Page 5055 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 26 October 2010
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The question that the leader of the opposition keeps putting is: how much will it all cost? Frankly, if the government turned around and told me how much it would cost, I would not believe much of what they told me, because the truth is that it would be a meaningless piece of modelling that could not possibly factor in all of the issues that are likely to be a consideration.
For example, what are the mechanisms that are going to be used? How much will technology change in the coming years? What will the price of solar be over the next decade given the price changes we have seen in the past decade? What will the unintended consequences of the mechanisms introduced be—either positive or negative? And what else will change over time and how much will it change? The price of carbon is just one factor. What about changes in the price of oil? What about the impact of a changing population or the impact of moving to a smart grid? And what about changes in personal behaviour, one of the hardest things to predict? It is fanciful and meaningless to imagine that we can answer all of these questions for a bill that has its preliminary target in 2020 and its latest target in 2060.
I want to be clear that the Greens are not suggesting that mechanisms or policies should not be costed. But we do not believe it is useful to link that to this legislation; it is not what the bill intends to do.
The Liberals may say that this is dangerous, that we are enacting a bill and we do not know what it will cost. I would say two things in response to that suggestion. Firstly, there is no danger inherent in this bill, because there are no punitive measures in this bill. The risks and opportunities, and costs and benefits of the major policies and programs that the government implements should be assessed, but because there is no mechanism in this bill, this is not the place for it.
Secondly, I think it is interesting to explore whether we need this sort of costing mechanism for this kind of target, and whether this is the right way to go about it. I wish I had been around to know the answer to this, and maybe somebody else can answer it for me, but was there this kind of cost-benefit analysis for the no waste by 2010 strategy when it was introduced in 1996? The best research I have been able to do suggests that it was not until 2000, four years after it was introduced, that the Liberal government at that time commissioned TAMS to do any sort of cost-benefit analysis. At least that was a cost-benefit analysis; they actually acknowledged that there would also be benefits. I do not believe that we had the same level of hysteria about costs then, and it certainly would have been a much simpler strategy to cost.
Let me turn to the second of the proposed amendments, 20B. Again, we have sympathy with the intent of this amendment, but again we raise concern about proportionality. At what point would this requirement be triggered? Would it be required for a $5,000 program even though it may cost $2,000 to undertake the analysis? This amendment has quite complex implications for the operation of government and could be overly onerous for the outcome that it may deliver.
As I said, we have some sympathy with the intent; I am just not clear as to the possible ramifications of such an amendment in terms of its workability. That is the
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