Mr FITZGIBBON (3:14 PM) —There were many notable omissions from the Prime Minister's speech in the Great Hall today: there was no real plan for the environment; there was no real plan for energy reliability and security; and, even more importantly—as fleshed out during question time today—there was no announcement on the planned advertising bill. $123 million of taxpayers' money has already been committed—$15.7 million on the Medicare campaign alone—and here comes the mother of them all: an advertising blitz designed to fool the Australian electorate into believing that, after 30 years in public office, the Prime Minister has a vision. But we know that someone else has a vision—a vision to sit in the chair occupied by the Prime Minister during question time. That person is the member for Higgins. But you will not find the Treasurer's fingerprints anywhere on this white paper; this is more in the mould of the National Party. The Treasurer will get his win one day, I am sure, but while ever the current Prime Minister sits in that chair, political expediency will win over policy integrity every time.

The Treasurer is a patient man, and he will wait. He knows that his best chance is to roll over and hope that the Prime Minister's vote-winning exercise will carry the day at the next election and then he will be able to quietly slip into the chair. Make no mistake about it: a vote for John Howard at the next election is a vote for Peter Costello. This makes it interesting. Only about $300 million of the $1.5 billion announced in today's white paper is to occur in the forward estimate years. That is around 20 per cent, and this raises a question: what confidence can anyone really have that, once the old man vacates the chair and the member for Higgins gains control, any of the spending announced today will see the light of day?

The opposition has been calling on the government for the past 8½ years to pick up the ball that was left behind by Paul Keating in 1996, take it to the 70-metre line and run with it again on energy reform. After five years of ignoring those calls, the Prime Minister finally buckled in the face of a looming energy supply crisis. If anyone doubts whether we face an energy supply crisis in this country, I refer them to the quote that I shared with the House during question time today. If they need more convincing, I refer them to a statement made by the minister sitting at the table—the honourable member for Groom—about 16 months ago, when he told an energy conference in Victoria that Australia was facing a $40 billion shortfall in energy investment and, if something were not done about it within three years, the lights would be blacking out. He said that, in fact, we would have blackouts during the Commonwealth Games. Here we are, some 16 months on into a three-year period, and still you have done nothing, Minister. You have still done nothing about the siren call you delivered in Melbourne that day. The question arises: when will you do something serious about energy security in this country?

The Prime Minister commissioned the Parer review. Of course, there is no response in this energy white paper to all the deficiencies in the energy market highlighted in the Parer review. Then he commissioned a Productivity Commission review. Again there is no response in today's white paper to the deficiencies highlighted in that review. So where is the reform? Where are the government's attempts in this white paper to address the very real deficiencies identified in those two very important government-commissioned papers? Later, of course, the Prime Minister formed a cabinet-level committee on energy reform and yet, more than a year later, all we see as a result of that process is a short-term political fix. I know how aghast some of the people working on that project must be that all that work they have done over the course of the last 18 months or so has been left to gather dust on the shelf. It has been forced to make way for a more politically expedient response to energy problems in this country.

It appears that the Prime Minister prefers George Bush's model for energy reform. It is the same old strategy: oppose the ratification of Kyoto but fund a round of initiatives to encourage greener energy and therefore transfer resources from the taxpayer to the energy sector in the process. It is about looking greener but not addressing the big energy issues of the day. The Prime Minister still has his head in the sand on global climate change, and he has no plan to address Australia's growing dependence on imported oil or the looming crisis in energy infrastructure investment. He has no plan to keep the lights on in Australia 24/7. The Prime Minister's energy white paper fails to deliver a policy which guarantees secure, reliable, affordable and environmentally sustainable supplies of energy to all Australians.

These are the big energy issues of the day. Instead of addressing these issues, after 8½ years of drift and inaction, all the Prime Minister has delivered is another short-term election fix: funding announcements on the eve of an election, most of which will not be available until after the four years beyond the forward estimates. This is a package full of half-truths, the trademark of the Howard government's modus operandi—kids overboard, weapons of mass destruction, ethanol, Mick Keelty, Greater Sunrise and Abu Ghraib. The $500 million technology fund is, over the forward estimates, actually a $107 million package. The $1.5 billion excise rebate for business is really a $154 million rebate over the next four years.

But let us look at the big issues: the first is greenhouse and environmental sustainability; the second is energy supply security and reliability; and, of course, the third is affordability—I have not seen any reference to that in the white paper as yet. First, let us look at global change—the most obvious omission, other than for the advertising campaign, in the energy white paper. The Prime Minister's failure to match Labor's commitment to the Kyoto agreement and increase the mandatory renewable energy target puts Australia on the path to environmental crisis and perpetuates uncertainty for industry. No matter where I go around this country talking to industry on this issue I hear, more than anything, there is the need for certainty. The Prime Minister justifies his position by saying that Australia is one of the few nations on track to meet its target under the Kyoto agreement. But what he does not say is that the only reason Australia is likely to achieve its Kyoto target is that a Labor government, the Beattie government, had the foresight to introduce landmark tree-clearing legislation which the Howard government did not endorse and the Nationals actively opposed.

The white paper reflects a piecemeal approach to climate change that targets votes in marginal seats on the one hand and technology winners on the other hand. This is what the Howard government does worst. Take, for example, Manildra, Syntroleum, Methanex and AMC. There is a long list of failures attached to the Howard government's approach to picking winners. No serious greenhouse response can neglect market based mechanisms and the need for a clear carbon price signal in the marketplace. The Prime Minister told us today how successful his voluntary systems, like the Greenhouse Challenge Program, have been—so successful that he now feels a need to make them compulsory.

I note with great interest that at least one of the states has now sought to enshrine in the COAG agreement on energy reform some guarantee that the states will be free to set their own carbon abatement programs, despite what the energy agreement might say. What does this mean? This means that the uncertainty for industry will continue while ever the Howard government continues to reject the ratification of Kyoto and market based mechanisms for dealing with the greenhouse challenge in this country.

What industry in this country will face if the Howard government is re-elected, as is made clear by the requests from the states for the amendment, is a plethora of state based carbon abatement regimes. That is surely the worst possible result for Australian industry, and yet the Prime Minister stood here during question time and tried to portray the Labor Party as the party creating problems for business. The biggest problem for business is the uncertainty created by the Howard government's piecemeal approach to the climate change problem in this country.

Labor will sign up to Kyoto. We will have a national emissions trading system of some kind—a market based system, in which market participants determine the most cost-effective means of reducing emissions. The details will be worked out in consultation with the industry and the states. Labor will not uniformly impose such a scheme on industry, but we will work with stakeholders.

The white paper's claim that the level of security in transport fuels is not under threat flies in the face of genuine community concerns about Australia's declining crude oil reserves and its increasing reliance on imports from OPEC and the Middle East. Australia must reduce its dependence on oil imports by moving to alternative fuels and newer fuels which can be produced from our enormous reserves of coal and natural gas. With oil prices at around $US40 per barrel, gas to liquids and coal to liquids are commercial propositions and it is only a matter of breaking through the many vested interests which act as a brake on such developments. Coal to liquid technologies are also the key to commercialising clean coal technology for power generation and reducing greenhouse emissions from coal fired generation.

But the Prime Minister shows the same disdain for electricity supply reliability as he does for transport fuels. While the white paper says that further energy market reform is urgent, it also says that the critical detail will be developed over the period from 2004 to 2006 by the Ministerial Council on Energy. We have waited at least 2½ years for this energy statement and it has followed committee after committee, task force after task force and inquiry after inquiry. Is the end result truly that we need to be talking more? Is the end result, Minister, the need to talk more? That is clearly the proposition you have put to the Australian electorate today.

Clearly it is not a priority for this government to keep the lights on for all Australians. But it is a priority for Australians and it is a priority for Labor. Australians do not want dirt-cheap electricity if it means falling levels of reliability of supply. They want a very reliable supply of electricity at a reasonable cost. In 8½ years we have had nothing more than Clayton's reform in electricity and gas. The truth is that all the Howard government has done on the reform front is replace NECA with the AEMC—which is only a matter of changing from a Corporations Law company to a commission—and create an Australian energy regulator whose relationship to the ACCC remains, at best, unclear. And we still have not had legislation to create those bodies introduced into the House, despite the fact that the start-up date is 1 July.

Absent still from that agreement is any real commitment to move distribution regulation from the states to the national body. The end result is that you still have all the state regulators and an additional national regulator to deal with. The government said the whole reform process was about reducing the layers of regulation, and yet the outcome appears to be more layers, not less. On top of this, the industry is going to be slugged with a levy to fund the Australian energy regulator when at present the ACCC is funded from the federal budget. It is another new Howard government tax and a nice little piece of cost-shifting from the Commonwealth budget to industry and, of course, ultimately the consumer. As I said, the new arrangements for the AER and AEMC are due to take effect from 1 July 2004, but we have still not seen the legislation.

The government needs to learn that energy reform is more than talking about extra fuel tax cuts and more than going to California to talk to Arnie Schwarzenegger. The Prime Minister was exposed on his trip to California—he said he was going there to secure a $15 billion gas deal, when we know now that all he was going there to do was to talk about one monopoly receival terminal. In fact, he was going there to pick one winner once again. To be serious about energy policy, the government must take a fully integrated approach. (Time expired)