Transcript
Station:
CANBERRA CONFERENCE UNIT
Date:
30/11/2015
Program:
BRIEFING
Time:
07:00 AM
Compere:
0
Summary ID:
C00064102672
Item:
CLIMATE CHANGE AUTHORITY MEDIA BRIEFING.
INTERVIEWEES: STUART ALLINSON, ACTING CHAIR, CLIMATE CHANGE
AUTHORITY
Audience:
Male 16+
N/A
AILEEN MULDOON:
Female 16+
N/A
All people
N/A
Okay, I'd just like to welcome people to the Climate
Change Authority's media conference today. I just want
to introduce myself, my name's Aileen Muldoon and
I'm the media advisor for the Climate Change Authority
and just before we get started, I just want to explain
the format of the conference. First of all, this
teleconference is being recorded and so you are most
welcome to record the interview as well. In the room
we have the Acting Chair of the Authority, Stuart
Allinson. He will provide some opening remarks and
then we'll invite questions. Before you ask questions, if
you'd just like to just state your name and organisation
before we ask any questions and sorry, also in the
room we have the CEO of the Authority and members
of the secretariat just to answer any technical
questions if there might be some as well. We might
have a few people on the line so I'd just ask you to be
patient and we'll get to everyone's questions before
our time's up. And if there's anymore questions or
information you'd like clarified after we're finished, my
contact details are on the media release as well.
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So, I'll just ask the people on the line again to just tell
us where they're from, their name and where they're
from.
QUESTION:
Annabel Hepworth from The Australian newspaper.
AILEEN MULDOON:
Thank you.
QUESTION:
Nicole Hasham from The Sydney Morning Herald.
QUESTION:
James Whitmore from The Conversation.
AILEEN MULDOON:
Thank you. Is that all? I thought we had another one
from Thomson Reuters. No. Okay, well I'll just
introduce the Acting Chair of the Authority Stuart
Allinson to say a few words. Thank you.
STUART ALLINSON:
And thanks very much indeed for joining us this
afternoon. I just wanted to say a few opening remarks
and then open up for questions as Aileen said, the
Acting CEO Shayleen Thompson's also with me and if
there's any more detail that I can't provide, I'll defer to
her in the first instance. The Authority's been asked to
conduct a review on whether Australia should have an
emissions trading scheme and what action Australia
should take to implement outcomes from Paris. Now,
our terms of reference require the authority to
consider Australia's undertakings under international
climate agreements, the climate policies, in particular,
of the EU, US, China, Republic of Korea and Japan, also
Australia's business international competitiveness and
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Australia's contribution to achieving the global two
degree goal.
Australia's efforts to reduce greenhouse gases are to
be taken in the context of broader international action
and the authority is tracking the progress of country's
against their existing commitments and as a general
observation, we're finding that countries are taking
their 2020 commitment seriously including Australia
with the Government stating last week that it's on
track to meet its 2020 target. Now, over 170 countriesand that might be even 180 countries based on reports
this morning, they've now made pledges beyond 2020
that by and large extend and strengthen their 202
commitments for the period beyond and it's this period
beyond 2020 to- for us, that is the main focus of this
review.
So, this review- and we're at the stage of the second
draft report of the special review into Australia's
climate policy options. In recent years the climate
policy conversation has become, I dare say, somewhat
polarised and at times it appears we've lost sight of the
overall objective which is to reduce emissions for
Australia's benefit, for the benefit of our environment
and, to a larger extent, our way of life. The Authority is
of the view that it's time for a fresh look at the range of
policy options including the various forms of emissions
trading schemes and the fact is that Australia will need
new policies to achieve its targets to 2030 and beyond.
So, the draft report, which I believe you had a copy of
too, lays out how the authority plans to evaluate the
wide range of policy options, reducing Australia's
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emissions and that's based on three key principles, cost
effectiveness, environmental effectiveness and equity.
Now, amongst the options, we're looking at several
different types of emissions trading schemes, including
cap and trade, baseline and credit and emissions
intensity. We're also looking at those alongside all the
other policies including renewable energy, energy
efficiency, investment in low emissions technologies
etcetera. Our overarching view is that good policies
reduce emissions at low cost and can be really scaled
up to achieve greater emissions reductions if and when
needed. And the other observation based on
worldwide experience is emissions reduction policies
are not one size fits all and it's important, we believe
that Australia's policy tool kit be suited to our national
circumstances insofar as what works for one sector
might not work for others and it's in this process that
we want to look at and draw on international
experience to consider might- what might work well
and even might work best here.
So, that's the process that we're in. This document is
an important piece of opening up the national
conversation about the right policy choices for
Australia and I want to just highlight that we're very
keen to get input before or on the closing day of 19
February 2016 so that we can incorporate that input
into the final piece of this special review which is
report three which is due in June 2016. So, thank you
for that. I would like to open up to any questions that
you might have on my remarks and on the second draft
report options paper. Thank you.
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QUESTION:
Can I just- it's Annabel Hepworth from The Australian.
Could I just ask on the- deciding on the cap and trade
emissions trading scheme or in baseline emissions
[indistinct] the other model, does the authority have
any preliminary or other view on what kind of a pertonne carbon price would be required under the
scenario of a market based emissions trading scheme?
STUART ALLINSON:
At this stage we haven't taken a view on the underlying
price. What we are- what we have done is taken a view
on the policy options that we have at our disposal and
then to really test how robust those policies might be
in delivering emissions reductions under various
scenarios. So, we don't have a view at this stage about
price, that would get in the way of consideration of the
policy option in the first instance.
QUESTION:
Right.
QUESTION:
Nicole Hasham here at The Sydney Morning Herald.
Can I ask about the scope of the review? Just having a
look at the terms of reference, it was pretty explicit
that it was just focused on the emissions trading only.
I'm just wondering- and I understand that up until very
recently, that was the focus, just wondering why it was
sort of broadened at the eleventh hour and on what
basis given that that doesn't really fall in the terms of
reference scope?
STUART ALLINSON:
So, two comments there, Nicole, the first is that as we
have looked- as we have come together as an authority
with continuing and new members, we've looked
around the world and we've really seen that there isn't
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Metro TV demographics are supplied by OzTAM, Non-Metro TV demographics by Nielsen and Radio demographics by GfK.
a sort of one size fits all and there isn't a single policy
response. So, where we look at places like Europe, you
know, Europe has a cap and trade emissions trading
scheme but it also has regulations around emissions
and it has other policy interventions. There's even been
recent discussion about adding to that, a taxation on
carbon in addition to that. So- and it is fair to say that
the environment that a- policy such as an emissions
trading scheme would be introduced in the Australian
environment would be against the context of existing
policy frameworks and indeed we point out in the
report that, you know, we've got the Renewable
Energy Target and we need to be mindful about having
some investment stability and certainty in that process
as well. So, one of the things that the members have
come to the view and understood that it's actually the
interaction of these policies that are as important as
the policies themselves. So, it's actually quite difficult
to look at an emissions trading scheme in isolation to
those other schemes.
So, our objective here is to take the central
requirement of the brief, which is to answer the
question whether Australia should have an emissions
trading scheme but to nuance that in two ways, one to
open up the understanding and the debate about what
form that could take and secondly to really see how
that might interact with an existing- existing policies or
other policies that might be introduced and it's those
interactions that we're as keen to understand as the
central policy itself.
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Metro TV demographics are supplied by OzTAM, Non-Metro TV demographics by Nielsen and Radio demographics by GfK.
QUESTION:
I mean- does the authority have- I'm assuming it has
the discretion to make that call about how to interpret
the terms of reference and did that entail taking any
resources away from purely looking at an ETS scenario?
STUART ALLINSON:
So, you're right on the first point. We do have that
discretion and no it didn't take any resources away
from looking at anything else. So, we're well resourced
to cover the scope of work that we've mapped out
through June 2015.
QUESTION:
This is Deb Thomson from Reuters. Could you just take
us through your- what you have to say about carbon
leakage and the need for- I guess, compensation for
emissions intensive [indistinct] under some policies,
ETS'? You seem to be suggesting that we're in a
diff…possibly in a different position than we were
when the carbon pricing was happening here a couple
of years ago and that the outcome of Paris main factor
makes those two things less of an issue, i.e. that as the
world acts, businesses here won't need compensation.
But I am also curious about what you mean about low
carbon leakage.
STUART ALLINSON:
Yeah, great question. So you know, the clock has rolled
forward since this was last looked at in detail. As a
general comment, the risk of carbon leakage
diminishes as our trading partners and other nations
with high emissions take concerted action to reduce
emissions themselves. So if we roll forward to an
idealised future point where all nations have firm
commitments to greenhouse gas reduction, then the
risk of carbon leakage is minimal. At the same time
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we're not there yet, and there will be some iteration
between what Australia wishes to do by way of its
policy framework and what other countries are doing
at the same time. And therefore carbon leakage
continues to be a real concern, and for different parts
of the economy. And that's part of why we see this as a
national conversation. I do recall last time that the
Energy-Intensive Trade-Exposed industries had a clear
voice on this matter. There were other businesses that
felt that they were adversely affected, and we're keen
to understand how different sectors of the economy
see that rolling forward with the benefit of further
experience and knowledge about how that's playing
out elsewhere in the world.
QUESTION:
Sorry, and on the [indistinct]- oh, sorry. Okay. I was
reading this wrongly. Okay.
STUART ALLINSON:
Does that answer your question Annabel?
QUESTION:
Yes, yes.
STUART ALLINSON:
Beautiful thank you.
QUESTION:
Yes, yes. Can I ask another question though? Did you
find doing this review difficult or frustrating thatbecause the Government hasn't put out any national
greenhouse gas account quarterly update since March,
and we've yet to see the, sort of, December- the
annual update which we'll see then, I guess, to the
report to the UN? In other words, we really haven't
seen any up to date greenhouse gas emission data for
some time. It's pretty old what's there.
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our clients but no legal responsibility is taken for errors or omissions. (*) - Indicates unknown spelling or phonetic spelling.
Metro TV demographics are supplied by OzTAM, Non-Metro TV demographics by Nielsen and Radio demographics by GfK.
STUART ALLINSON:
Yeah, look. It didn't affect the discussion amongst the
members or the input from secretariat really because
we're looking beyond 2020 to the 2030 period. So what
is happening in the short term, whilst it's useful to
know as part of the broader evidence of organisations
and countries meeting their commitments, really the
focus of thismoves beyond that to the policy
framework that I think it's generally acknowledged
needs to go further to get to the higher targets that
have been set out.
QUESTION:
So, it's Annabel Hepworth again. Could I ask another
question just on this issue of industry? You seem to be
arguing that Australian industry will have less and less
reason to be concerned about global competitiveness
as other countries lurch into action. If we do you see a
scenario then where India doesn't do much at the Paris
talks and that becomes a problem, where does that
leave business competitiveness if we do get reasonably
big emitters like India not doing enough?
STUART ALLINSON:
Yeah, but look, that would be a legitimate concern and
that's what we're keen to hear from. The best parties
to comment on that are those that would feel that they
stand to be disadvantaged if that scenario played out.
So we're really keen to hear from organisations that
feel that that would be a direct impact. At the end of
the day the policy framework has got to be effective.
So it's got to reduce emissions globally, and if it
reduces emissions in Australia all to the good, but if it
also contributes to lowering emissions overall, that's all
to the good. But if there are organisations and sectors
that are adversely affected in the short term, then the
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our clients but no legal responsibility is taken for errors or omissions. (*) - Indicates unknown spelling or phonetic spelling.
Metro TV demographics are supplied by OzTAM, Non-Metro TV demographics by Nielsen and Radio demographics by GfK.
policy framework will need to take account of that and
look at methods or mechanisms for softening the blow
or creating some comfort for those kind of
organisations and sectors. But mindful at the same
time that part of the idea is for a price to be felt
through the economy so that people do actually take
action to reduce emissions. So it's a balancing act.
QUESTION:
Yes, yes.
AILEEN MULDOON:
So do we have any more questions from anyone? Are
we about done?
QUESTION:
I think so, well for me. Yeah, that's it for me.
AILEEN MULDOON:
Yeah?
QUESTION:
All good.
AILEEN MULDOON:
James? Good?
QUESTION:
Sure.
QUESTION:
All good, yep.
AILEEN MULDOON:
Great. Well, thank you very much for joining us, and if
you need to clarify anything certainly give me a call.
QUESTION:
Thank you.
QUESTION:
Thanks for that. Bye.
AGENCY REPORT For private research and not to be disseminated. Every effort made to ensure accuracy for the benefit of
our clients but no legal responsibility is taken for errors or omissions. (*) - Indicates unknown spelling or phonetic spelling.
Metro TV demographics are supplied by OzTAM, Non-Metro TV demographics by Nielsen and Radio demographics by GfK.
QUESTION:
Okay, thank you very much.
STUART ALLINSON:
Thanks. Thank you very much.
*
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END
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AGENCY REPORT For private research and not to be disseminated. Every effort made to ensure accuracy for the benefit of
our clients but no legal responsibility is taken for errors or omissions. (*) - Indicates unknown spelling or phonetic spelling.
Metro TV demographics are supplied by OzTAM, Non-Metro TV demographics by Nielsen and Radio demographics by GfK.