WILL ANYONE TELL ME THEY’VE CALCULATED HOW MUCH CLIMATE POLICY COSTS?

Our commissioned report by economist Dr Alan Moran estimates that climate policies cost Australians $13 billion every year. You would think on such a costly policy area the government would have made its own estimates. Well they haven’t, not even the Productivity Commission could give me a figure or tell me where the proof that human CO2 affects climate and needs to be cut is.

Transcript

Senator Roberts, you have the call.

[Malcolm Roberts] Thank you, Chair. And thank you for being here tonight. I understand the Productivity Commission does analysis of policy sometimes; impacts, so on. Good policy in my view would be based on specifically, particularly in terms of climate change and energy policies, would be based upon specified, quantified impacts of carbon dioxide. In other words, for a given amount of carbon dioxide output from humans, it would have a quantified effect on climate factors, such as temperature. Now you’ve written reports on climate change, I believe. Have you ever identified any specified quantified link between human carbon dioxide and any climate factor? Whether it be temperature, rainfall, droughts, storms, whatever. Specific quantified impact.

So Senator, sorry, Michael Brennan the Chair of the Productivity Commission. I would have to check, it’s a while since we’ve done work that went specifically to climate change or other related policies like energy policy. For the most part, the scientific basis for the work, I think has been based on findings from organisations like the IPCC. So it hasn’t been the practise of the commission to second guess the scientific assessment made by other entities. But possibly to make a judgement about the economic policy response and how best the economic policy response might sit with that science. But as I say, it’s some time, I would have to take on notice the last bit of work we have done that was specifically on climate or a related policy and confirm that response.

[Malcolm Roberts] So you’ve not been able to identify specific, quantified impacts between human carbon dioxide and temp and climate factors.

Well, I’m really saying that it wasn’t necessarily we would not have seen that as part of our…

[Malcolm Roberts] Yes. But you have to, yes. Okay. So I’m not finding you wrong for doing that, but you haven’t seen that. Have you assessed the, you have assessed the costs and benefits of policies?

I’m going to have to take that on notice because it’s a while. And I might even turn to Mr. Latimer because his history with the commission is longer than mine. It’s certainly in recent years, we haven’t done work in this area going back 10 to 15 years, possibly.

2012, we did some work on barriers to effective climate change adaptation, but we haven’t done a lot of work in this arena.

[Malcolm Roberts] Wouldn’t it be difficult to assess a policy if there’s no specified quantified link between the cause, the claimed cause carbon dioxide from human activity, and the impact supposedly?

Well, it could be potentially, but it would be, if we were to undertake work of that nature we would be taking the science as given by what we would take to be the expert scientific community.

Okay.

[Malcolm Roberts] We’ve had policies now going on at least 25, sorry, not in ’96, 25 years that are impacting energy, generation, agriculture, industry, transport, personal as well as business. And these had billions of dollars of impact throttling us back in our economy, especially relative to our competitors. Could you tell me, on notice, what advice you have given to governments? Not you, but the Productivity commission, has given to governments and MPs and ministers since 1996. Please, just the type of communication, the date, the type of communication, who it was sent to, and what the advice was, please?

You said it all. We can certainly take that on notice. It’ll be predominantly in the form of written reports that we will have published. That that’s our primary end for the most part, the overwhelming bulk of our communications with government.

[Malcolm Roberts] And if you could note the specific advice in there. Just a summary of that advice, please?

We’ll see what we can do. Yeah.

[Malcolm Roberts] Thank you very much. Thanks. Thanks Chair. That’s all.