356 page Clean Energy Bill – extending the tentacles of government further into the lives and operations of Australian families and businesses

This week the Carbon tax bills have been introduced into the Parliament.

If any proof were required that the carbon tax will extend the tentacles of government even deeper into the lives and operations of Australian families and businesses, the release of the Bills provides that proof.

This is an enormously detailed package, containing 19 bills. The centrepiece bill, the Clean Energy Bill, is 356 pages long.

A flavour of the way it works emerges from even a quick scan of the pages.  It establishes ‘liable entities’; it has complex provisions for the issue of ‘obligation transfer numbers’; it creates ‘liability transfer certificates’; there will be ‘carbon units’ which are issued, transferred and auctioned; liable entities will have ‘emissions numbers’; liable entities will be recorded in a public database; there are detailed requirements to keep records, and breaching these requirements attracts a penalty; and of course there are a whole range of new powers for government.

Part 15, for example, will gladden the heart of any bossy bureaucrat: it is entitled ‘Monitoring Powers’ and it provides for the appointment of inspectors and the issue of identity cards.  The inspectors will have wide powers to enter onto premises, to snoop around, to inspect and examine, to conduct a search, to ask questions and to demand documents.  The consent of the owner of the premises is not required if the inspector has a ‘monitoring warrant.’  A failure to answer questions from an inspector exposes an individual to six months’ jail; and there is no privilege against self incrimination in answering questions.

Parts 16 and 17 also deal with penalties – and impose absolute liability for many breaches of the Act.  This means that a senior executive of a company can be personally liable for a breach regardless of whether he or she actually knew of the breach or intended to cause it. 

Part 18 deals with infringement notices, part 19 with offences and part 20 with enforceable undertakings.  In other words, of the 23 parts to the Act, six of them – over twenty five per cent – deal with monitoring, enforcement, breaches and penalties.  This Bill extends the punitive powers of the state very significantly.

The legislation also establishes such Orwellian institutions as the Regulator and the Climate Change Authority.

Against this backdrop, the short title of the bill is misleading in the extreme: it calls it ‘A Bill for an Act to encourage the use of clean energy, for other purposes.’ 

It might have better been called ‘A Bill for an Act to impose detailed, prescriptive micro-regulation across wide sectors of the Australian economy and impose serious cost disadvantages on our major industries and sources of competitive advantage, backed up by the full penal and criminal apparatus of the state, in pursuit of actions by Australia to reduce emissions, in the absence of any assurance that other nations will take similar action.’