Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

That is inaction, as identified in the subject of this MPI, by the Howard government. Australian business is being forced to go overseas to continue to produce greenhouse-good technologies. The mums and dads of Australia are realists. They know about climate change. They are educating themselves about its implications and they are feeling concerned and anxious about the future for their kids. And why wouldn’t they, given the time lines and the scale of this issue? But they are not climate change sceptics.

The Prime Minister and his government have had an uneasy and confused period in dealing with climate change. Their position has shifted significantly, but for the last 11 years one consistent theme has emerged from the Howard government: that is, climate change is not a real, present and future danger to the Australian way of life, to our economy, to our ecology and to our society. In the last week, with climate change awareness at an all-time high, we again heard some extraordinary assertions by the Prime Minister and his environment minister on this issue. Last Monday night, four days after the release of the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, the Prime Minister was asked, on ABC TV’s Lateline program:

What do you think living in Australia would be like by the end of this century for your own grandchildren if the average mean temperatures around the world do rise by somewhere between four and possibly more than six degrees Celsius?

As we know, the Prime Minister answered by saying, ‘It would be less comfortable than it is now.’ That is something of an understatement. A four to six degree increase in temperature is dismissed by the Prime Minister as potentially uncomfortable. That potential increase carries a burden on future generations to try to manage highly stressed ecosystems, with our natural icons under siege and with health, security and social implications of an order hitherto unseen. The Prime Minister went on to challenge the accuracy of the IPCC report by saying:

I think it is very, very hard for us in 2007 to try, with that kind of mathematical accuracy—with great respect to the scientists—to sort of extrapolate what things might be like.

The nub of the problem lies in the Prime Minister’s own misconceptions about climate change and in his refusal to take responsibility for a decade of inaction by his government. This IPCC report was produced by 600 authors from 40 countries, including 42 scientists from Australia. There were 620 expert reviewers and 113 governments involved. The Prime Minister says that it is very hard for them to try to work out with some kind of mathematical accuracy to ‘sort of extrapolate what things might be like’? They have done exactly that—perhaps not with mathematical accuracy, but with enough accuracy to give prudent governments a clear identification of the nature of risk that lies at the heart of this climate change issue. This is an issue about managing risks, and this is where the policy approach of the Howard government is deficient.

Let us quickly revisit what the report tells us. It tells us that, if there is business as usual, temperature increases are likely to be in the range of two to 4.5 degrees Celsius. It is very unlikely to be less than 1.5 degrees Celsius. We have already had an increase of 0.76 degrees up to now. It tells us that snow cover is projected to contract and that the thawing of the permafrost is expected to deepen. It tells us that it is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy rain events will continue to become more frequent. And it tells us that the number of tropical cyclones may decrease but, at the same time, their intensity will increase. It predicts more rainfall in high latitudes, with decreases in rainfall across subtropical regions by as much as 20 per cent. Importantly, the report also tells us that how we respond, and how quickly we respond, will determine how hot the planet gets. This report makes clear that ‘business as usual’ will see climate change and global warming continue to build over time until the task of managing and mitigating against the impacts will be greater than anyone in this chamber can imagine.

In the House yesterday, the Prime Minister again sought to dismiss the global threat posed by climate change by referring to the opposition as climate change purists and climate change fanatics. What an extraordinary assertion. When it comes to naming climate change purists, perhaps the Prime Minister should also include the Australian Medical Association, who have very great concerns about the impact climate change will have on the nation’s health. He should include companies like Visy, Origin Energy, Westpac, BP and the Australian Insurance Group, who have been demanding that the Prime Minister address this issue with the seriousness it deserves in order to give them some security in their business arrangements as they go forward. The Prime Minister could also include the National Farmers Federation, who argue that climate change is a very real issue for their members. More worryingly, he should also consider including some of Australia’s most eminent security analysts, like Dr Alan Dupont, who suggested that climate change is fast emerging as the security issue of the 21st century.

But what is the government’s response to their concerns and the concerns raised in numerous reports over the last 11 years? It is a discussion paper of nine pages on emissions trading. That is the substance of the response. The 2001 IPCC climate change report warned of temperature rises without precedent over the last 10,000 years. In 2003, the Australian government report Climate Change: An Australian guide to the science and potential impacts warned that temperatures could rise by two degrees and that rainfall in southern Australia could fall by 20 per cent by 2030. In 2005, the Australian government report Climate Change: Risk and vulnerability warned of direct threats to Australia from climate chance, including prolonged drought, a 20 per cent reduction in rainfall in southern Australia, increased high bushfire danger days and more extreme cyclones. Why did the government ignore all these reports? Why did the government ignore all these warnings? Those are the questions that the Australian people want answered, and those are the questions that the Prime Minister has to address.

Finally, while the Prime Minister sneeringly dismisses the Kyoto protocol as totally ten minutes ago—as last year’s fashion—Australian business continues to be locked out of $30 billion in carbon trading, and Australia is, once again, asked to leave the room when the real climate change negotiations start.

Some of us in this chamber have spent a long time campaigning on issues like climate change, and we have watched and witnessed the scientific evidence accumulate which tells us that if we continue to increase the production of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, the likelihood of an ever increasingly-warm world will jeopardise our way of life and will certainly create an additional range of problems, obstacles, hurdles and challenges for our kids to deal with.

I think it is really a question about duty of care, because we owe a duty of care to the people who we serve in this place. The lawyers in the House, including members opposite, will recognise that the definition of duty of care and an understanding of duty of care involves consequences that can be foreseen. We now have the best scientific brains in the world telling us that we can foresee with some degree of certainty—in some instances with a 90 per cent degree of certainty—what the consequences will be. We need to exact a duty of care now, instantly, to recognise the scale of the threat that we face.

No amount of dissembling, spinning or debating and no number of reports, recommendations and the usual business that goes on when we watch the Howard government in action will satisfy the Australian people that they are responding in a fair dinkum way to climate change. I have absolutely no doubt that this issue will preoccupy every member sitting in this House. I have absolutely no doubt that, unless you have a policy suite which recognises the need to urgently and immediately reduce CO and other greenhouse gas emissions now, the task will get harder and harder as we go forward.

Labor are not climate change sceptics. We are not sceptical about climate change. We have looked at the science, we have taken note of the reports and we recognise the need to act. Labor will take action to protect Australian communities from the ravages of climate change and enable Australian businesses to maintain their competitive edge in the international arena. We will ratify the Kyoto protocol to give Australian businesses access to the world’s carbon trading markets and allow them to compete on a level playing field.

We will aim to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas pollution by 60 per cent by 2050 because the best minds in the world tell us that that is what is needed to avert the worst excesses of climate change. We will build a robust renewable energy sector because that is what is needed to draw on our great natural inheritance of sunlight—and with a technology that is not 20 years away, expensive and with a raft of unsolved problems of radioactive waste, exposure to terrorism and management of nuclear proliferation. That is what a Rudd Labor government would do about climate change. It is about having the solutions and being willing to put them into place.

The jury is in and the science is clear: the planet is heating. The time for action is now, and our children and our grandchildren deserve nothing less. The challenge for the Prime Minister and the challenge for the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources is to recognise that the policy suite that we have identified here has virtue and merit. Why debate the business of cuts? Every single person who looks at this issue with any degree of seriousness recognises that you have to cut greenhouse gas emissions. What better way to do it than to say you will and to establish a target and a time line in order to do that?

Why have a paltry two per cent mandatory renewable energy target when renewables are one of the fastest-growing businesses in this world and we can build Australian businesses that produce and provide energy? Why not, as a matter of course, stand up and say, ‘Now that the Australian public is speaking to us about climate change in a way that says they understand the enormity of that issue it is time that the government listened’?

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