Topics: Net Zero, Energy Prices, Spanish PM

E&OE.......................

CHRIS KENNY: Let's the go to Dave Sharma, who's the Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury. He joins us live from Sydney. Just first up on that, Dave, as a former ambassador to Israel, this is shameful from the Europeans over something as trivial but as much loved as the Eurovision Song Contest.

DAVE SHARMA: It is shameful. And we saw Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish Prime Minister, I don't know if you saw this, but the Vuelta de España, which is like the Tour de France of Spain, uh, the stage was interrupted by pro-Palestinian protestors. And rather than Sánchez, the prime minister, saying, "That's not on, in our country, this is a major sporting event that we're proud to host," he endorsed the actions of those protestors disrupting this event, you know, putting the cyclists in danger. Now he's gone one step further and says we should boycott Eurovision. I thought his parallel was bizarre. I mean, as you pointed out, Israel was invaded by Hamas just like Ukraine was invaded by Russia. They didn't start this war, they didn't seek this war, and all they've sought since is to recover their hostages and make sure Hamas can no longer pose a threat to them.

CHRIS KENNY: Yeah, spot on. Let's, uh, bring it back to domestic politics and the climate debate. Andrew Hastie is right, isn't he? If we wanna look after the national interest, we cannot pursue net zero by 2050.

DAVE SHARMA: Well, he's right in the sense that we should be putting Australia's national interests first, you know. I've got no problem with lower emissions, but I also want cheaper prices and I want more reliability. And what we've had under Labor is emissions not going any lower, but prices a lot higher and reliability much lower. They've got the worst of all worlds in their policy setting.

CHRIS KENNY: But the point here is that all of their mission is driven by this, these targets to, to get to a certain target by 2030. They're gonna announce a 2035 target soon. It's all driven by net zero by 2050. There's nothing wrong with doing some things in energy and other industries to reduce emissions. The problem is the target. The problem is destroying our energy grid and destroying our energy affordability in order to meet that target, surely.

DAVE SHARMA: Well, yeah. Look, I'd say two things. Firstly, you know, Labor is basically no closer to their 2030 target than they were three years ago. We're still at about 28% of emissions less than in 2005. And yes, they have completely ignored prices' affordability. I mean, you know, Labor's promise that electricity bills would be $275 lower has not proven to be the case. And we need to be making sure that whatever we do is in Australia's national interests, our industry's interests, our competitiveness interests, our consumers' interests to bring down prices. Now, if that means low emissions technology, if they bring down prices, I'm all for them. But if they're gonna jack up prices and make electricity unaffordable for industry and for households, then we should not be doing it.

CHRIS KENNY: We know that's the case so far. Let's break it down to a simple matter of cost versus benefit. What benefit has Australia delivered to the global climate over the past 10 years of emissions reduction action?

DAVE SHARMA: The truth is, Chris, and, and you know this well, we are a tiny fraction of global emissions, about 1% or thereabouts. So whatever Australia does is eclipsed by orders of magnitude by the emissions from predominantly China, India, and the United States, which together account for about two-thirds of global emissions. So, it makes no sense for Australia to be harming ourselves if other nations are not putting the same policy straitjackets back on -

CHRIS KENNY: But let me just.. But, but we've done that already, right? We've reduced our emissions at great cost over the last 10 years, yet global emissions have increased. So the environment hasn't benefited at all. It hasn't done anything to change the climate, improve the climate, or even slow down so-called global warming. But it has, has cost us at least $145 billion. By any analysis, that's madness, isn't it?

DAVE SHARMA: Well, I think, yeah, imposing a set of policy straitjackets on yourself that is leading to no outcome eh, of any consequence, yes, that is policy madness.

CHRIS KENNY: It sure is. Thanks for joining us. Dave Sharma there, a Liberal Party front bencher, Coalition front bencher. We'll see where this, where this debate ends up.

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