Mr. Ian Talbot:

I thank the Senator. I keep merging the two things together, the big things and the small things and being able to talk about things against the background of the SDGs. It is just very difficult. Carbon tax causes a stir every time there is talk about increasing it. Returning to the point made by Ms Ciesielski about policy coherence and people seeing the long-term vision, going back to a different aspect of the budget, we deal with the budget step by step and year by year. I know there is a plan for the carbon tax that extends out for a few years but nobody is focused on it or talks about it. Every year, there is a budget announcement and we are all wondering if that is what was agreed and what the plan said three years ago about what we were going to do in 2025. The carbon tax is difficult. Stand-alone housing is another difficult issue. We are still signing off on and continuing to build stand-alone houses but these cause all sorts of issues in terms of the grid, water services, etc.

Returning the thoughts expressed by Senator Pauline O'Reilly about things like advertising, for people doing big stuff like putting advertising campaigns together and so on, they do not really feel the SDGs will resonate, even if they did think about it. They would say they will not resonate because people do not understand what they are. There is no point talking in isolation about the clean energy goal if people do not understand the whole context.

Going back to renewable energy and LNG, this is all about policy coherence. From a business perspective, we are looking at the energy transition and asking how we can get from where we are, burning lots of fossil fuels, to where we think we can get to with the amount of renewable energy. As we are not, however, getting there on the renewable energy side, how are we going to ensure we will be able to do the things we need to do to just keep ordinary employment going for 2.75 million people? We have had complications here as well because we have had a growing workforce, which is great. We have never had so many people in work, but in its own way this is also creating emissions. Our population is growing too. There are a lot of factors here. I do not think we are focused enough on the endgame, on where we need to get to and on bringing people along.

Regarding energy, for example, I guess, ultimately, we need lots of renewable energy, interconnectors and the improved grid. Every time we try to do any of those things, however, there is just a huge amount of pushback from communities. It is about how we engage with those communities and get them to understand the greater good. It is very difficult is my summary. I think we are all sympathetic to everyone else's perspective, but our sense overall is that we are not moving quickly enough on the stuff we can do to make a difference.