New Queensland Sustainability Minister on the future with less oil (transcript)

Transcribed by Katherine Baldwin

Andi Hazelwood: This is Andi Hazelwood for Global Public Media on the 19th of September 2007, speaking with the honorable Andrew McNamara, Queensland's new Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation. Andrew, congratulations on your new portfolio.

Andrew McNamara: Thank you very much Andi, and it's an absolute pleasure to be talking to you again. It seems that we've been having this conversation now over a number of years and maybe we're getting somewhere.

Andi Hazelwood: What can you tell me about this brand-new position? Did it actually come with a set of guidelines on what's expected of you?

Andrew McNamara: Yes, and I guess the best thing is that the Premier Anna Bligh has asked me to think big and to think long-term. This change of name from the Department of Environment to Sustainability, Climate Change, and Innovation is much more than cosmetic. We are looking to the government that really takes the old idea of looking after the environment and puts it in the long-term context of sustainability and I really couldn't be happier with the job that the Premier has asked me to do. It's, I think, the most important job in the world, and it's going to be a great challenge, but one I'm really looking forward to.

Andi Hazelwood: Well, and given that sustainability and climate change have become such trendy issues, especially in the last twelve months, it's really good to hear that it's not just a cosmetic name change.

Andrew McNamara: Not at all, no, there are a very great number of changes that have gone with the name change. The old Department of Environment budget has more than doubled and we have accumulated a range of programs and spending initiatives that were spread across a number of other departments in the previous structure of government, which I think do belong under one roof. So money for innovative science to address climate change and sustainability has come over from our old Department of State Development. The Climate Change Center of Excellence, which was in the Department of Natural Resources, is now under my roof. There are a range of other areas of government which will be centralized in this portfolio, which makes a lot of sense in terms of getting the best bang for our buck, but also making sure we've got the people with the expertise and the scientific knowledge, in particular, who can work together and develop a range of policies from the very local to the qui te global to address these issues.

Andi Hazelwood: Now let's go back a little bit. You were actually Parliamentary Secretary for Main Roads for a year. How will that experience inform what you do going forward?

Andrew McNamara: Well, there were some really good things about it, of course, in terms of straight out training to be a minister. On a very personal level, learning to work with the Queensland Government Agency and learning those processes, I hope will make me more effective in the job of Minister. But, again, the Roads portfolio, I saw it very much as part of the network of infrastructure and those portfolios that are still going to be a battle going forward in an oil constrained world. Roads, in my view though it's not my portfolio any more, will have to be seen as part of a transport network, seen as a perspectively open space which is shared by cars and public transport, push bikes and pedestrians, to get the best possible mix of use and linkages. I hope this will have some input in that area in terms of developing policy for sustainability at my first Cabinet meeting on Monday. The peak oil task force report, which I'd shared, was considered and I've been asked by the Cabinet to take--for my department to have the lead agency role in coordinating a whole of government response for dealing with peak oil. Obviously I will be working closely with a range of other ministers to bring in all of those areas where we can do little things and do big things to make our transition to this carbon constrained world a little smoother.

Andi Hazelwood: I want to get into the--what's now being called the McNamara report in a couple of minutes, but on that topic, I guess, with so much priority today being given to accommodating growth and expansion, it sounds like this new role is going to involve a lot of inter-departmental compromise on your part.

Andrew McNamara: Well, I think there's obviously a need to work closely where a government that is going to try and do it's very best for the people of Queensland, while recognizing that we're working within some constraints to growth that are going to get tougher. I see my role as not so much compromising, but being part of a team that sees the world as it is, sees the future, and starts to deal with it. That hasn't been the way, and I think we may have discussed this before, that in the period since second world war, politics has been fairly easy and that there's been no concept of limits to growth and politicians have been able to say 'vote for me and you can have more of it', and generally that was true. I think we are now entering a different period, and I think that across all parts of government; the perception that we need to plan much, much better, and to make sure that we are not in a position where we are quite so car-dependent is very much being reco gnized. But, again, the Premier has appointed me Deputy Premier as the ministers are planning elevating that portfolio to very high ranks in the government, so there's, I think, unanimity of purpose and an understanding that the challenges we face are not just about managing growth, but managing decline in inputs in some resources. I think it's an exciting time for me, personally, because I have been banging on about these things for a while, but it isn't necessarily all bad for everyone else out there as well if we think about it and marshal our resources and make smart decisions.

Andi Hazelwood: The news is currently chock-a-block with stories of crippling drought and impending agflation and the U.S. credit and mortgage crisis, which is now leading into the world market. These are all sustainability issues that are related to, or in some cases, even caused by climate change and peak oil. How do you prioritize these huge issues you're dealing with?

Andrew McNamara: I think you've got to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. There are a range of issues that will have great demands on my time, but my department has some two and a half thousand employees who are very skillful and dedicated people, so it's not just a matter of it's up to me. There's an awful lot of help out there, and I intend to draw on it very heavily.

Andi Hazelwood: That's good to hear. Tell me about the innovation portion of your new title. That almost sounds like you've been told, 'find a techno-fix.'

Andrew McNamara: Well I don't know that there's a simple techno-fix, but there are some aspects of technology that can certainly help and obviously we're not going to turn our backs on technological advances that can lead to more efficient energy outcome. We are very keen to work particularly with the university sector, in partnering them in doing research and, for example, one of the things that is going on at the moment is that we are working with scientists from the University of Queensland to establish a Geothermal Research Center of Excellence. That, for Queensland, is very much a real option for generating electricity in a way that isn't going to produce the same sorts of carbon emissions that we get from coal-fired power. It also represents a move to localizing power supplies, which is a very, very important aspect of getting better efficiency and less loss from transmitting power over vast distances. Everything that we can do that can generate electricity, in par ticular from sources that don't use carbon, is something I'll certainly be pursuing very, very vigorously and that's an area where innovation fun and that aspect of the portfolio will be very important.

Andi Hazelwood: Now let's talk about the oil vulnerability report. Based on the coverage in this weekend's Courier Mail, it sounds like it pulls no punches.

Andrew McNamara: I was very proud to put my name to it, as the chair of the report. As we're speaking, it is being prepared to be released publicly on the web, but that just hasn't happened quite yet, but it's not very far away at all. I have the Cabinet's consent to make that report public and it will be available on our departmental web site very soon. There are just a couple of missing footnotes and tidying it up so it's absolutely Mickey Mouse, so it will be a public document very shortly. At the end of the day, as I say I'm proud of it, it's still a starting point. It's, I think, still the first provincial government report into peak oil anywhere in the world. It's a compilation of efforts across a number of departments and I think it's a useful starting point for discussion here in Australia about what is the likely date of peak oil, and what are are the impacts going to be and what are the potential alternatives - renewable and non-conventional and that sort of thing. But at the end of the day, yeah, it doesn't pull any punches. It says that we're going to have to reduce energy use, and that's the hard part that we're going to have to simply be much more efficient and frugal with all energy, and particularly hydro-carbons, than we have been. The report doesn't sugar-coat it. It doesn't say that there's any simple, business-as-usual, model. It doesn't say that alternatives like ethanol or hydrogen are somehow just going to step in, seamlessly fill the gap. They aren't. The report makes that very clear.

Andi Hazelwood: You've mentioned that we need to adopt a war-time mentality to oil use. That sounds like conservation and rationing. How do you sell those concepts to the public?

Andrew McNamara: I think, first off, you have the conversation, and these concepts have been sold to the public previously, in war-time. I gave a lecture recently at the University of Technology to fourteen hundred students in the build, environment, and engineering faculty and it was about sustainability; it was before I became the Minister, so, just one of those things that happen. I put out a series of thoughts over an hour on where I thought sustainability and government were going. One of the power points that I had was a thing that said 'the last time sustainability mattered,' and underneath was a poster from the second world war in relation to petrol and other rationing initiatives that were going on, and my point was that sustainability means for the long term. When you don't know how long you have to make something last, then you have to assume that it's a long time, at least a hundred years, four generations. The thing about the second world war was no one kne w how long it was going to go on for; therefore you had to operate in a way that was sustainable. And we, after the second world war, stopped thinking that we had to operate in a way that was sustainable, because we were in a different set of political and economic circumstances. I think that once people understand the challenges in front of us, that they will understand that sustainability is not an option, it's not a take-it-or-leave it kind of thing. You have to operate in a way that leaves yourself and the next generation and the one after that the ability to function, and using oil, and to a degree coal, in ways that we are, just doesn't meet those criteria.

Andi Hazelwood: Speaking of coal, in recent months in Parliament, you spoke at about clean-coal technology and a global emissions trading regime for the aviation industry. What other mitigations do you want for Queensland and Australia?

Andrew McNamara: There are many, and I guess that's the job I've been given by the Cabinet, is to pull together a significant range of mitigations and options for other uses or different ways of using energy that are more efficient. It's at this stage, perhaps I'd like to maybe lead that one-to-one side, my mind is very open; I've just become the Minister. I was sworn in last Thursday, so I've been the Minister for two and a half working days and I guess I don't want to prejudge the next aspect of this particular job by saying, 'here are the things that I think we should do.' The Task Force Report made a series of recommendations, which were, I think, fairly straight forward in terms of reducing oil energy use, developing alternatives and renewables, and preparing for demographic change in the way that we structure our cities and where people live is going to be obviously something that changes quite dramatically. But in terms of very very specific recommendations, the m ost important thing was, put everything on the table. I'll be working now across a number of government departments with my ministerial colleagues to bring forward all of the ideas that are there, that in some cases have already been put together in briefing notes; in others, pulling together working parties to bring all ideas to the table. My perspective to this is that if we put our thinking-caps on, we can do a range of things quickly that are not so hard. A number of things will take more time, which will be harder, but, as I said, I just don't want to prejudge it by saying, 'here's the answers,' because, again, I need to take a lot of people with me and appearing to suggest that you've got it all covered is probably the wrong way to go.

Andi Hazelwood: Now, I have to take you to task a little bit on one issue. When we spoke in April last year you said you would differ with people who oppose nuclear energy. Your speeches in Parliament of late have actually seemed to have changed tone on that.

Andrew McNamara: Yeah, and I know I've been public about this, but I have this terrible habit of saying what I think, which will, of course, get you into trouble if I change my thinking. I'm, again, I'm on the public record of saying nuclear energy won't work in Australia, that there's simply a range of very practical reasons why. Nuclear energy is not an option for Australia in terms of dealing with green house or simply just producing electricity. They are a thirst that we simply don't have the scientists available to do the work. The School of Nuclear Engineering at the University of New South Whales shut in 1988, and we haven't had a nuclear engineering graduate in twenty years. Given the demands of the world nuclear industry, which is expanding at this time, the idea that we are suddenly going to produce a group of people with the skills to start rolling out nuclear plants within twenty years is completely fanciful. The second point, of course then, is that, urani um, like every other resource, is a limited thing, and it's in fact a rare metal. It's not like coal or oil. The best estimates that I have seen suggest that there are, at best, fifty years worth of uranium supply in the world, so it seems, frankly, absurd to me for Australia to start down the path of trying to build a nuclear industry that beings to function in twenty years time when effectively the uranium is on it's last legs anyway. Then, of course, the cost factors of storing waste, which are very, very significant when you start counting the human cost in guarding nuclear dumps for half a thousand years. I honestly don't believe that the nuclear industry will ever fly in Australia, and I think it's a distraction from the main game, and it's unhelpful; but apart from anything else, I guess that my message always has been that we don't really face an energy crisis, we face a liquid fuel crisis. In the current circumstance, producing very expensive electricity via nu clear power doesn't help to address that at all.

Andi Hazelwood: Today was the fifth consecutive trading session in which oil prices have reached an all-time peak, yet we're still quite a ways from the hundred dollars a barrel that we were expecting last year. Why is that?

Andrew McNamara: There are a number of reasons why it's bogged along at the level that it's at. Some of those are that the market is not a very particularly pure animal in the way that production volumes still have some capacity to be manipulated by the various oil producing countries. Having said that, $80 a barrel is a very, very, very high price, and is already causing economic impacts in Australia. A number of the recent interest rate rises will go down purely to the inflationary impact of rising petrol prices feeding into the CPI, which the reserve bank has reacted to. And of course, my second point is that we may, fairly soon, still look back on the good old days when oil was only $80 US a barrel. Inevitably, it will reach that surge, but at this point, far too many people in the market are still not pricing it as a resource that's about to go into decline. It's still being priced as something that there's a limitless supply of, and $80 a barrel is the price that on it while supply and demand are very tight. Once the market factors in that supply is actually declining, then the price will escalate hugely, I have no doubt about it.

Andi Hazelwood: Now we've talked a lot about your government efforts towards sustainability and what you'll be planning for the future, but do you also see a place for community initiated efforts?

Andrew McNamara: Oh absolutely, there's no question whatsoever that community-driven, local solutions, will be essential. That's where government will certainly have a role to play in assisting and encouraging local networks who can assist with some local supplies of food and fuel and water and jobs and the things we need from shops. It was one of my contentions in the first speech I made on this issue of February of 2005, which seems like a lifetime ago, that we will see a relocalization of the way in which we live that will remind us of not last century, but the one before that. And that's not a bad thing. Undoubtedly one of the cheaper responses that will be very effective is promoting local consumption, local productions, local distribution, and there are positive spin-offs to that in terms of getting to know our communities better. There are human and community benefits from local networks that I look forward to seeing grow.

Andi Hazelwood: Queensland Sustainability Minister Andrew McNamara. Thank you very much for taking the time today, and again, congratulations on your new portfolio. We're really rooting for you.

Andrew McNamara: Thank you very much, and let me publicly thank too, you Andi, and of course Post-Carbon Institute, for your work in publicizing these issues over the years. It's made it much easier for me in helping spread my message that you've been out there pulling together information and people and keeping this discussion going. It's always been my view that if enough people talked about it, eventually it would become a mainstream issue, and I think we have arrived, in Queensland at least, with a new portfolio specifically dedicated to sustainability, climate change, and innovation, and a minister who, at his first Cabinet meeting, has been charged with addressing the issue of peak oil.

Andi Hazelwood: That's fantastic. We're really excited about it. Thank you very much.

Andrew McNamara: My pleasure.

Andi Hazelwood: This is Andi Hazelwood for Global Public Media.