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

He said this:

A market based solution will give the right signal to producers and to consumers. It will make clear the opportunity cost of using energy resources, thereby encouraging more and better investment in additional sources of supply and improving the efficiency with which they are used ...

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Price signals in an efficient open market will promote new and more efficient investment ...

So the environment minister is in the Senate today saying price signals are bad but the Treasurer goes to LA, thinking that something called the internet does not exist, and says it is good. The Minister for Foreign Affairs said this on 31 July 2005:

We know that emissions can’t continue at their current rate. That’s going to require research, collaborative research. It’s also going to mean we’ll have to investigate price signals coming from energy ... By changing price signals, obviously that leads to changes in the investment patterns. You can get more investment into cleaner energy through changing pricing signals ...

The foreign minister was right on 31 July 2005, the Treasurer was right on 18 January 2006 and indeed the environment minister was right on 14 February 2006, but they say a different thing today on the issue of emissions trading and the need to get price signals. You can only have two forms of price signals: emissions trading or a carbon tax. Maybe they are in favour of a carbon tax rather than emissions trading, but the Labor Party is in favour of emissions trading. That would appear to me to be what some of the government, some of the time, are arguing should happen—but not just yet. That is one of the inconsistencies in government standards.

On 27 October 2005 the environment minister described climate change as ‘a very serious threat to Australia’, but at the same time his department was in court challenging the very existence of climate change. The environment minister has said on numerous occasions that global emissions need to be cut by at least 60 per cent by 2050, but the government’s climate change policies will—according to the report from ABARE on the Asia-Pacific climate pact—increase emissions by 70 to 80 per cent by 2050. That was the most optimistic assessment if all the proposals discussed at the Asia-Pacific climate pact meeting were adopted.

Let us look at the Great Barrier Reef. The government’s own Australian Greenhouse Office has for years highlighted the dramatic impact climate change will have on the Great Barrier Reef. The report to the government and to the minister, the Climate change risk and vulnerability report—the report which had the chapter about what to do about it suppressed by the government—said this:

The Reef itself is likely to suffer from coral bleaching events, which have long recovery times and flow on effects for the whole ecosystem. Climate model projections suggest that within 40 years water temperatures could be above the survival limit of corals.

The evidence is very clear. It has been given to the government, and yet what do government ministers say? On 9 February this year, the industry minister said this:

I think the Reef is in good shape. Those areas where it is being closely managed... it is probably in better shape than it has been for years.

The government is all over the shop when it comes to the fundamental challenges before it.

Let us look at the Kyoto protocol. On 19 December 1997, after the Howard government signed the Kyoto protocol, the Prime Minister described it as ‘a win for the environment, and a win for Australian jobs’. This is a government that now holds the Kyoto protocol in the same affection as the National Party hold Senator McGauran. On 16 February 2005, the environment minister said, ‘Quite frankly, the protocol is a dud.’ At the same time, when the Asia-Pacific climate pact meeting was being held, the government was saying that it complemented the Kyoto protocol and that the Kyoto protocol, as the international agreement, was important.

Let us look at the issue of whaling. On 22 June 2005, at the end of an International Whaling Commission meeting, the environment minister arrogantly exclaimed:

Australia and pro-conservation nations have today won a massive victory for whale conservation. This is a fantastic outcome because it reinforces Australia’s determination to ensure all commercial and so-called ‘scientific’ whaling is consigned to the dustbin of history.

Tragically, the slaughter of whales has not been consigned to the dustbin of history. Night after night over the Christmas period, Australians were shocked by the images of whales being slaughtered in our territory, in territory declared by this government as part of the Australian Whale Sanctuary. And yet the Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, intervened in a case involving the Humane Society International about whaling in the Australian Whale Sanctuary to say that it should not be successful because it would create a ‘diplomatic disagreement with Japan’.

Far from an end of whaling, we have actually seen a doubling of whaling since the minister declared that. There has been a doubling in the catch of minke whales to 935 and an expansion to include 50 fin whales. If it were not for Greenpeace’s actions, Australians would not know what occurred in the Australian Whale Sanctuary over the Christmas period, because this government was not interested in monitoring the activities there.

Now the environment minister is saying that Japan will probably have majority support at the next IWC meeting, which will be held in the Caribbean this year. The government has sat on its hands while Japan has stacked the IWC. He says that he wants to consign whaling to the dustbin of history, but he has not been willing to take the government of Japan and other whaling nations to international courts such as the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

We also know that when it comes to heritage issues this is a government in which ministerial accountability has gone missing. On 18 December 2003, the Prime Minister stated that Anzac Cove would be the first listing on the National Heritage List. He said:

It seems to me ... entirely appropriate that the Anzac site at Gallipoli should represent the first nomination for inclusion on the National Heritage List. And, although it’s not on Australian territory, anyone who has visited the place will know that once you go there you feel it as Australian as the piece of land on which your home is built.

So what was actually going on while you had the Prime Minister and other ministers saying this? What was going on was that they were requesting road works to trash this sacred piece of our heritage. When I raised it in the parliament and asked questions of the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister’s response was that it was regrettable that it was even being raised. Although Anzac Cove is still not on the National Heritage List and in spite of the public outcry about what has occurred there, reports were given at Senate estimates that the area is continuing to be desecrated. (Time expired)

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