Page 2600 - Week 07 - Thursday, 2 August 2018
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are doing to come up with a considered report that received unanimous support across the community outside of the Liberal and Nationals party room.
What was interesting about that was that—
Mr Coe: Unanimous support in the community?
MR RATTENBURY: Mr Coe is probably right to correct me; I am sure there were those who had reservations. But the point I am making is that that report received extensive support in the community. I will reframe. One should never use the word “unanimous”, because there is always someone with a different view. It received extensive support, and it was recognised as having been thoughtfully done. Instead it was trashed by the Liberal-Nationals party room, and they came out with the NEG as a way through. That was very disappointing, because that work was done with considerable thought.
The government then decided to propose a new energy policy. Of course, it could not look like a carbon tax; a carbon tax is taboo. Nor could it look like an emissions trading scheme or a clean energy target. And so we got the NEG, a Frankenstein’s monster cobbled together out of a policy of bits and pieces that had not already been ruled out by some element of the coalition party room.
That brings us to the point where the architecture has been given extensive scrutiny and a lot of questions have been asked. That is the challenging position we find ourselves in, where we are being told that in the national interest we must agree to an energy policy. That raises the very interesting question of what is the national interest. I think the national interest says that we need not just any old policy but a good energy policy, and we need something that is not just the lowest common denominator that can be agreed by the coalition party room but something that can actually serve the energy sector well. I think it is possible to find that. I have great optimism about the fact that, through the work done by people like Professor Finkel and other energy experts, we can find a sensible way through this.
It has been interesting to reflect on people saying that the NEG is the only game in town. Last July, at a COAG Energy Council meeting in Brisbane, we were told by anybody who would listen and anybody who wanted to make a commentary that Professor Finkel’s report and the clean energy target were the only game in town. It is important to reflect on history and reflect on the political dynamic that is now being thrust upon us: to cut through the spin and actually focus on the policy of this rather than the politics.
The ACT has expressed a number of concerns about the policy. We do believe that the emissions target proposed is simply not adequate. A 26 per cent reduction in emissions from the electricity sector will not meet our Paris climate change commitments. It is clear that that is the case, and that has been reinforced by public comments in recent days, which I will come back to shortly.
Simply asking the electricity sector to reduce its emissions by 26 per cent, so essentially a pro rata approach for all sectors in the Australian economy, is foolish.
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