Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I thank the honourable member for his question and, obviously, for his longstanding interest in the whole issue of climate change. What the Stern review is helping to focus the public mind on is the fact that the only solution to the climate change issue is going to be a comprehensive and global solution. That can be illustrated with a simple statistic. According to the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, ABARE, Australia produces about 1.6 per cent of global emissions and China, 15 per cent, but by 2050 Australia’s share will have dropped to 1.1 per cent and China’s will have increased to nearly 27 per cent.

Those statistics make it perfectly clear that the great challenge in addressing the climate change issue is to engage countries like China, India and also, by the way, Brazil to ensure that these major developing country emitters are part of the solution to the problem. It cannot be solved without engaging them. Of course, the Labor Party cries, ‘Kyoto, Kyoto, Kyoto.’ What does ABARE say about Kyoto? ABARE says that, without the Kyoto protocol, greenhouse emissions during the commitment period, 1990 to 2008-12, would have increased by 41 per cent, but if every single country which has targets under Kyoto and has ratified Kyoto achieves those targets—and, as the Prime Minister has said, many of them are way over those targets—then those emissions would not grow by 41 per cent but by 40 per cent.

For the Labor Party to go out and try to convince the Australian public that Kyoto is an answer to the climate change issue is completely misleading. It is more than misleading; it is false. What this government is doing is working on making sure that we engage the major emitters. The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, which had its inaugural meeting in Sydney in January, includes China, India, the United States of America, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Australia. This is about 50 per cent of the global GDP and it is about 50 per cent of global emissions, and most of these countries—there are a couple of exceptions there—are not making any commitment under Kyoto.

This is an enormously important development. We will have more to say about it as the week wears on. The fact that we will have more to say about it I know will interest the Labor Party. The Labor Party has bagged this initiative from the word go. The honest truth of this is that the Labor Party’s preferred option is Kyoto, which excludes China, India and Brazil—and the United States of course—from making any commitments. Our preferred option—

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