Mr BOWEN (McMahon—Minister for Climate Change and Energy) (12:10): I ask leave of the House to make a ministerial statement relating to the Annual Climate Change Statement 2022. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Buchholz ): Is leave granted? Mr Ted O'Brien: Before I grant leave, I wish to place it on the record that the opposition was provided the documents that the ministry will table in relation to the statement only around 90 minutes ago. Ministerial statements require leave of the House, and in the future the opposition will not grant leave if such short notice is repeated. With that said, leave is now granted. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I take it leave is granted. I give the call to the minister. Mr BOWEN: The Ngunnawal and Ngambri people have loved the lands, skies and waters of our region for millennia. As we reflect on the health of our environment today, we acknowledge their stewardship of our lands by all of Australia's First Nations people, and celebrate their elders past, present and emerging. In acknowledging country, I also acknowledge a fundamental truth: that our First Nations people, who enjoy such a rich and meaningful connection with their country, have much to lose from unchecked climate change. From the visible and the tangible: from the rising sea levels and natural disasters impacting on the people of the Torres Strait islands to increasing temperatures in remote communities. To the less visible but deeply meaningful: the impact on culture and ritual, and the increasing difficulty of living on country for our First Nations people. Today I reaffirm the Albanese government's commitment to work with and learn from First Nations people in tackling the challenge of climate change. We will do this through a voice to parliament. We will do this through the development of the First Nations Clean Energy Strategy, funded in our first budget, which will be co-designed with First Nations communities. We will do this through our remote community microgrids policy and through the Torres Strait island centre of community excellence, which were also both funded in our first budget. It was an honour to meet with Torres Strait Islander elders on their country in my first weeks as climate change minister. I've met with them on several occasions since, and it's an honour to have some of them here in the House with us today. The impacts of climate change There once was a time, when advocates of climate action had to warn of the impacts of climate change in the distant future. No longer. Climate change has moved from a theory to a prediction, to a lived reality. The truth is no Australian is spared from the impact of climate change—from the cities to the regions. Not the farmer, working harder and harder amid more and more destructive disasters. Not the tourism worker in Queensland, whose livelihood comes from sharing the joys of the world's greatest coral reef. Not the communities subjected to seemingly never-ending cavalcades of bushfires followed by floods, followed by floods again, all too dispiritingly soon. Our beautiful land has always been subject to natural disasters. But those disasters are becoming: increasingly devastating increasingly frequent increasingly unnatural. As difficult as our current predicament is, it is still incumbent on us to be truthful and frank about how much worse it will be if we, and the world, don't act now. Our country was devastated by the Black Summer bushfires just a few years ago. But, as frightening as that bushfire season was, the absence of action will see the temperatures and conditions of that year become normal by the 2040s and become a 'good year' by the 2060s. We cannot let that happen. Changing rainfall and worsening heat will make our world-class agricultural sector less productive and harder to work. In fact, Australia is a developed country most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, including bushfires and floods, so the stakes are extremely high. Not acting would be an unforgivable act of intergenerational negligence. And while Australia has a lot to lose from climate change, as a good international citizen we care deeply about our region and the impacts of climate everywhere. Pakistan received three times the annual average rainfall in only three months this year—May, June and July—inundating hundreds of villages, towns, and districts. More than 1,700 people have died in those floods, including more than 600 young lives lost. Closer to home, our important neighbour Indonesia is the world's largest archipelago with hundreds of millions of citizens living in low lying areas exposed to sea level rises. And of course our Pacific neighbours are on the front line, and not just through rising sea levels. Natural disasters are taking an increasing toll on our friends and neighbours. Salt water is invading fresh water supplies. The lifestyles and economies of our Pacific neighbours face unprecedented threats—indeed, threats that were, until now, unthinkable. I am honoured to welcome so many Pacific ambassadors, high commissioners and community leaders here today and I reiterate our government's support to work with them on the way forward. I give these examples not out of a sense of despondency but out of a sense of urgency. Our country has wasted a decade. We now don't have a second to waste. Six months of renewed climate change action I am honoured to present the Albanese government's first Annual Statement on Climate Change. Almost exactly one year ago today, the now Prime Minister and I released the climate change and energy policy of the then opposition. Six months ago, we received a mandate from the Australian people to implement that policy. And, since then, we've been in the early stages of doing just that. Important in our agenda was the passage of the Climate Change Act, showing the world that Australia is open for business, with a stable investment environment to unleash billions of dollars of renewable energy investment and zero emissions technology. I thank the parliament again for passing that act. We are now just one of 22 countries to have legislated our climate change targets. We are, in that regard, international best practice. Of course, the act requires today's statement. We want to be accountable, transparent, and open about the opportunities, progress, stumbling blocks and challenges in meeting this our most important national challenge. In line with this, I'm proud to table this statement, and the accompanying advice of the independent Climate Change Authority, the latest emissions projections and quarterly emissions update and to do so in an open, accountable and transparent way. There are and will continue to be challenges— But our determination as a government, and I'm very confident as a country, is greater than any challenge. Target and projections Australia's increased target is to reduce emissions by 43 per cent by 2030. There are those who call for more. I understand that sentiment and as we've said many times, we see 43 per cent as a floor, not a ceiling. But the documents I am tabling today, including advice from the independent Climate Change Authority, underlines just what a substantial effort this 43 per cent target requires. The previous government left their projected emissions reductions by 2030 at only 30 per cent. The projections I am releasing today show the actions and policies of this government so far have increased this projection to 40 per cent. That is, we've lifted the outlook by a third in our first six months. Policies we received a mandate for, and are working to implement, will lift our result to at least 43 per cent. To get on a credible path to net zero—you need to achieve a 43 per cent reduction by 2030. This being the first day of the month, 2030 is now just 84 months away. Eighty-four months is not a long time. As the Climate Change Authority advice makes clear, to achieve this target we will need to achieve the same emissions reduction in the next eight years that has been achieved in the last 18 years in total. Since 2009, Australia has decarbonised its economy at an average rate of 12 million tonnes of carbon a year. To achieve a 43 per cent reduction by 2030, and net zero by 2050, this decarbonisation rate needs to be at least 17 million tonnes of carbon a year—a 40 per cent increase. Increased dispatchable storage will also be essential, after 10 years when four gigawatts of dispatchable generation left the grid and only one gigawatt of dispatchable capacity entered the market. We will need to install much, much more clean dispatchable power in the coming eight years. Energy prices and renewable energy And of course, this all comes in the shade of the biggest energy crisis ever to face the modern world: bigger than the oil crises of the 1970s. This statement is delivered at a time when climate change and energy prices are two of the most discussed topics in the world—at cabinet tables, at boardroom tables and at the dinner table. Our government's response is twofold. Short-term the measures will ensure Australian industry and businesses are shielded from the worst of Putin's weaponisation of energy. And our long-term plan is to power our economy with the cheapest form of energy—renewable energy—and in turn, to harness the economic opportunities which come with it. There are some who argue that the world crisis is a reason to slow the move to renewable energy. The opposite is true. As the International Energy Agency puts it: The world is struggling with too little clean energy, not too much. Faster clean energy transitions would have helped to moderate the impact of this crisis, and they represent the best way out of it. We haven't wasted a day in beginning to implement the ambitious plan to achieve these goals. Electricity A third of Australia's emissions come from our electricity system. Over the next eight years, we will need to transition our electricity system to 82 per cent renewables, from the current base of around 30 per cent. The most important thing we can do is to rewire our nation, because the fact is there is no transition without transmission. In the first six months, we've made good progress with our Rewiring the Nation policy. Our first budget allocated the necessary $20 billion of investment. And, importantly, we've finalised agreements for the first projects. The Marinus Link, which had been all talk for years, will now be a reality. These two cables between Tasmania and the mainland will see the apple isle move from being 100 per cent renewables to 200 per cent renewables—with the equivalent impact in a reduction of emissions of taking one million cars off our roads. Likewise, our investment in the link between Victoria and New South Wales—KerangLink—and the co-investments with the Victorian government in renewable energy zones and offshore wind are vital to our efforts. And the government continues to work at a great pace on other Rewiring the Nation projects. In addition, the budget funded our commitment to 400 community batteries and the program to roll this out will be shortly underway. The budget also abolished the failed Underwriting New Generation Investments program and replaced it with a new program to help finance new renewable energy storage. A new and cooperative approach around the table with my state and territory energy minister colleagues has seen us strike an important National Energy Transformation Partnership and, for the first time, write emissions reduction into our national energy objectives. And I'll be consulting with my state and territory colleagues on a capacity investment mechanism in coming weeks. Safeguard But renewable energy alone won't meet our emission reduction target. We need a whole-of-economy response. In fact, industrial emitters are projected to overtake electricity generators as Australia's leading source of emissions. We won't reduce our emissions unless we reduce them from our top 200 industrial emitters. So we need to reform a safeguard mechanism which governs the emissions of our biggest industrial emitters. This process has commenced. Yesterday I introduced legislation which enables credits to be provided to large industrial facilities which come in under their safeguard mechanism baseline—incentivising them to innovate and adopt emissions reduction technology. The next stage will see the release of the draft design of our reforms, which will be implemented by regulation. This follows the release of a comprehensive consultation paper, for which we received more than 200 submissions. I'm not going to pre-empt the result of the draft design today, but I hope the release of today's projections provides additional context to the size of the task ahead of us and why we need every part of the economy to do their bit. I welcome the fact that around 70 per cent of the facilities covered by the mechanism already have net zero commitments. The reformed mechanism will be a good example of carefully calibrated policy, designed in consultation with industry and business. When the old safeguard mechanism was so poorly designed that it allowed facilities to increase their emissions, it simply wasn't good enough. Business as usual can't be the usual business anymore. Businesses must step up and deliver on their commitments during this critical decade for climate action. Transport How we move around our wide country has a big impact on how much we emit. Our government inherited a situation in which just two per cent of car sales are electric, five times below the international average. Last week, the parliament passed our electric vehicle tax cut, cutting $9,000 a year from the cost to an Australian business of providing a $50,000 electric vehicle to employees. But there is much, much more to do. The budget funded our Driving the Nation investments in cleaner and cheaper transport, including a national electric vehicle charging network to roll out a fast charger once every 150 kilometres on our highways, in partnership with the NRMA. And the minister for transport and I are now working through feedback to our National Electric Vehicle Strategy consultation paper, including consideration of fuel efficiency standards. Australia is in company with Russia as one of the only major economies without vehicle efficiency standards, and Australians are paying a price for that, with manufacturers sending efficient models to other countries that require them as a matter of law. We've been encouraged to see more than 100 organisations—including car makers, energy companies, transport operators, car clubs, businesses and unions—publicly back the government's Electric Vehicle Strategy process, and we've noted their calls for fuel efficiency standards to be introduced. We know the work can't stop here. We're delivering solar banks to provide access to renewable energy to low-income families. And we're leading by transforming our own federal government to be net zero by 2030. We're also committed to practical actions in the land and agricultural sectors, driving abatement and incentives through carbon markets that have integrity and cut pollution. And we're returning our country to full international engagement and leadership in climate, just as we did in the last few weeks at COP27 but also through the Quad, the G20 and the Clean Energy Ministerial. Next Steps I'm pleased with how much progress the government has made in our first six months—pleased but not satisfied. We've done a lot in a short time. But there's so much more to do. The government has a sense of urgency, passion and answers. But we don't have all the answers. We don't own all the wisdom. We are a government which listens. One of the things we promised to do is restore the role and resourcing of the independent Climate Change Authority, a promise we've kept. And I'm pleased to today table the advice of the authority, as well as announce that we accept all their recommendations. In particular, the authority recommends that the government begin work on a plan to guide the nation's efforts towards achieving net zero, which we agree with and will prepare. The authority also points out that, while technology exists to meet our 2030 targets, there are significant labour market and supply chain challenges, as every country around the world strives to meet their targets. And we agree. Providing the training and investment in clean energy and decarbonising our workforce was a major focus of our Jobs and Skills Summit in July. Our policy of 10,000 new energy apprentices, which we're implementing, is a great start, but we know more needs to be done. Ensuring access to resources and supply chain has also been a key focus of my first six months as minister, particularly in my work with my fellow energy ministers from the Quad countries. But again, there's much more to do, and we accept this advice from the Climate Change Authority that this will need an ongoing focus. In addition, while reducing emissions will always be the most important agenda, the fact is that the climate has already changed and will keep changing, and we must adapt. Right around the country, Australians are living with the consequences of climate change right now. So more leadership is necessary. We need a comprehensive plan for adaptation and climate risk assessment. And, working closely with the states and territories, that's exactly what we will do. We don't have time to waste to take advantage of the opportunities which come with climate action, especially for our regions. We must prepare, adapt and take advantage of the opportunities as well. Australia's regions experience some of the worst climate change impacts, but they also have the opportunity to be at the heart of our clean energy revolution. Regional Australia That's why regional Australia is at the core of our plan to ensure Australia takes advantage of the economic opportunities which will come from climate change action. It's why we announced in the budget the creation of a net zero taskforce. The taskforce will bring together perspectives from communities, state and territory governments, industries and unions to advise the government on ensuring regional Australians are first to benefit from Australia's transformation to a renewable energy superpower. Because, while regional Australia is right now at the heart of Powering Australia, it will also be the heart of our clean energy future. Those who demonise renewable energy ignore the immense potential for new energy industries in regional and rural Australia. New opportunities which will bring new jobs and new investment—and drive down power bills at the same time. Conclusion In this report to the House, I have emphasised the costs of climate change that we are already facing and that will get worse if we don't act. These are real and serious. It is too late to avoid the climate emergency. It is our job to act with urgency to avoid the worst of the emergency. But I am also hugely optimistic about our future. Because the world's climate emergency really is Australia's jobs opportunity. 'Renewable energy superpower', 'green energy export powerhouse', 'electricity factory of our region'—whatever your preferred term of description, Australia has this potential. But only with the right policies. Policies this government is implementing, especially in our regions, regions that have powered Australia for so long. For decades, Australians were told by some that action on climate change would cost jobs. This was always a lie. It has never been more of a lie than today. The deniers and delays will continue their baseless predictions. But Australians know better. We can have electric vehicles and enjoy the weekend. We can reduce methane and have barbecues on the weekend. Renewable energy is the answer to this energy crisis, not the cause. Our country had a decade of denial and delay, more than enough of it. The stakes are high. The cost of inaction is huge, but the dividend of action is enormous. Ambition is important. Careful plans, implemented with alacrity to achieve that ambition, are even more important. Our government has hit the ground the running with a strong agenda of climate action. How we have begun is how we intend to continue. I began this speech talking about the stewardship of our country by our First Nations people. Caring for country and climate in this changing world is more important for all of us than it ever has been. And it's a task this government joins in partnership with communities, business and our entire country with passion. I table and present a copy of the Annual Climate Change Statement 2022, the Climate Change Authority's first annual progress report, Australia's emissions projections 2022 and Quarterly update of Australia's national greenhouse gas inventory: June 2022 to the House. I commend these documents to the House. I commend the annual statement on climate change to the House. Now the real work continues.