Page 3229 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 13 November 2007
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also because firms that base their business plans on it are likely to actively oppose any changes. Indeed, we have seen the success of such industries as so eloquently pointed out by Guy Pearce, former adviser to Robert Hill when he was the federal environment minister, about the actions of the major polluters—the coal companies, the aluminium producers—in ensuring that Australia did not get any effective measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions until this point.
The numerous design flaws in the scheme point to a poor design process, and there is a clear conflict of interest in Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal being the scheme administrator as well as the compliance regulator with full responsibility for assessing the scheme. This highlights the need for good governance in designing the policies required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Baseline and credit schemes such as this one have often proved ineffective as there are inherent problems with compliance auditing as well as additionality.
This is one of the reasons that the European Union energy trading scheme, the proposed multi-state scheme in Australia and elsewhere in the world have all chosen a cap and trade approach instead, which is based around physical, measurable emissions instead of abstract notions of reductions.
We recently heard about the collapse of the certificate market prices. Although the government denies that this is a failure of the scheme, it shows that, despite the large number of certificates being produced, there is still a consistent rise in emissions. Too many companies produced too many certificates too fast. This oversupply occurred because companies gave away thousands and thousands of free light bulbs—light bulbs which were given away but not necessarily used—and thousands of water-reducing showerheads, which, by regulations, could not be installed by the company providing them and had to be installed by a plumber. We have no idea what the amount of duplication of certificates is—that is, households getting multiple kits from different companies.
Mr Speaker, for all these reasons, I consider the greenhouse gas abatement scheme to be seriously flawed, and, consequently, I cannot support this bill today. Between this bill being tabled and this debate, we have had the evidence from New South Wales given heaps of publicity in the Sydney Morning Herald, although not in the Canberra Times, about the failure of the scheme to actually reduce emissions, and, of course, the light bulb debacle that I just referrred to.
The ACT must actively lobby the other states and the commonwealth for an effective national scheme which actually lowers our gas emissions and which can then become the central plank in the next climate change action plan for 2012 or 2016. I look forward to working with the government. The Greens, of course, look forward to working with the federal government as well towards making this national emissions trading scheme begin and to make it effective. Perhaps what we might find in another year or two is that this government is embracing meaningful emission reduction targets as well. Whatever the scheme is, let us make sure that it works. Mr Speaker, the amendments that I have had circulated actually aim to make sure that there are meaningful targets that actually lead to a reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions.
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