Bills
Climate Action this Decade Bill 2025
Second reading
Resumed from 1 May.
Hon Sophie McNeill (10:08 am): It is my great honour to rise to speak to the Greens' Climate Action this Decade Bill 2025. I first want to quickly say that I am really deeply disappointed that the public gallery is closed this morning. So many people in the Perth community had come to listen to our climate bill. We had children take the day off school to come and listen to this debate.
The President: Order, member. I would encourage you to continue with what is relevant in relation to the bill and concentrate on the content of the bill.
Hon Sophie McNeill: Thank you, President. I would like to say thank you to the community that wanted to come and watch us debate this bill this morning.
The Climate Action this Decade Bill was first introduced into this chamber in May by my colleague Hon Dr Brad Pettitt. I cannot really think of a more important week to be having this debate. This is a week when so many Western Australians who love our oceans, our Coral Coast and our beautiful Ningaloo Reef are grieving and in shock because exactly what climate scientists warned us about for decades has come true. Large swathes of coral at our stunning World Heritage–listed Ningaloo have died as a result of a record-breaking marine heatwave. It is not bleached and stressed but dead. It is dead after eight years of a Labor government that has refused to legislate gas emissions reductions. It is dead after eight years of a Labor government that has had the power, the funds and the means to lead and transform and to leave an incredible legacy on this critical issue of our times. Yet, on climate action, we have seen from this government the political equivalent of putting its fingers in its ears and squeezing its eyes shut. Western Australia remains the only state without a 2030 target. With rising emissions and no renewable energy target, we still have no climate act in this state.
This bill, introduced in the last term of Parliament, was so low on Labor's priorities that it was not even brought into this chamber for debate. Now is the government's chance. The Greens, in a gracious act of generosity, is using one of its precious allocations of non-government business time to provide the Cook government with an opportunity to not only debate but also pass climate legislation and respond to this growing crisis in our oceans with the urgent action and leadership that it deserves. It is an opportunity to do our bit to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees and, if there are to be any coral reefs left for our children, to protect sea country for the oldest continuing culture in the world. It is an opportunity for the government to send a message to the people of Exmouth that it feels their grief and pain about the devastation at Ningaloo and that it is going to do something about it. We have made it easy for the government. This is its own bill that we are debating today. It was introduced in December 2023 by Hon Reece Whitby, the then Minister for Climate Action. Unfortunately, the role of Minister for Climate Action has since been abolished, seemingly along with any pretence by WA Labor that it is going to do anything about the climate. It has had eight years. In December 2023, Minister Whitby put on the record:
Climate change is the greatest challenge of our lifetime. We need to take decisive action this decade.
He said "this decade". What has changed since the minister introduced that bill? I have so many members of our community come up to me regularly and say that they just do not understand why Labor was so good at listening to the science on COVID but when it comes to climate it pretends the science does not exist. Not that it is even listening or paying any attention right now, though, to be honest. In this critical decade, when we have only a small window left to act, why has WA Labor decided to choose such a cowardly and gutless path on climate inaction? Why has Labor chosen during this existential crisis to protect the profits of companies like Woodside and Chevron rather than country, our oceans, Ningaloo and our kids' future? The Greens are proud to engage in evidence-based politics. It should not be such a revolutionary idea, but, unfortunately, it is in this chamber for climate and what urgently needs to be done. The Greens bring the climate science, the facts and the evidence to this place. Our policy platform is based on that, and I am presenting that today with this bill. The science, the evidence and the facts—all the answers and solutions—are all there if only Labor would take its fingers out of its ears and open its eyes.
Analysis by world-leading climate advisory body Climate Analytics released just this week demonstrates that between 2005 and 2023, WA's net emissions rose by 17%. Comparatively, this analysis found that over the same time period, Australia's emissions decreased by 26%. If it were not for WA's rising emissions, there would have been a 32% national reduction. WA's rising emissions are undermining reduction efforts across the country. This Labor government is holding back not just Western Australia but the entire country on climate action. The lack of action in WA is threatening our national legislative commitment of a 43% reduction of emissions on 2005 baselines by 2030 and begs the question of just what it will take for federal Labor to pull this government into line. Minister Bowen is trying to get on with the job and set a 2035 target. How can he do that when right now WA is on the path to ruining its ability to meet the 2030 commitment?
As I mentioned earlier, WA is the only state in the whole country without a 2030 emissions reduction target. That is a critical change we made to this iteration of the bill introduced by my colleague Hon Dr Brad Pettitt in May this year. As my colleague made reference to in his second reading speech, this bill will create economy-wide targets at five-year intervals commencing from 2030. Creating and maintaining 2030 and 2035 emissions reduction targets aligned with the 1.5-degree limit in the Paris Agreement is crucial for our state, and it is a key aspect of this bill. Why is 1.5 degrees so important? Why is it so critical? What does it look like? It is our best hope of protecting our coral reefs, the Arctic sea ice, our coastal communities, and water and food security, and the survival of many species. What is at stake with 1.5 degrees is a future for our children and hundreds of millions of people on this planet, particularly the most vulnerable, who have done the least to contribute to this climate emergency we are facing. According to climate scientists, exceeding 1.5 degrees could trigger multiple climate tipping points. We are talking about the breakdown of major ocean circulation systems and the thawing of permafrost. They are abrupt, irreversible and dangerous impacts for humanity. We have no chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees if governments like this Labor government continue to refuse to act. I note with great disappointment that before our debate even began today, the Minister for the Environment, Matthew Swinbourn, told The West Australian this week that he rejected this bill.
A member interjected.
Hon Sophie McNeill: Hon Matthew Swinbourn—I am sorry. My huge apologies.
Hon Matthew Swinbourn interjected.
Hon Sophie McNeill: I note with great disappointment that even before our debate began today, the Minister for the Environment, Hon Matthew Swinbourn, told The West Australian this week that he rejected this bill and the Greens' idea of a 2030 target. The minister was quoted saying that in The West Australian. I would love to know it is not true. The West Australian reported that the minister referred to the 2030 target as "virtue signalling". If that is what this government thinks of people who are worried about this climate emergency and proposing urgent solutions, that is deeply concerning. The Greens' position is based on climate science not virtue. How is not following the science working out for this government? Last year was the hottest on record and our driest ever. This state had record forest collapse. This year, a reef is dying. What else does the government want to lose on its watch?
The reason the state's emissions are rising is very clear. It is because of our gas industry. WA is the second-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas in the world. We are a massive creator of emissions. That is what happens during gas production. Therefore, any WA emissions reduction target has to rein in that industry, right? That is what WA Labor does not want to do. The Premier claims that we cannot have a 2030 target and that our emissions have to keep rising because WA gas is helping Asia to decarbonise. The Premier believes that somehow replacing one fossil fuel, coal, with another fossil fuel, Western Australian gas, is going to help reduce emissions and help the global climate crisis. I still remember the first time we heard this false claim about WA gas decarbonising Asia. The first one to spin this line—it is a pretty desperate narrative to try to justify new gas projects—was Woodside CEO Meg O'Neill, speaking at the National Press Club in Canberra in April 2023. I watched it live; I was a climate campaigner for Greenpeace at the time. It was gutting. Then, lo and behold, a few months later in his first big energy speech in November 2023, Premier Cook started echoing that same false claim—a line straight from Woodside's PR department. It is a line that the Premier repeated as recently as yesterday, when he was confronted with images of our dying Ningaloo Reef as he was trying to justify this government's shocking record of climate inaction.
In the two years since this claim about decarbonising Asia first surfaced, we have not seen a single shred of evidence to back it up. Unsurprisingly, the evidence shows the opposite—that more gas displaces renewables. A report from December last year by the US Department of Energy examined claims that increasing gas use could displace coal in Asia. It actually found that for any reduction in coal use, the corresponding fall in renewable energy is nearly double. This US government modelling work, which has now pretty much all been defunded and banned, found that when the US increased its gas production, coal consumption decreased by 13%, but renewable energy production decreased by 25%, so more gas only ends up displacing renewables. We are not helping our neighbours in Asia to decarbonise; we are keeping them hooked on fossil fuels for decades to come.
The science has now made it very clear: any claim that LNG is significantly better than coal for our climate has been firmly debunked. A peer-reviewed study from Cornell University last year comparing the burning of coal and gas over a 20-year period found that emissions from LNG were 33% higher than those from coal. That is because methane is up to 86 times more potent than CO2 over the same period. The same study found that at every point along the chain of gas production, there is leakage of methane. That is a really important point that has informed some of the measures that we, the Greens, are proposing here today with this bill. If we are going to replace coal with something that, over its lifetime, is worse than coal, that is not something to celebrate. It is a climate crime. We can replace all the coal we want with LNG, but we will still cook the planet if we do not go straight to renewables.
As members may have noted in the supplementary notice paper, the Greens have proposed some key changes and amendments to this bill. One of those key amendments is a renewable energy target, because WA is currently the only state in Australia without one. This is a critical step that is necessary for supporting our states in transitioning away from fossil fuels, reducing our emissions and improving our energy security. We have great examples here in West Australia of excellent renewable energy projects that are running really successfully—projects such as Denmark Community Windfarm—but nowhere near enough for one of the sunniest, windiest, least crowded places in the world. We need a legislated renewable energy target that will guarantee certainty to the industry and drive investment for decades to come.
On the current trajectory, we will have only 56% renewable energy by 2030, largely achieved through household rooftop solar, not large-scale projects that support the state's grid. What is wild about this is that there are investors who want to inject money into renewable energy projects in Western Australia, but they are being obstructed by this government's policies and investment decisions. For example, the plan for users to pay up-front $100,000 per megawatt for renewable energy projects to connect to the grid is making some projects unviable. Renewable energy investors are putting their money into the east coast, where governments are actively encouraging and supporting their investments.
Last year in the Western Australian Renewable Energy Transition Survey, a majority of industry respondents stated that the WA government does not do enough to encourage private capital investment and smooth the project development process. As a result, WA is the worst performing state when it comes to energy from renewable sources. Last September, the Climate Council found that only 18% of our electricity here in WA comes from renewable sources. WA has the lowest amount of renewable energy out of all the states in Australia and the highest amount of gas-fired power generation. WA is going to be left out of the green boom if this government continues to refuse to adopt a renewable energy target.
Another key amendment for this bill is to ensure genuine emissions reduction, not just clever carbon accounting, by replacing net zero with real zero. Real zero focuses on eliminating emissions without relying on offsets. Net zero is a flawed concept because it enables clever accounting designed to allow governments to say that they are reducing emissions without actually doing anything. Relying on offsets is not reducing our emissions, and evidence from the Australia Institute shows that up to 75% of our Australian carbon credit units, known as ACCUs, are not resulting in real emissions reductions. Further to that, analysis by Climate Analytics has found that the majority of land sector offsets fail to deliver genuine or additional emissions reductions. The impermanence of carbon offset projects pales in comparison with the thousands of years that fossil fuel emissions stay in the atmosphere.
As I mentioned earlier, when it comes to Western Australia's emissions, one of the areas of significant concern is the methane emissions from our gas industry. That is another of our key amendments in this bill—that is, the introduction of mandatory methane regulations. This would regulate venting and flaring at oil and gas facilities and ensure mandatory methane leak detection and repair standards. We need to remember the evidence that methane is 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide when considered over a 20-year period. Methane leaks at every point along the chain of gas production, particularly through venting and flaring, and through which processes methane is released directly into the atmosphere.
It does not have to be this way. In the EU, venting is now banned, except under exceptional or unavoidable circumstances, or for safety reasons, and flaring practices are restricted or permitted only in certain circumstances. But here in WA, fossil fuel companies can pretty much vent and flare all day and night. We see this up in Karratha. Anyone who has been up there will know that you can see the glow from the town. At the North West Shelf, night turns into day because of the sheer heat and light from these horrific flare stacks. The International Energy Agency estimates that over 75% of methane emissions from fossil fuel operators could be reduced with existing technology, so why is this critical conversation about methane not even happening in this state? It is time for this Labor government to stand up to Woodside and Chevron and put in place these urgent methane reforms.
One last key amendment to this bill is the establishment of an expert independent advisory body to provide unbiased and non-aligned climate advice to the government. We simply cannot continue to have a government that makes policies based on what Woodside wants, rather than on the expert advice of climate scientists. We need an expert, independent advisory body consisting of members with a broad range of scientific, professional and lived experience of climate change, including First Nations representation. The government must seek advice from this independent body and make that advice public.
At the federal level, the Climate Change Authority provides advice to the government on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions targets, and we urgently need a similar body here in Western Australia.
Before I end my debate today about this bill that we are so proud to bring to this Parliament, I want to highlight what the continuing climate inaction and denial is responsible for here in WA. Acting President, I would like to seek leave to table these photos taken by the Australian Institute of Marine Science at Rowley Shoals.
Leave granted.
(See paper 437.)
Hon Sophie McNeill: Those photos are devastating. They were taken by scientists in the last few months off our WA Coral Coast. Rowley Shoals is an amazing spot. It is on every WA diver's bucket list, but 90% of the coral there has now died as a result of this marine heatwave. Scientists told me they struggled to find any live coral left at the Rowley Shoals. Last week, I was lucky enough to visit our beautiful World Heritage–listed Ningaloo Reef, but it was one of the saddest trips of my life. I was taken out by scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, and for large parts of Ningaloo right now, it was like snorkelling over a coral graveyard. Parts of the coral reef—90% of them—are now dead, and at the rate that marine heatwaves are occurring, the reef may never recover.
It is immoral for this government to continue to allow emissions to rise in this decade, which is the most critical decade for climate action. No matter how many excuses the government comes up with and no matter how many stories it tells itself about Asia, the safeguard mechanism and how the rest of the world needs to act first, this state is a major exporter of fossil fuels. We are a massive contributor to our warming oceans and planet. What we do here matters and what the government is failing to do has a cost. What will it take for brave members in the government to stand up to the pro-gas bullies in the Labor Party and say enough is enough? What will it take? How much of Ningaloo has to die before the government will act? This government must change its path. We need urgent climate action in this state. We need a climate bill and we need it now.
Hon Jess Beckerling (10:32 am): I rise to strongly support the Climate Action this Decade Bill. As I begin today, I acknowledge that for 60,000 years or more, First Nations people have cared for this place, and if we are serious about truth-telling, we must reckon with the impacts of climate change on First Nations people whose connection with this land is as old as time.
The climate crisis is here. It is not a theoretical future possibility. We are living it right now and Hon Sophie McNeill has made that very clear with her description of what is happening to Ningaloo Reef and the marine environment. We also know that the first of the Pacific Islands, Tuvalu, is preparing for its complete evacuation. Last month, nearly half of the population applied to move to Australia in the world's first climate evacuation, as their spectacular country and all of its history and heritage is being swallowed up by the rising seas. We were warned of this decades ago and we failed to act in time. Tuvalu's climate minister has urged Australia to stop adding fuel to the fire. He said opening, subsidising and exporting fossil fuels is immoral and unacceptable. Vanuatu's climate change minister called Australia's decision to approve the North West Shelf extension to 2070 a slap in the face for Pacific nations. Right now, Australia is calculating our 2035 target, as I am sure all members in this place are aware. This is a requirement of the Paris Agreement. It must be submitted along with all other signatories by the end of this year. While every other state is making an effort to bring down emissions so that we can meet our international obligations, WA has been going in the wrong direction, wrecking our national climate targets and pouring fuel on the flames of the climate crisis.
In 2025, with the science settled, the clear and undeniable impacts of climate change in front of us, and in the full knowledge of what we are set to lose with catastrophic warming, it should not be necessary for the Greens WA to be introducing this bill. The Cook government should have continued with its own bill, strengthened by the much-needed amendments that we have brought, and every member of this house should be supporting it. Instead, the WA Liberal Party is leading an effort to abandon even our weak national targets and members of the crossbench are sadly following. The Labor government, with all the power it needs to act, is still opening new fossil fuel projects and moving far too slowly on the renewable energy transition. History will not look kindly on people who stood in the way of climate action, and with young people showing us that they are a generation who know how to see through spin and get on with what is right, and starting to have a bigger influence on elections, I hope that the future that they are fighting for is not too far off.
I am going to use my time as the Greens spokesperson for the environment to paint a picture of the impacts of climate change on the natural world. While I was researching for this speech, I reread the 2022 state of the environment report—a harrowing report—that says environmental degradation is now considered a threat to humanity that could bring about societal collapses, with long-lasting and severe consequences. On the federal department website, there are links that are supposed to take someone to the reporting frameworks for each of the states and territories—WA's link is broken. There is literally nothing to say. Our last state of the environment report was in 2007—18 years ago—and we have no plans to produce another one. Is it because our government is too embarrassed to admit what the state of our environment is in WA, particularly knowing that the policy framework that we have in place here is in fact building the ground for further declines? I would love to be proven wrong on that. However, I am not sure what other conclusion to draw because the following stories of environmental degradation and destruction across our state should alarm every one of us and compel us to act.
As fellow Western Australians, some if not all of these stories will be familiar to members, and I hope that hearing them compiled will remind members that climate change is here and now, and that what we do next will have profound consequences. Last summer, we did not have any significant rain in Perth for eight months from September 2023 to April 2024. The native vegetation here is, of course, accustomed to hot, dry summers but not to these extremes, and in February 2024 large areas of native forest, heathland and woodlands across this global biodiversity hotspot started to turn brown and die. We have seen this before, in the summer of 2010–11, when we had our first ever forest collapse and 16,000 hectares of the beautiful biodiverse Northern Jarrah Forest suddenly turned brown and one quarter of the mature trees in that area died. The forest has not recovered in the past 15 years. The ecosystem has been substantially changed from a forest dominated by tall trees to a forest dominated by shorter, multi-stemmed, more flammable vegetation. This should have come as a major wake-up call to all of us. But this time, in 2024, our second major collapse, over 300,000 hectares of native vegetation across this biodiversity hotspot from Shark Bay to Esperance has been impacted. How much will we have to lose next time and how much are we prepared to lose before we put on the brakes?
After the first collapse, when banksia woodlands on the Swan coastal plain and exotic pine plantations that Carnaby’s have come to rely on also suddenly died, we saw a catastrophic 34% drop in Carnaby’s black-cockatoo numbers. This devastating situation is replaying now, and this time the population is smaller and less resilient. By October last year, following our hottest ever summer and a long delay in the onset of winter rains, the remaining banksia woodlands had failed to set seed. Food sources for the cockies in the banksia woodlands and the tall forests have been decimated and the birds are not breeding. The Perth Zoo and rehab centres were reporting a major influx of starving and emaciated birds into their care and Dean Arthurell reported that only 11 breeding pairs were recorded at a major breeding site near Cervantes, compared with the previous year's more than 100, and said that it can all be traced back to food availability. Professor Kingsley Dixon said after four million years of the Carnaby's eating banksias on the Swan coastal plain, we are now seeing a catastrophic failure of the banksias to set seed, leading to the mass starvation of birds. This heartbreaking situation is set to get far worse if we do not take immediate and decisive action. To prevent extinctions, we must get to real zero emissions as quickly as possible while ensuring a just and fair transition that brings people along and supports and improves their livelihoods.
In October 2024, while the veterinarians and rehabilitation centres were ringing the alarm, Professor Dixon called for two million banksias to be planted and for a taskforce to be established. Minister Whitby, Minister for the Environment at the time, said that he had asked the department to report back and that the Cook government would always do what was right for the environment. I have heard the Cook government's argument that our increasing emissions are an altruistic act, and, like my colleague Hon Sophie McNeill, I am frankly embarrassed as a Western Australian that the Premier would so shamelessly try to gaslight us all into believing this. It is fundamentally untrue and it is designed to confuse and divert attention away from reality. Western Australia's exported gas is not bringing down emissions overseas. Our gas exports are displacing renewable energy uptake in the countries that are buying our gas; they are not displacing coal. This was confirmed by a CSIRO report that Woodside commissioned—no doubt something it very quickly came to regret.
The task before us is technically a simple one. We have enough fossil fuels already in the system to provide our energy needs while we make the transition to clean energy and there is no genuine need to open new fossil fuels. We have the cleared land on which to build large solar and wind farms and to run transmission lines across. There is no need to have a massive impact on nature and biodiversity while we build the energy systems that we need for the future. We are perfectly placed to be a global leader in the renewable energy transition and the economic benefits of the transition are waiting to be realised. Every other state in Australia is bringing down emissions but still WA lags behind. Why? The inescapable conclusion is that the Cook Labor government is suffering from a misplaced loyalty to the fossil fuel and other major polluting industries. WA is the world's third largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, as we have heard, supplying 12% to 13% of the world's total LNG exports. Gas is our number one most polluting sector, quickly followed by alumina production. The science is settled that we must phase out fossil fuels as urgently as possible, but in WA we are championing the opening of new deposits. Alcoa and South32 are also massive climate culprits responsible for millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions every year. Far cleaner methods are available for producing alumina and clearing our ever diminishing forests is not necessary, but the companies are under no pressure from our governments.
Our challenge is not practical; it is political. We need the major parties to show more commitment, loyalty even, to ordinary Western Australians and this land that we all love, and to then show it to WA's biggest polluters because that is what has been standing in the way of climate action. We have the resources, the land and the technology—everything except the political will. It is a strange reality that I have to stop like this while talking about the impacts of climate change on the natural environment to specify that our emissions are not good for the world, but that is the reality of the propaganda machine that I am afraid we live in. We are so surrounded by it that we can forget that it is even there, like the story about one fish saying to the other fish, "How's the water?" and the second fish saying, "What's water?" The plain reality that we have to avert catastrophic climate change is unavoidable, but the propaganda we are saturated in tells us that we cannot, or that we do not need to worry or that we already are, and it is so pervasive in the mainstream news and from the major parties and corporations that many of us cannot even identify its presence. Before I get back to the cockatoos, I say again: WA's emissions are not good for the world.
As well as the major starvation crises following the 2011 and 2024 record-breaking hot and dry summers, I want to draw the attention of members to another devastating day for the Carnaby's in 2010 as the heat and drought sucked the life out of the forests and woodlands. In January that year, the temperatures soared to 48 degrees Celsius in Esperance. The Esperance cockatoo population was almost completely wiped out on that day with 200 birds found dead on the ground. This is the reality of climate change. I do not want to hear another word spoken about people's love for the cockatoos or their commitment to caring for this incredible place that we are lucky enough to call home if they refuse to recognise the climate change is killing them and refuse to commit to real action to bring down emissions.
As a first generation immigrant to WA with such a deep love for the cockatoos, the forests and this beautiful state, I can only imagine what losses like this must be like for traditional custodians of this land. In the introduction of the Australia: State of the Environment 2021 report, Wakanda elder Uncle Wayne Webb was quoted to say in his poignant, understated way: "This is life. Our family's home, our heart, our country." Of course, this affects not only the cockatoos. I want to draw the attention of members to another couple of examples of how the climate crisis is here and now.
In November 2018, an estimated 23,000 spectacled flying foxes, one-third of the entire population of the species, dropped dead out of the trees during an extreme heatwave in Cairns. The little penguin population here on Penguin Island off Rockingham has dropped by 94% since 2007, leaving only 114 individuals. This population is at the very brink of extinction and unless things improve for them immediately, we will see the end of this population in the very near future. A combination of climate change and badly managed tourism has pushed them to this point. Extreme heat during breeding and moulting season is killing the penguins and reducing their breeding success, and marine heatwaves are wiping out their food supplies. On extremely hot days when the penguins are highly vulnerable, they cannot get to the water for any relief because the island is covered in people, exacerbating the problem and causing them even greater stress. When Minister Whitby was still Minister for the Environment and under pressure to close the island to tourism for certain periods to sustain and recover the population, he insisted: "It's not tourism to blame. It's climate change." The Cook government is happy to admit the impact of climate change on our endangered species when it means not changing tourism patterns, but it is still failing to act to bring down emissions.
Less than 30 kilometres from here lies Bibra Lake where for millions of years, long-necked turtles have survived dry seasons by burying into the mud, aestivating and waiting for the rains to return. But in 2023 and 2024, Bibra Lake almost completely dried and the cracked lake bed became a hunting grown for foxes that dug up sleeping turtles and killed them. In just two years, 436 dead adult turtles have been recorded across Bibra, Yangebup and Little Rush Lakes, and over 65 dead adult turtles have been recorded in Yellagonga Regional Park. Whole generations have gone in just two years. We are witnessing a deadly combination of water shortages drying our precious wetlands while foxes take advantage of the crisis. The Beeliar wetlands are now classed as being under extremely high water-stress risk and extreme depletion risk. Drying wetlands means lower water quality, more disease, fewer hatchlings and more deaths. We are in a vicious spiral here because this in turn leads to a loss of ecosystem function and biodiversity impacts that will affect overall wetland health.
In 2019 the Climate Council published a report called This is What Climate Change Looks Like. I encourage all members to look at it. It highlights cases in which climate extinctions have already begun across the continent and here are two of the cases. The Brambil Cay melomys holds the awful title of being our first official climate extinction. We knew it was endangered but we did not act. Storms and rising sea levels caused by climate change in the Torres Strait where it lived wiped it out, and the northern population of green turtles on the Great Barrier Reef could be next. The sex of green turtles is determined by sand temperature. If the temperature of the nest is more than 29 degrees Celsius they hatch female, with sand temperatures above 34 degrees being fatal. Ninety-nine per cent of the turtles hatching on the northern beaches are now female. Increased temperatures in the northern population have been causing this phenomenon for approximately the past 20 years, which means that the complete feminisation of the population may occur in the very near future and that will be the end of them. All of this happened at 1.5 degrees of warming and this is just a snapshot of how climate change is already impacting this fragile, beautiful and ancient continent. This will be out of date very soon as the next climatic-caused extreme event takes its toll. It will not be long before someone is reporting on the second, third and fourth climate extinction, or the next Pacific island where its people are saying goodbye to their ancestral homes and becoming climate refugees on another land. What happens at three degrees? The place where we are heading if we do not change course is unthinkable. We are now halfway through the critical decade for climate action and what we do next really matters. When Minister Plibersek released that state of the environment report I mentioned, she said:
It tells a story of crisis and decline in Australia's environment [and] of a decade of government inaction and wilful ignorance …
How will we not be characterised as being responsible for another decade of government inaction and wilful ignorance? As members of the Legislative Council, each of us has the responsibility and the power to choose whether we support the status quo, which is already killing people and wildlife, decimating the places we love and causing whole countries to pack up and move, and which is on track to get far, far worse, or to be wilfully informed and to take meaningful action.
As I understand it, there are four major reasons why a person would not support climate action. There is anxiety about how the energy transition may impact the economy and people's livelihoods. For some, there is a lack of a sense of urgency because they do not see the impacts of climate change being here and now. There is a small but powerful group who want to maintain the obscene profits that are still available from fossil fuels and other extremely polluting industries. There are also those who think that it is all a giant hoax designed for some obscure benefit. If any of these apply to any members, I implore them to look a little deeper and to interrogate their own position, because none of them are based in logical reason and it has never been more urgent that we all recognise the reality that we are faced with and take urgent action.
History will remember whether we stood with the polluters or with the people and the places that we love. I commend the Climate Action this Decade Bill to the house, and I urge all members in this place to support it.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas (10:50 am): This is a debate on an issue for which I have been passionate for a very long time. I will put on the record though, that the opposition will not be supporting the bill put forward by the Greens, but I want to give a bit of background before we get into the technical details.
The Acting President: Sorry member, can I just check whether you are the lead speaker?
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: I am the lead speaker for the opposition on this one, thank you.
Sometimes in politics, a little courage is required. For those who have heard me speak often, they know that I like to quote Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister not infrequently. Of course, courage is both required but also highly risky in many circumstances and sometimes your courage comes back to bite you.
None of the members currently in the chamber started as early as I did, back in 2005. I was in the other chamber, the chamber that shall not be named—the Voldemort of the Western Australian Parliament—in a seat that the Labor Party redistributed out of existence at its first opportunity, something I am starting to take a bit more personally these days.
Hon Matthew Swinbourn: You've always taken it personally.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: Yes, I always take it personally. In 2005, there were 33 members of the Liberal Party. I started briefly on the backbench. Members might remember my friend Matt Birney was the Leader of the Opposition at that point, elected unopposed. At the end of that first year, he appointed me the shadow Minister for the Environment based on the fact that I had a pretty good scientific background and basis. I thought that was a pretty good appointment and I quite enjoyed it. After the next year, 2006, I gave the government merry hell when it released the State of the Environment report. I thought that was great. In fact, so much so that it is probably my fault that the government has been too frightened to ever release one again. I take personal credit for that. I think that was great, good fun.
Interestingly, in that same period of 2006 and 2007, the Liberal Party was actively involved in policy development. Members opposite might argue that perhaps we should have maintained that rage into the future.
Hon Dan Caddy interjected.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: An energy policy was released last year, member. I will get to that in the fullness of time. There was a policy development process overseeing—
Hon Klara Andric interjected.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: I am not that old, member. I might look and I might feel it, but I am not quite. There was a policy development process that was overseen by my friend Hon Norman Moore, a member of this place for many years.
Hon Dan Caddy: The last time you were developing policy was when Norman Moore was here? That sounds about right!
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: No, hang on. Let us get this right, Hon Dan Caddy. A state Liberal energy policy was released in May last year, four to six weeks before the federal Liberal energy policy. The member might not have seen it. I do not know how many people did. That is one of the issues that we face, which is a debate for another day. This policy development process was happening nigh on 20 years ago and I was developing an environment policy.
I do not think even at that point we were too successful in developing a wide range of policies. I think two or three got developed in that period, but the Liberal environment policy was released publicly as a draft paper—a green paper—for public discussion. By the time we released it, Matt Birney had been deposed and my other friend Paul Omodei, who was then the member for Warren–Blackwood, became the leader. I will never forget, Paul and I went up to Kings Park and we announced this green paper document.
I still have a copy of it. With the indulgence of the house, I am going to read in a little bit of page 4 to page 7, the chapter that I put in on a 24-page environment policy on climate change. The reason is to make the point that this has been a long-term passion.
It is the green paper from 2006–07, nearly 20 years ago, written by me:
The Western Australian Parliamentary Liberal Party recognises climate change as one of the key environmental issues affecting Western Australia in the twenty first century. Changes in weather patterns have resulted in significant impacts on our lifestyles and industries, in particular water storage and agriculture.
I do not plan to read the whole lot in. I will jump over sections—I probably waffled as much then as I do now. The next section reads:
Climate change is an issue that will confront and hopefully galvanise the entire world. It will be one of the foremost issues confronting Governments into the future, putting pressure on international relationships. The world's atmosphere is continuous and borderless; so all nations will endure the results of altered climate. The responses to it however will by necessity be both international and local.
The Liberal Party will work to both adapt to the effects of a drying climate and minimise this State's contribution to it. We recognise that on global terms Australia produces only around one and a half percent of world greenhouse gases and that therefore we in Western Australia are only small players and will not alone significantly alter worldwide climate trends. However that will not stop the Liberal Party in this state promoting and developing good strategies to monitor and minimise greenhouse gas emissions - we believe Western Australia must do its' fair share.
Again, I am going to skip a bit:
The Liberal Party in Western Australia acknowledges the need to reduce worldwide carbon emissions and recognises as part of that process intentions to develop international carbon trading systems, and will engage productively in this development. This involves an acknowledgement of the special circumstances that exist in the state of Western Australia, which include our vastness, isolation, and the distribution of natural resources the world needs. We will therefore support a worldwide carbon trading system that includes all countries equally, and that does not impinge excessively or unnecessarily upon our resource development.
In a little bit more detail on the next page, I added this bit:
… it is our view that any proposal for carbon pricing must meet the following two conditions-
1. Any proposed carbon tax or emissions trading scheme must be managed by the Commonwealth and apply equally across Australia, but must be internationally compliant so that it can also apply uniformly to all countries and jurisdictions, and
2. Any proposed emissions trading scheme or carbon tax must be distributed to all people who benefit from an industry which incurs a carbon debt, including Government and consumers.
The second condition can be achieved using a lifetime model of apportionment of carbon debt – that is to acknowledge the carbon burden established in the extractive industries that may benefit end users. An example can be seen in the extraction of natural gas from our north west which, when exported to Asia, reduces the greenhouse gas emissions of those countries by replacing high emission energy.
Then there are a couple of little additions at the bottom of that page:
Our state has considerable potential in both geosequestration and biosequestration.
Another line reads:
A future Liberal Government will work with the agricultural industries to adapt farming practices to an altered climate and promote new and alternative crops.
That was three pages of climate change action from back in 2006–07, from the then Liberal shadow Minister for the Environment. The result has been I have probably had a target on my back ever since. But just occasionally, a bit of courage is required.
My first contribution to the debate today is simply to say that I have been debating this issue in the Parliament, in the Liberal Party and the wider community for 20-odd years, including developing significant policy along the way. I am not one to simply make comment without doing the proper and adequate research. As I continue to make what will likely be a fulsome contribution, because this is an area of great passion, I want members to understand I have done a lot of work both in the energy component of this and others, and for more than 20 years. In reality, if one is going to make a target of oneself, which I have done—there are certain sections of the Liberal Party that have never forgiven me—one might as well be open and plain about it. It may surprise members to learn that I am not generally known as a shrinking violet. I tend to be fairly forthright in my opinions, words and presentation.
For the past 20-odd years, I have believed in a free-market solution as much as possible to the thorny problem of carbon emissions, which has put a target on my back. A number of other Liberals in the state and federal sphere have agreed with me, but not all of them. I commend to members the work of Hon Greg Hunt—he is a former federal Minister for the Environment, Health and a few other things, and is now retired—who did a university thesis on carbon trading and carbon marketing. It still well worth a read if members can find it, 30-something years later. He was also a believer in reducing emissions but doing so in the most productive way without necessarily falling for the emotional rhetoric that gets thrown around. We have had some great debates on this subject over the last eight years in the last two terms of Parliament. The Leader of the House, Hon Stephen Dawson, engaged in many of those debates. I miss two members who have retired who also made significant contributions—my good friend Hon Robin Chapple from the Greens and my sometimes friend, when we are not throwing rocks at each other, Hon Alannah MacTiernan, whom I consider a friend, although if members saw our performances in both the house that shall not be named and this house, they would think that that friendship is probably impossible because we had a few good cracks at each other. We had a good range of debates, which were fantastic. People who missed them should try to pick them up.
Let us look at the history of removing the histrionics of this issue, which is what I want to do during this presentation—history without histrionics. I want to plainly deal with the issues. In the lead-up to the 2007 federal election, the then Prime Minister John Howard committed his government to developing emissions trading. In 2006, John Howard—I presume he is "honourable" too; I probably should have looked that up. Is it Hon John Howard?
Hon Kate Doust: That is questionable.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: We will not put that out there, Hon Kate Doust.
The Howard government—I will call it that—established the Prime Ministerial Task Group on Emissions Trading. It was chaired by Peter Shergold, who was both influential and highly respected at the time. It was a big step for John Howard at the time because plenty of people in the party room, and more particularly in the joint party room, did not like the idea very much. But John Howard was prepared to have a look. It has to be said that many people of that generation started with a fair degree of scepticism towards the arguments of climate change and global warming. That argument is gradually diminishing over time, although there are still a few people floating about who have an alternative position. It was much more common back in those days when I was a younger MP.
At the same time that the Howard government was working towards an emissions trading scheme, members might remember 2007, which was the year of Kevin 07, when the Rudd Labor opposition was also promising an emissions trading scheme. There were two proposals for emission trading schemes from both major parties going into the 2007 election. They had to work through it. There were differing views, and it got remarkably chunky, I have to say, but if members want to see the intent from 20 years ago, remember that. We will come back to that. In 2006–07, both the Liberal government and the Labor opposition were proposing emissions trading schemes.
Of course, everybody remembers Kevin 07. The 2007 election was very difficult for the Liberals. WorkChoices probably played a significant role in that. I do not think an emissions trading scheme was necessarily the governing issue. In July 2008, the Rudd government, having been elected, released the green paper on its proposal for a carbon pollution reduction scheme, which was going to be Australia's emissions trading scheme. It was largely based on a report by a well-respected man called Ross Garnaut, an economist who became in recent years a climate activist. His economic work was quite good. Some of his environmental stuff is not bad; some of it is probably not quite to the same standard, however, back in those days. Ross Garnaut recommended a $20 or $30 price on carbon. I want members to consider the 20 years in the interim of warfare over emissions trading and the price of carbon, because it becomes critical in the warfare. Bear in mind that in 2006 and 2007, both sides of politics were proposing an emissions trading scheme. Kevin Rudd was in power for the Labor Party; it was the Rudd government. For a brief period—one year—a very nice man was the Leader of the Opposition. I am just trying to remember his name. I thought I wrote it down somewhere; hopefully, it will come to me. Who was the guy who took over at the Australian War Memorial?
Hon Tjorn Sibma: Brendan Nelson.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: Brendan Nelson—thank you! Don't get old; your mind starts to go.
Dr Brendan Nelson was the Liberal Party leader for about a year, during which time work was still done on the Liberal Party's emissions trading scheme. He was rolled by Malcolm Turnbull, but work continued down that path.
We need to consider two significant issues. There were a couple of major faults. Ultimately—it is now history—the Liberal Party elected Tony Abbott as its leader, and he reversed that position. But the opportunity to develop that policy in 2006, 2007 and 2008 was absolutely there. Tony Abbott ascended to the leadership in December 2009, which was a couple of years after the last federal election.
What went wrong? In my view, there were two significant issues with carbon pricing. First, in my view, Ross Garnaut got it wrong, as did the Labor Party at the time, when it introduced carbon pricing and set it at $23 or $24 a tonne, which it ultimately was when Prime Minister Hon Julia Gillard—who famously said, "there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead"—managed to get one through and set it at a price that had everybody struggling. Obviously, it is hard to keep everybody happy. Industry could have accepted a reasonable price, but the Labor Party was pushed by the Greens to make sure that it was high enough to punish industry. In the contributions that I have heard to date—not in the original speech from Hon Dr Brad Pettitt—I have heard the repeated mantra that we have to punish industry, that it is industry's fault, which is the Greens' position. The government finally managed to get a carbon price through the system during the Gillard era, but if it had set it at a price that industry could absorb, it would still been in place today and would gradually rise.
Hon Sophie McNeill interjected.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: The history of climate change and the setting of goals is critically important. I know that this is uncomfortable for Greens members, and I know that they do not like to hear it.
Hon Sophie McNeill interjected.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: I have already read out my original policy.
The Acting President: Order! I would like to hear what Hon Dr Steve Thomas is saying.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: Thank you, Acting President.
I have already read out my policy. Carbon trading and scale setting should be done at the national level. That is absolutely my position; it was my position 20 years ago and it remains my position. Greens members are embarrassed for two reasons. First, if they had compromised on the carbon price that left Australian industry working with change but not under attack, my view is that there would still be a price on carbon today.
I turn to the other thing that the Greens are generally highly embarrassed about. Those who saw The Weekend Australian a couple of weeks ago would have read a very interesting point made by Tony Abbott, whom I have a lot of respect for. He said that we should not throw out the net neutral or net zero target by 2050. I thought it was a great article. I am happy to share it with everybody. Whether people love or hate Tony Abbott, he came to every state conference of the Western Australian Liberal Party when he was Prime Minister and said, "We accept climate change is real and we should act." I know he said that because I was sitting in the room every time. He did vote against it, so he did change his mind about the model by which it is done.
I think two things are absolutely inarguable. If the Labor Party and the Greens in combination could have accepted a starting point and a reasonable price, I still think we would have had a price on carbon today. Probably more importantly, before the Julia Gillard legislation back in 2009, after Tony Abbott took over from Malcolm Turnbull, a vote occurred on the emissions trading scheme proposal of the Rudd government. Guess how the Greens voted? They voted against it.
Hon Sophie McNeill: Any thoughts on this bill—the bill before us now?
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: Welcome to the world of second reading speeches! This is about the issue that we face today. The Greens voted against it. There was an opportunity under Kevin Rudd. To be honest, I still think the price was an issue. To the pride of the Greens across Australia, they joined with Tony Abbott to vote against the emissions trading scheme as originally proposed. Then Kevin Rudd had to go back and try to renegotiate it through federal Parliament. They voted against it. Perhaps it is not confected anger but I understand the anger. This is not about one group of people who stand over there sainted on a cloud, with everybody else being evil. In a moment I will talk a little about the Greens going forward and how they manage this particular policy. But that is the history—the Greens joined to vote down the Labor Party's carbon tax proposal.
Hon Sophie McNeill: In the federal Parliament, not this one.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: In the federal Parliament; indeed. Why? Presumably, because it was a battle for who was the most green, and they saw some political advantage in trying to be more green than the Labor Party. Interestingly, perhaps the Labor Party is intermittently green, not necessarily green across the board, but there we go.
That is the history; the Greens do not carry the enormous high moral ground in this area. I understand the argument. It was a very clever move by Hon Dr Brad Pettitt to reintroduce the government's own bill, and I applaud him for that. I thought that was a touch of political brilliance. In the meantime, the Labor Party has moved on to a much more technical and nuanced position but it has left the door open for the Greens to try to claim the high moral ground that the Labor Party was seeking.
Hon Dr Brad Pettitt: What does "technical and nuanced" mean?
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: Doing things differently.
Hon Dr Brad Pettitt: I can't see it.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: I will come to that in a little while, too.
I understand the position of the Greens. This is about politics in general, not just as it relates to the Greens. It is a case of Yes Minister; it is about the white hats and the black hats. That is what we do in politics. We try to say, "We're the good guys and they're the bad guys." I absolutely understand. I say to Hon Tjorn Sibma that that is another good Yes Minister reference. So those opposite are the bad guys and we are the good guys. Fair enough. I understand that. I think the Greens are incredibly clever on the climate debate. They are a bit like the teals; they offer an alternative that is still high carbon but assuaged of guilt. Where do we find Greens voters and teal voters in particular? They are not largely in Labor Party seats where people are struggling to put food on the table. They are in the relatively well-to-do areas around Fremantle and the leafy western suburbs. The teals gave us a pretty good scare in the seat of Forrest federally. But this is the model that is proposed.
If we are serious about getting everybody to reduce their carbon emissions, everybody should be doing it but there are some problems with that. The carbon emissions of someone with a four-wheel drive who lives in Nedlands are probably well past where they should be. But if all of us take one flight a year, we would blow our carbon footprint out of the water. This movement is clever because the Greens will not tell us to not fly anywhere. They will say, "Keep your Toorak tractor. That's okay. But vote Green and support us on this because we're going to make industry, which we hate, pay all the costs of this. You'll be okay. Vote Green, assuage your guilt and industry will pay." That is okay. I understand the Greens can do that because they do not support industry. They dislike it. That is not a universal view; there are exceptions, of course, and I have met some Greens members who do. It is a clever model of the Greens. They say, "We don't like industry. Industry will pay." Guess what? When industry pays, workers pay because industries close down. We have named some of them—the gas industry and the alumina industry. Down in the South West, the alumina industry employs thousands of people. I guess it is a luxury of the Greens as a minority party to be able to hate industry because they will probably never have to work with them in any significant way. No disrespect to the crossbench, but the crossbench will never have to balance a budget. They can call for just about anything and it will not matter.
Several members interjected.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: Sorry; I missed that completely.
I understand the process—I get it—but industry still has to occur; it has to go on.
Let us talk a little about what is happening around the world with emissions because some of that was mentioned this morning. I have often considered that Alan Kohler, the economics presenter on the ABC, is pretty left wing. I do not consider him right wing in the slightest. I have some respect for him; I think he presents very well and I have some respect for what he says. He did a report a couple of weeks ago, which I thought every member should look at. Again, I am happy to distribute it. Just before we apply the guilt to Western Australians and move down that path, let us look at the latest emissions profile. There are those who want to go down that path—those who like emissions profiles per head of population or per person. Obviously, countries with a massive population look a lot better. A state like Western Australia, with a massive area and a smaller population, looks terrible. Australia does not look very good that way. I once did an experiment in which I measured emissions per head of population. Australia ranks in the top couple. When we measure emissions per square kilometre of landmass, for example, Australia rates into the hundreds. How we measure it absolutely makes a difference. Rewarding highly populous nations by allowing them even greater emissions at the expense of everybody else did not necessarily make sense. In 2024, China emitted 34%, or over one-third of world emissions; the United States of America emitted 12%; and India emitted 7.6%. The top three emitters are currently emitting 54% of worldwide emissions. What does everybody think the impact of Australia's emissions, which I have said we need to work on, will be?
Hon Sophie McNeill: Scope 3 emissions.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: I mentioned scope 3 emissions in a member's statement the other night. If I am given another opportunity, I will be talking a lot about scope 3 emissions. Scope 3 emissions are a transfer of guilt. The Greens love scope 3 emissions. Not only do we have to feel guilty about scope 1 emissions that we generate and scope 2 emissions that we buy in terms of energy, but also we should feel guilty about scope 3 emissions. When we export something and the community or the country that we are exporting to actually gets the benefit of it, we should not feel guilty about that. That is what scope 3 emissions are about. It is about making sure the guilt can be applied where it might bite home, because there is no point trying to guilt China into doing something about its emissions, is there? There is no point in protesting China.
Hon Jess Beckerling: We're actually the party that doesn't like scope 3 emissions. They're just a simple fact of life. It's not about guilt. It's about the fact that we have to try to do something to bring them down.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: I have my version of that. I mean, I get it. I could spend an hour on scope 3 emissions alone, but I have too much other stuff I want to get through here.
The reality is China is at 34% of emissions. The best part about the Alan Kohler report was he put up a chart of emissions generation by source in China. I will seek leave to table this so that members can have a look at it, if I can, Acting President. Members can take a look at this; I have printed it in colour. Everybody says—I get this all the time—that China is massively investing in renewables, and it is, in huge amounts. China is massively investing in storage, and it is, in huge amounts. China is also massively investing in nuclear energy in huge amounts. Do members know what China is investing more in than anything else? It is coal-fired power. Coal-fired power is increasing in China faster than everything else, and probably everything else combined.
This was the chart that Alan Kohler put up, which I thought was an absolute cracker. It shows coal generation by source in terawatt hours. In 2000, it was probably 80% to 90% coal with a maximum of about one to one and a quarter terawatt hours. That increased in 2025 to the maximum of 10 terawatt hours—so, eight times as much or maybe seven times as much—but coal generation has gone from almost one terawatt hour to something like six terawatt hours. Is China investing in renewable energy? It absolutely is. Is it investing in electric cars? It absolutely is. We wish them luck with it. But do not be fooled for one minute that that does not mean that China is not investing massively in coal. There has been a sixfold increase in coal generation over the last 20 years. China is putting more coal in than anything else. It was said before in one of the earlier contributions that gas exported to Asia does not displace coal. I agree with that, in part. What we do not see is Western Australian gas going into Asia and a coal plant being closed down and a gas plant being built. We do not tend to see that. The reason that we would potentially want to see that is the emissions at the generation point of gas are, let us say, somewhere between 50% and 65% those of the coal that it would in theory be replacing. Half is a hard number. We always used to say that gas produces half the emissions of coal. There is some new research out that says it is not all the way down to half; it is actually less than that, but it is a significant reduction. But what it is certainly doing over long-term contracts is providing energy that would have been built as coal if gas contracts had not been available. People get confused by this. Australia does not export any coal. Our coal fields are in a disastrous state; multiple governments have seen to that. But the gas that we export is used to generate energy that would otherwise come from coal, and if members do not believe that, just have a look at those Chinese numbers. There is a sixfold increase in coal-fired generation. It is absolutely through the roof.
Where are we going to land with this going forward? China is currently at 34% of emissions. I do not think anybody expects that that will change in the next decade. China's major policy is based on lifting a large proportion of its population out of poverty, and that in itself is probably a worthy contribution. I get and understand that. But the problem we have, if we believe it in a purely scientific and environmental sense, is that we have to come back to the sustainability of the country. This is a great argument for Australia. Australia probably has a certain population it can sustain at a certain economic benefit. A certain population will have a certain standard of living, because basically we have to measure the capacity of the country to output. It would be almost impossible to massively increase the number of people without massively increasing the output. I am a free market thinker, but I do not believe in endless growth and endlessly increasing growth. I think that is a furphy that we have inherited over the last 40 or 50 years, and I think that reality might just come home to roost in some countries that are assuming endless growth all the way through. If we assume that there is a kind of limit to the amount of wealth, welfare or standard of living that one can apply to a certain population, why are we always rewarding those countries that are massively populated by not applying carbon emissions to them? It is so hard to do. America looks like it is largely walking away from emissions monitoring, and that is a shame. Possibly a compromise view from America would have been pretty useful. But China has no interest in debating with the world about where its emissions are going. It is currently at 34%. That is quite likely to hit 40% going forward. India, which is currently sitting at 7.6%, is very likely to hit double figures.
I guess that is probably the depressing bit. The Labor government sort of went down this path as well. It sort of sells this misrepresentation of action in Western Australia. We produce more than 10% of the emissions of the country. We are normally 10% of everything, but for emissions we are significantly higher. That is another interesting point. When I wrote that Liberal policy 20 years ago, I think it said that Australia's emissions were 1.4% of the world's emissions at that point, but I may have to check that number. It was either 1.3% or 1.4%. The latest figures indicate that it is probably 1%, and it is heading down as a proportion, not because Australia has massively decreased its emissions, but because other countries have exploded with theirs. When we look at China's increase of a much bigger pool, if we see that it is now producing 13 billion tonnes a year of carbon emissions out of about 39 billion tonnes worldwide and is continuing to rise, we can see that Australia's net proportion has actually come back a bit, to be honest, not because of any great work done by governments to deliver that; it is just that we are a slightly lower percentage of a significantly bigger pie. But it is very frustrating in these debates to have people say that we are going to change the outcome of the world, or even Western Australia, with the things that we are going to put forward, because we are not.
Hon Sophie McNeill: We've got to lead!
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: We have to be a part of it, but we also have to be a part of the economy. This is where we get down to the substance of this debate. I understand that the Greens hate industry—I get that. I understand that. But industry employs people. It keeps people in jobs. Those industries are critically important. As I keep saying in the energy debate—I do not even have time to get to the energy debate today—the first job is to keep the lights on. As we do so, let us try to keep our emissions down, but the first job is to keep the lights on and to supply enough energy for the community, including businesses, that they need at a price they can afford.
Debate adjourned, pursuant to standing orders.
