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

For a decade the Howard government has ignored the scientists. For a decade the Howard government has ignored the economists. This is a government that only has ears for the pollsters. The glaciers are retreating and so too is the Howard government. Just as the dinosaurs were wiped out by the ice age, there is a need for the dinosaurs in the Howard government to be wiped out politically by the age of global warming. Climate change is a serious threat. The Stern report this week has shone a light on the potential impact of climate change on our economy—the Great Depression but with much worse weather.

The Howard government has known about the threat of climate change for a very long time. There have been CSIRO reports. Ministers and departmental officials have attended numerous international meetings on climate change where the threat has been spelt out. Indeed, they did not have to wait for the Stern report to outline the environmental consequences of climate change because in June 2005 the Howard government received the Climate change: risk and vulnerability report. It outlined the consequences for Australia: the 30 per cent drop in rainfall, the more extreme weather events in northern Australia, where cities such as Townsville, Cairns, Darwin and Broome were all identified by that report as being at risk, and the disappearance of the iconic areas of the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu.

That is why no-one can take John Howard seriously on climate change. Yesterday we saw him put seven different positions between two o’clock and a quarter to four. Yesterday the Prime Minister invented new Kyoto. It does not exist. I googled new Kyoto and I invite people to do so. When you google new Kyoto, one entry comes up. Does it mention climate change? Does it mention emissions reductions? Does it mention renewable energy? Does it mention the United Nations? No, the one entry on new Kyoto—the one real new Kyoto which is there—is the Hotel New Kyoto. What pops up is a review, and the review says this:

Stuffy rooms—Would choose another.

It says:

The worst aspect of the room was that the window didn’t open and there is no way—

wait for it—

to cool the room down or get some fresh air. They only have a heater (which works really well, blowing out only hot air).

That is the new Kyoto of the Howard government—no substance and something made up on the run. Today is day 2 of what will be regarded as the turning point in the climate change debate—and, I might say, the turning point for another nail in the government’s coffin—because climate change will be an issue which will see the Howard government left behind. We are the future party, the only party, that is able to take Australia forward into this century and look after this generation and generations to come.

The Kyoto protocol, of course, does exist. We saw today, on day 2 of this debate, the Howard government having no answers whatsoever. We sat in tactics this morning and we thought, ‘They’ll have five or six questions on Kyoto,’ but they had nothing. What happened with our questions? The Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister whether Australia and the United States would have a vote at the meeting of the parties to the Kyoto protocol—the second meeting that is taking place in Nairobi this month. The Prime Minister did not have a clue. He did concede that there were two meetings, and there are two. One is the conference of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which Australia has signed. Yes, we will be participating in that meeting.

But there is a second series of meetings—the meetings of the parties to the Kyoto protocol—that will be sitting down looking at practical measures about how the clean development mechanism operates, the joint implementation system and the opportunities for Australia in the first commitment period between 2008 and 2012. Common sense tells you that the post-2012 Kyoto agreement, which this government now concedes is a reality—forget the ‘new Kyoto’ rhetoric; it is about the next step in Kyoto, the second commitment period of Kyoto from 2013 onwards—will, of course, evolve from the first period of Kyoto. By Australia being on the outside, not able to vote and not able to participate in those discussions in Nairobi, we are doing ourselves a great disservice. India will be there and China will be there, but we will not be around the table during that debate.

This morning we heard from Elliot Morley. I have met with Elliot Morley. He was the climate change minister in the Blair Labor government. I spent two hours with him last year. When you meet world leaders, not just of the Left but of the Right, in Germany and Denmark, and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Californian government, they express horror at the position of this government, because the truth is that the position of this government is holding the world back. That is what we heard from Elliot Morley this morning—the fact that Australia’s intransigence and position outside of Kyoto, the undermining of Kyoto, gives the US cover, the two countries isolated outside of Kyoto. Elliot Morley and Tony Blair, and Arnold Schwarzenegger for that matter, want Australia to be part of Kyoto because they want to isolate the US and get them in as well. We are providing cover, a handbrake, on the global action that is needed to address climate change. Agreements do not just get made up in question time as a result of a poll or a tactics meeting.

Let us look at how this has evolved. In 1992 we had the Rio summit, which identified the issues and what was needed and established the United Nations framework, which Australia was a signatory to. It took five years of complex negotiations to get to the Kyoto agreement in 1997. Then it took from 1997 to 2005 to have enough countries which had ratified the agreement to make sure it came into effect on 16 February 2005. Every industrialised country in the world except Australia and the US is a part of this and the next agreement is about taking that forward.

Elliot Morley belled the cat. The Prime Minister puts forward the position which is to say, ‘We shouldn’t be a part of it until everyone else is,’ and particularly there is his offensive criticism of China and India. It is the United States that produces 25 per cent of the world’s emissions. Do we hear the Prime Minister say, ‘The United States should have targets, adopt emissions-trading and be part of the global system’? No. We hear him criticise the developing nations struggling to feed, house and clothe their people and to achieve economic growth and move forward. But the truth is they are doing better than we are. That is the truth.

The Stern report identifies China, California and the European Union as the three economic entities which are doing best. Elliot Morley’s comment today really said it all. It said it all about the failure of the Howard government to meet the greatest moral challenge of our times—avoiding dangerous climate change and showing national and international leadership. He said this:

... if we will take that attitude then there’ll be no progress at all, and we will just sleepwalk to oblivion ...

Common sense tells you how absurd this government’s position is. But instead of looking at the Stern report and looking seriously at the three core recommendations—first, that you need an international agreement that provides that economic framework and that that agreement is the Kyoto protocol; secondly, that you need emissions-trading and you need to have a price of carbon; and, thirdly, that you need to support renewable and clean coal technologies and that you need economic mechanisms to drive that change through—

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