Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources) Share this | Hansard source

The honourable member asks about land clearing. Land clearing and land use are a vital part of the carbon cycle. He says he is fit to govern; he does not even understand how the carbon cycle works. You have got your carbon geosequestration, land use, planting trees and cutting down trees. These all have an impact on the carbon cycle, and of course they have to be taken into account. It is quite appropriate that they should be taken into account.

The member for Kingsford Smith and his colleagues—the Leader of the Opposition, in particular—always miss the point on climate change because they forget that global warming is a global challenge. They do not have a forward agenda. Consider the track record of the Howard government. We have established with other countries the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate—AP6, as it is called. This is a group of the largest emitters, including the biggest economy in the world, the United States, the fastest-growing economy in the world in China, and India and Japan. We have pulled together that group of countries and we are sharing and developing the technology that will enable each of us to achieve our objective of reducing emissions. In partnership with China we are developing the clean coal technology that will enable China to reduce its emissions and thereby achieve the reduction in global greenhouse emissions we need. That formed no part of the member for Kingsford Smith’s speech. There is no international agenda. It is as though he believes Australia is in a little bubble and we just have to do things in Australia and everything will be all right. This is a global problem.

His consistent failure to understand the facts associated with the issues in his portfolio is not limited to this particular issue of climate change today. Only a few days ago, late last week, the member for Kingsford Smith and the Leader of the Opposition pledged that a Labor government would send naval vessels—warships—to intercept, board and arrest Japanese whalers in the waters off Antarctica.

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