Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

in what the future economy will look like, in what the future is—the future in areas such as solar energy, which increased globally in 2004, the latest figures, by 65 per cent. Fifteen years ago we were in the position to be the Silicon Valley of the solar industry; now we account for less than one per cent. With the reaching of the mandatory renewable energy target, and the refusal of the government to get on board and do something about that, we are seeing a decline.

The member opposite, the member for Flinders, talks about the climate pact. We see the climate pact as being positive. We see discussions that are taking place around the world as being positive. But they are extremely limited, because they do not provide a real solution. You need both the push of new technology and the pull of the market to make them happen. One of the government’s favoured ideologues on this, who they brought out from the Pew Centre in the United States, Eileen Claussen, had this to say:

If you really want results you have to do something that’s mandatory. It’s not going to happen with voluntary approaches.

Because history tells us that good intentions simply are not enough. They certainly are not enough, and surely we should look at cases such as Enron in the United States and James Hardie to see that, unless you intervene and establish a market, you will not get the innovation. It is an absurd position because the government—the Treasurer, the environment minister, the foreign minister—is on record as saying that what we need here is a price signal, but not yet.

What an absurd proposition. Here we have the carbon market that will be the world’s biggest market. And we are saying, ‘We don’t want to get involved; we want everyone else to have a head start.’ That is why Australia is isolated. The government said that Kyoto would not come into effect—Russia ratified it, and it did. They said emissions trading would not start, and it did on 1 January last year. They said that it would not last beyond the Montreal climate change summit, but that summit saw the world move forward and start negotiations for the global situation post 2012. But we are not around the table for those decisions. Australia and the United States, alone among industrialised countries around the world, are on the outside looking in. We cannot afford that luxury—we need to engage, because younger generations will recall climate sceptics who denied human contribution to climate change as being misguided, but those who acknowledge the problem but fail to do anything about it will be judged much more seriously indeed. We need to take action now. We need to take action if we are going to avoid dangerous climate change.

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