Mark Vaile (Lyne, National Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Maranoa for his question. I recognise that many parts of his electorate in Queensland are drought declared, and they are part of the many regions in which we have declared exceptional circumstances across Australia. I know that many of his constituents appreciate the assistance that the government is giving to farming families in those areas. In only the last two weeks we have announced 62 areas as being in drought exceptional circumstances, and we have increased the assistance we are giving to farming families in those areas. More than 50 per cent of Australia’s agricultural land is now drought declared under exceptional circumstances, which is quite significant. Of course, we have announced extra counselling and emergency grants to be administered by the CWA. Obviously, we are talking to communities such as those communities in the member for Maranoa’s electorate about any other measures that may need to be taken, if warranted, to assist people in those areas. We are not giving them false hope but we are trying in practical ways to help them through this very challenging time.

We all need to remember that, at some stage, it will rain again, and we need to give people hope that that will take place. What we do not need to do is provide false hope that there is a quick fix. We need to recognise that this hot and dry drought is not the longest and not without precedence. The eight-year drought during World War II went for a longer period of time than this drought and, of course, history has recorded that the Federation drought, from the 1890s to 1902, went for longer than the existing drought that we are succumbing to at the moment.

We do need to give people hope. They need to know that we as a nation are going to stand beside them and support them. But we cannot give them the false hope of a quick fix—and that is what the Leader of the Opposition has been doing. He has been creating the illusion that signing Kyoto is going to help out with this dry spell and the hot conditions at the moment. People need to understand that ratifying Kyoto will not stop the El Nino effect. Scientific evidence is in that this drought has been partly caused by an El Nino effect. The El Nino effect on our climatic patterns has been around for a long, long time. In fact, it has been around since before the Industrial Revolution. We did not even have the steam engine when this was happening in our climatic circumstances. Ratifying Kyoto will not stop El Nino, ratifying Kyoto will not change the fact that El Nino has been with us for centuries, and ratifying Kyoto will not prevent future climate change.

The Labor Party has been wont to refer to and quote from the Stern report on climate change coming out of the United Kingdom. But another report has come out of the United Kingdom—a report by an all-party House of Lords committee which included a former Bank of England Governor. Commenting on the compliance mechanisms in the Kyoto protocol, the report said ‘they were very weak and even counter-productive’. They went on to say that the targets that were set were going to make little difference to rates of warming. The Blair government has done nothing to refute those assertions in that report coming out of the House of Lords committee.

The government is responding to and assisting with the drought in Australia in a very practical way. We are providing moral and financial assistance to the farmers of Australia and we are responding to climate change in a very practical way.

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