Climate Action this Decade Bill 2025
Extract from Hansard
Second reading
14th August 2025
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 Legislative Council—Thursday 14 August 2025 Page 14 of 22 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, Legislative Council—Thursday 14 August 2025 Page 15 of 22 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.
