister does not know the detail; is ignorant of the key elements of his emissions trading scheme. No wonder Industry are pouring through my door, one after the other, in despair about the thousands of jobs, the ignorance of the Government, the failure of the Government to engage properly on this, the arrogance of the imposition…
DAVID SPEERS: … (inaudible) coal, if they did address that, if they did offer free permits or some sort of rebate to coal, you would get on board?
ANDREW ROBB: Well what we put with the Shergold model was that we would bring in a scheme where you give 100% protection up to world’s best practice for all of the trade exposed industries, including coal until the rest of the world come on board. I mean the coal industries are competing against Mongolia, and Indonesia and South Africa. None of these countries will have a scheme probably in my lifetime for that matter. Now we have to do things, have a scheme designed that doesn’t strip jobs out of the Australian economy and send them, export them over to Mongolia and Columbia and all of these places that are very serious competitors of ours in coal. The Prime Minister must have sent a signal of enormous concern to industry across Australia today that he could stand there, two months before we vote on this scheme and not know, perhaps one of the key elements of their emissions trading scheme. It beggars belief.
DAVID SPEERS: Now briefly before we go, Peter Costello, what’s the deal, what’s going on? There is a lot of focus on what’s happening in the Party.
ANDREW ROBB: Again today, we asked 10 questions today in the House, every question the Government obsessed about the Coalition. We’ve got 80,000 people who have lost their jobs in the last two months in Australia and yet the Government turns every question of ours into some obsession about Peter Costello or Malcolm Turnbull.
DAVID SPEERS: Is nothing going on?
ANDREW ROBB: Peter is a very strong contributor, Peter was the greatest Treasurer in Australia’s history, he’s got so much to offer. But Malcolm is the leader. Malcolm is doing an excellent job, a very impressive performance on the weekend. He is giving us direction and the thing is, we are focussed, ironically, we are the ones focussed on jobs, the Government are focussed on us and at a time of great crisis around the world we need a government that is not obsessing about it’s opponents who are not feeling vulnerable politically, who are actually sitting down and doing the hard yards on keeping Australians in work.
DAVID SPEERS: What did you make of that survey in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday that more of your colleagues want Peter Costello than Malcolm Turnbull.? Apparently a poll of you and your colleagues. Were you surveyed as part of that?
ANDREW ROBB: They didn’t call me.
DAVID SPEERS: They didn’t call you at all?
ANDREW ROBB: They didn’t call me and actually the colleagues that I have spoken to, none of them, the handful that I have spoken to, the only ones I have spoken to, everyone of them, none of them were called.
DAVID SPEERS: So the claim that everyone was called, you are saying is wrong?
ANDREW ROBB: Well it certainly didn’t, I had no knowledge of this thing until Sunday so I treat it with a grain of salt and I just look at the facts. We are the ones who are focussed on solutions and jobs and all the rest of it, the Government is the one who is focussed on us and obsessing about us.
DAVID SPEERS: Andrew Robb, thanks very much for your time.
Media Contact: Stuart Eaton, 0433 298 620.