Peter Garrett Meet the Press, Channel 10

[Niemmy]

Peter Garrett MP
Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Heritage

Transcript: Meet the Press, Channel 10

E & O E Proof only

Subjects: Tamar Valley Pulp Mill; Labor indigenous jobs and environment policy; Labor climate change policy

JOURNALIST: Labor's support for the Tasmanian pulp mill project was signalled by the party's environment spokesman. Some see it as conclusive proof that Peter Garrett is no longer a green campaigner, but a mainstream politician. Welcome back to the programme, Mr Garrett.

PETER GARRETT: Thanks, Paul.

PAUL BONGIORNO: Let's just go to that story. In Britain, Gordon Brown has been spooked by opinion polls and he's called off an election. He's got two years, of course. John Howard has two months. Do you think the opinion polls are spooking him off calling it sooner rather than later?

GARRETT: I don’t know the answer to that question. What I do know is that the longer the Prime Minister puts off holding the election the more we’re seeing of a million dollars a day of Government propaganda. And the only way in which the Prime Minister it seems can actually get his message out there is to spend taxpayer’s money trying to convince us of the merits of his policies. It hasn’t worked up till now and I don’t think it’s going to work over the next week or two.
Given that we’ve had this devastating result in the football (Rugby World Cup) and we’re all feeling it this morning, why doesn’t he just get on with it and call the election?

JOURNALIST: Well we saw during the week bipartisan support – both the major parties have agreed to the Tasmanian pulp mill with conditions. Now we did, this is a point that some of the green campaigners are making, the Franklin Dam was also given the tick but opposition stymied it. Do you believe the pulp mill will be built?

GARRETT: Yes I do Paul. I don’t think it’s the same as the Franklin issue even though I do understand and accept that there are really strong feelings about this particular proposal.

At the end of the day the decision that’s been made is one which recognises that if in fact you want to have a proposal of this kind in a place like this, then you have to set very high standards. The Chief Scientist has provided an additional set of conditions which go I think to what were the pretty important issues the Commonwealth needed to consider, particularly the effluent discharge and the impact that might have on marine ecosystems.

JOURNALIST: What about what the Commonwealth couldn’t consider? The air quality, the trees.

GARRETT: Well I mean that’s one of the difficulties we’ve got with the existing legislation. People probably don’t remember but the Howard Government has actually contained the Environment Protection Act (EPBC Act) in such a way as to leave the Minister with a range of the issues they can consider but other issues that don’t come under (interrupted)

JOURNALIST: Would Labor change that?

GARRETT: Certainly in the future we would look at amending the Act to fix up some of the deficiencies that it has. We wouldn’t do it retrospectively but we would look at that legislation if we were the Government.

We would (also) say that in terms of what the Government has done in the past that they have limited the impact the decision-making can have because of the amendments they made to the Act.

JOURNALIST: It seems to be getting personal with Bob Brown. He says he’s not your friend anymore, he threw out this challenge.

BROWN (video cross): Peter Garrett will you save Tasmania’s forests …

GARRETT: Look, Bob is always coming up with very strong and provocative comments. He’s always personalising this debate. He comes up with stuff which is factually inaccurate as well at times. He’s playing the politics of it.

If we go to the substance of it, what I will do – if I am in a position to – is ensure that the best possible standards are met with the proposal of this kind. That the conditions that have been identified by the Chief Scientists are rigorously and scrupulously observed. And that there isn’t significant impact on matters of National Environment Significance.

JOURNALIST: Well, many people believe that you’ve had to compromise long-held beliefs, long-held views to take the stand that you are.

GARRETT: Paul, you know when I joined the Labor Party I joined in. I intend to take the best set of environment policies that we’ve ever seen in an election campaign to the Australian people as we head towards this election.

I’m also very conscious of the fantastic environment that Labor has.
If we look at World Heritage areas. If we look at the protection of the Wet Tropics, if we look at Antarctica, if we look at the Great Barrier Reef, all of those things done by good strong Labor Governments advocating for the environment. And all of them opposed in one way or another by the Coalition and by Mr Howard.

JOURNALIST: Do you believe you will be Environment Minister in a Rudd Labor Government?

GARRETT: Well that’s a decision that Kevin will take. It’s a decision that he will take but it’s obviously a position that I would love to do. But I’ll do whatever I’m asked.

JOURNALIST: Here’s a question from Mark Matthews, on the pulp mill from our Meet the People site on Myspace.com

MARK MATTHEWS: It seems that the Government has come to recognise that climate change is a massive issue in today’s society. Don’t you think the pulp mill is a backwards step?

GARRETT: Look, climate change is critically important, he’s absolutely right in that regard. Is it (pulp mill) a backwards step? I don’t believe so. What is a backwards step Paul is the fact that we haven’t set a target under the Howard Government for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It’s 11 and half years of scepticism, denial and delay.

We haven’t had any real conscious awakening by senior Government Ministers to the urgency of the climate change challenge. Whether it’s in relation to international negotiations, whether it’s in relation to the impact that drought is likely to have on our agricultural communities, whether it’s in relation to actually getting on with the job of setting up an emissions trading scheme or supporting renewable energy. All of those components are absolutely necessary and vital in dealing with climate change and that’s what we’re committed to doing on this side of the House (of Parliament).

AD BREAK – RETURN WITH JOURNALIST PANEL

JOURNALIST: On Tuesday the CSIRO gave its (inaudible) on climate change in Australia. It was sobering. Using the advanced computer modelling, the scientists warn that at best temperatures will rise by one degree by 2030 and at worst by five degrees by 2070. The effects would be devastating: droughts, bushfires and storms.
The Greens want a 30 per cent cut in emissions by 2020 to forestall a disaster.

SENATOR MILNE: More disasters from one end of the country to the other. It needs more than an Akubra hat and a band aid cheque. What it needs is strategic planning and deep cuts.

JOURNALIST: Mr Garrett, you do of course have a long term target, but isn’t the big hole in your policy that you don’t have any medium term target cuts?

GARRETT: Michelle I think the big hole in policy on climate change has come about because the Government never took climate change seriously; knocked back a series of reports that specifically came to Cabinet.

Treasurer Costello never really did the detailed modelling necessary to make prudent and sensible decisions about things like interim cuts.

Kevin has commissioned Professor Ross Garnaut, along with the state Premiers to come up with effectively an Australian Stern Report. That will provide us with the sort of information base that we need (interrupted) and that’s what we’ll certainly look at some time in the next year were (interrupted)

JOURNALIST: Worthy as that is, surely that’s a bit of a cop out. There’s a lot of information out there and you’ve got more detailed policies in other areas. Surely you’d be in a position to have, to go to the people with a short-term target.

GARRETT: Look, I think that it would be a real mistake for us to not take advantage of the necessary depth of information that you would need to have in Government if you were making a decision of this kind. Certainly we’ve set a long term target – that’s a target based in science. And certainly we’ve got a number of other important policies out there and we’ll have more to announce before the election. But it would be absolutely folly to try and make a decision of this importance and magnitude on a basis of not having the full suite of data and analysis available to you.

And Professor Garnaut’s remit is to provide specifically that sort of information to us. It will be comprehensive in terms of the recommendations he brings forward. He’s a respected economist; he’s travelling widely, not only in Australia but overseas as well. And on the basis of his recommendations, if we are in Government, we’ll be able to make those kinds of decisions in a timely fashion.

JOURNALIST: Mr Garrett, in the context of the pulp mill decision in Tasmania, you’ve said that Labor would consider, would in fact broaden, the scope of matters that the Commonwealth could consider under the Environmental Protection Act. How, what matters specifically would you include in the scope of the Act?

GARRETT: We think there needs to be a climate change trigger in the act. We think that some of the amendments that were brought forward by the Government of the last term of the Parliament, where they’ve basically allowed for a great deal of Ministerial discretion in decision-making (inaudible) needs to be looked at again. They’re obviously two important areas.

The other thing I would say is that we’ve already brought forward a number of extremely good policies to do with climate change. I mean we brought forward policies about ,0,000 low-interest loans (for green home improvements), the capacity to really leverage a significant amount of investment in climate change proven technology in people’s homes. We’ve looked at a fairly considerable commitment just on Friday as I was saying before we came in to Indigenous Protected Areas, to Indigenous Rangers, to protecting biodiversity in the North. And giving Indigenous communities the opportunity to participate in the climate market.

I mean we’ve got a lot of policies out there already Peter.

JOURNALIST: On the question of good policy, do you think it’s good policy for Commonwealth and State Governments to subsidise the creation of major carbon emitters like the pulp mill in Tasmania, and which also happens to threatening to destroy a carbon sink of native forests. Is that good policy to subsidise these carbon emitters?

GARRETT: Look, there are subsidies that operate right across the national economy. We know that. The task is to make sure that you bring your greenhouse emissions trajectories down. That you set a target that is clear, that you provide the certainty to enable business and governments to make information decisions about it. That you have an emissions trading scheme that enables you to do that job.
Now, we are in a delayed moment because the Howard Government just hasn’t taken climate change seriously. I mean we are so far behind the eight ball because of Mr Howard’s intransigence on this issue that until we have those measures in place, including the set of issues you’ve raised, we’ll have the (interrupted)

JOURNALIST: Isn’t one of your problems though that the Howard Government has come late to this issue but is now appearing to be extremely active so in the public mind, (inaudible) swinging voters, the difference is being blurred. You’ve been (inaudible) sharp in this debate it’s a bit like what happened with health before the last election. Is this a problem for you?

GARRETT: Well, I don’t see the Government getting any great traction on it’s so-called ‘climate change credentials.’ What better example do you need that their announcement of a so-called clean energy target which was basically just bundling existing state targets into a national target. No additional capacity for renewables.

JOURNALIST: They got a lot of coverage and people would have thought they were doing something.

GARRETT: Well, it lasted about a day, Michelle, and the next day we had the Prime Minister took over the debate and bringing out a sort of recycled paper about abatement policies and now we've got them in the process of loading up the population with additional propaganda, sending out their so-called climate-clever propaganda messages into the public domain. Look, the Government doesn't have credibility on climate change. That shows up consistently in the polls. Clearly, we have showed ourselves to be serious about it. Kevin has identified it as one of the most important issues we've got to deal with and I'm absolutely confident that when you match up the policies, both now and also in the run-up to the election, people will very clearly see the differences between us. We've had Minister Downer running around in other parts of the world talking about aspirational targets and not being prepared to commit to binding targets. We've had the Agriculture Minister saying, "Well, I'm not really sure about the climate change-drought connection. They are stuck in an old paradigm with old rhetoric that is all about trying to mask their inaction and I think people see through that.

JOURNALIST: Mr Garrett, you suggested recently an audit of Australian farmland to work out, with drought and climate change, what might be marginal farmland and what might not be. What criteria would you use in judging what's marginal and what's not? And what would you propose in terms of some sort of structural adjustment perhaps to help farmers off the land?

GARRETT: Look, Peter, we did say following the announcement and the research that came through, which showed the linkages between likely impact of climate change on drought and what's going to happen to agricultural communities, that a lot more needs to be done, and we need a better knowledge base to make any kinds of decisions. We've also announced a $ 130 million package. That includes providing rural communities with the additional counselling needs that they have. It's got a specific component to provide us with more data and more information. I mean, on the basis that we are now going to see a great increase in the number of drought-affected days in southern parts of the continent, that we're going to see probably 15% less water availabilities in the Murray-Darling system itself - this is a system that's already at its lowest level of water flowing down the river system ever since records were kept - so it's absolutely critical for us to have a decent information base, to work closely with those agricultural institutions that do that work, and with the Bureau of Meteorology, and to finance and support that, so that planning for dealing with the effects of drought and considering the kinds of land use that's appropriate for farming in these areas can actually be determined with a sensible basis of knowledge.

JOURNALIST: Well, Mr Garrett, here's another question from our MySpace Meet the People site.

ADAM FINNEY (Myspace.com): If you and the Labor government were voted into power, would you reduce the coal exports coming out of Australia, which are contributing to so much of our greenhouse gases?

GARRETT: We wouldn't. What we've said is we need a $500 million investment pool in a national clean coal initiative.

JOURNALIST: Peter, can I just come in on that? Can there be such a thing as clean coal? Is it an oxymoron?

GARRETT: Well, the challenge for the scientists and the challenge for the industry and the challenge for us is to invest in it to make it work. It's very clear that we are going to be meeting a significant amount of our future energy needs, particularly in the short term, by coal. It's clear that our trading partners - including China - is going to be doing the same thing, and Australian coal is clean. Yes, it is producing greenhouse gas emissions, and it's a significant issue for us, but every bit of report that you see, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says pretty clearly that you must apply a necessary capital and intellectual investment to make coal clean. And our scientists tell us, if they get the support, they can get the job done.

JOURNALIST: Thank you very much for being with us today, Peter Garrett.