Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance on the government’s failure to secure Australia’s future economic prosperity through its attitude to climate change. The complacency and inaction of this government over 11 years on climate change have indeed endangered our future prosperity and our future job security. Dangerous climate change is a serious risk to our future prosperity and our job creation capacity. The longer we delay, the more climate change will cost our water supplies, our jobs and our environment because the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of action.

As we saw during question time today, this PM is only interested in the electoral climate; he is not interested in climate change. We saw today in question time that this government does not have the policy courage, the foresight and the moral conviction to tackle dangerous climate change. We have a government that does not understand the future, and if it does not understand the future then it simply cannot govern it. Parties like the Liberal Party that do not prepare for the future rapidly become irrelevant. There are two pieces of evidence that I want to mention that demonstrate the negligence of the Howard government—there are many more, but there are two that I want to mention up-front.

We had a speech from the Secretary to the Treasury on 14 March to Treasury officers entitled ‘Treasury’s effectiveness in the current environment’. This is the government’s No. 1 economic adviser, speaking only a couple of months ago—one of the most respected advisers in the country and, I would say, of international standing as well. The Secretary to the Treasury, someone who has worked in that organisation for around 15 years, said of this government’s stewardship of the economy and its failure to respond to climate change:

We have also worked hard to develop frameworks for the consideration of water reform and climate change policy. All of us would wish that we had been listened to more attentively over the past several years in both of these areas. There is no doubt that policy outcomes would have been far superior had our views been more influential.

He said that policy outcomes would have been far superior if the government had listened to Treasury. The Secretary to the Treasury continued:

That is not just my view; I know that it is increasingly widely shared around this town.

You could not get a bigger indictment of this government’s lack of stewardship, application and commitment to tackle dangerous climate change to secure our future prosperity and job security. Of course it is not just the Secretary to the Treasury who failed to have his way and to involve all of the expertise in his department in meeting this dangerous challenge; there are many others who are highly qualified who have been unsuccessful in getting their advice through to the government as well.

We saw the same situation back in 2003 where a cabinet submission went to Treasury recommending an emissions trading system. As Stern shows, an emissions trading system that provides the price signal is the most fundamental element required to deliver the innovation and the investment that will give us the new technology to reduce carbon emissions. An emissions trading system is absolutely essential to an economy that we want to be carbon-cleaner; you do need an emissions trading system. What happened then? In 2003 the Prime Minister and the Treasurer refused to put up an emissions trading system, despite the recommendations of a number of departments. This 2003 rejection came on top of a 1998 recommendation from the foreign minister for there to be an inquiry into emissions trading and a 1999 Australian Greenhouse Office discussion paper on emissions trading, so the evidence is there.

Mr Costello, the Treasurer, loves to talk about experience. We come into the House and he says, ‘How experienced that mob over there are in economic management!’ He says that nobody else could be trusted with the economic management of this country because the government are so experienced. When it comes to experience and when it comes to the economic threat of climate change and water, the Costello experience is one of absolute negligence. His experience, when it comes to protecting our future prosperity and protecting us from dangerous climate change, is one of 11 years of negligence and complacency—11 years of denial, 11 years of inaction and 11 years of reckless indifference. If that is experience, this country most certainly does not need it.

When all of this has been exposed, what have the government done? What has been their response? Their only response is not a substantial policy response but a taxpayer funded advertising campaign. That is their response to everything. Of course, it is all part of the cover-up. In this House they are also running a scare campaign to say that somehow early action on climate change will bring damage to the Australian economy and loss of jobs. That is the rubbish we heard from the Prime Minister today, that somehow early action would cost jobs. Early action will not cost jobs, because a strong economy must be predicated on a healthy and sustainable environment. It is the absolute foundation of a prosperous economy.

As we know, the Stern report commissioned by the British government found that the global cost of failing to act on climate change could be of a similar scale to the Great Depression and the two world wars. In the face of this evidence, what did the government do? They stuck their heads in the sand, there was no immediate action and now all we get is more taxpayer funded scare campaigns. Sir Nicholas Stern said that, unless we acted to reduce carbon emissions now, the consequences would be the equivalent to a cut in global economic output by 20 per cent.

Australia will not be immune to this. Climate change threatens serious damage to our agricultural and tourism industries in particular, which combined bring in around $50 billion in export earnings each year. Our tourism industry alone employs more than half a million Australians. The Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change, which includes leading companies like BP, Origin Energy and Westpac, has warned that a two to three degree rise in temperature could cause enormous economic harm. I do not have time to go through it today, but there would be economic harm to our tourism, agricultural and livestock industries. With climate change comes the risk of more severe droughts. Australia will have to face up to 20 per cent more droughts over most of Australia by 2030 and up to 80 per cent more droughts by 2070. What we see here is that the cost of inaction is far higher than the cost of action.

Acting now, prudently and sensibly, is what we should be doing. Just imagine where this country might be in relation to the rest of the world if we had started to tackle this when the government was advised of it some years ago. What we know from all the economists and the modelling is that the longer you delay the higher the cost goes. There is a disproportionate cost the longer you delay. What this government’s negligence and complacency are doing is building a bigger cost for us to deal with into the future and to pass on to our children and their children. That is why we must move this matter of public importance today—because Australia cannot afford another three years of climate change inertia.

Labor’s plan to protect the economy as well as the environment does include a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by 2050. We must set a target. That is what the science tells us we must do if we are to stabilise those emissions to prevent the consequences that Stern is talking about. We must act now; we must certainly act now. It is not just because Stern is out of favour; he is also a European. Despite the fact that he had come from the World Bank, he is out of favour: he is a European. We have this use of the word ‘Eurocentric’ in the House. The CSIRO’s submission—they are all Australians—to the Prime Minister’s own task group on emissions trading recommended reductions between 60 and 90 per cent. Are they all dangerous Europeans? Are they all communists down there at the CSIRO when they recommend to the government reductions of 60 to 90 per cent, or are they sensible scientists such that we in public life have a responsibility to listen to their advice and take it seriously?

We have the UN panel—I will not go into that, because they are all foreigners! But what we do have—someone the government might listen to, you would think—is the business community of this country. What does the Business Roundtable on Climate Change say? It says achieving a 60 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from year 2000 levels by 2050 is possible while maintaining strong economic growth. This is a complete repudiation of everything the Prime Minister has said in this House, over the last four weeks of sitting, about a 60 per cent reduction target. The Business Roundtable on Climate Change has simply blown the Prime Minister away because it has done the work. He has not done the work.

Labor are prepared to do the work. Not only have we committed to the 60 per cent target; we have also committed to a means of achieving it through the Garnaut report, something else that this government would not do. The Treasurer met all the state treasurers in Canberra about two months ago. They put a proposal to him for a review like the Stern report and he knocked them back. It was left to Labor to join with the state governments to get their expertise to bring Ross Garnaut in and put a similar report together. The government would not do it because they are only interested in playing politics.

No wonder the Treasurer would not put climate change on the agenda of the G20 in November last year in Melbourne. That tells you how quickly the government’s political conversion on climate change has come about. What we are getting, and we saw more of it today, is the abuse of those who are out there putting these targets forward. We have seen the Prime Minister having to run away from his earlier endorsement of a Clinton adviser in the last question time. Yesterday he embraced the views of Larry Summers, who apparently does not support targets. We dealt with that yesterday. What about the views of former President Clinton? Former President Clinton had this to say, ‘What a country does with prosperity is just as important a test of its character as what it does when its back is against the wall.’

We are in an unprecedented period of prosperity. On issues like climate change and water, skills and education more generally and infrastructure we have a government that has walked away from its nation-building responsibilities, prepared to coast on the resources boom and the boost to national income that has flowed from that. Meanwhile, here at home, it has not attended to the long-term foundations of our economy. It has not attended to the long-term foundations of our economy in educating our people or in developing modern infrastructure. Most certainly it has not tackled the biggest long-term threat that we face, which is dangerous climate change—which if it is not tackled, as Stern has said and as others acknowledge, does present a serious threat not only to our economy but to our national security as well.

This is why we say that the only commonsense way to deal with dangerous climate change is to tackle it early and bring the community together to have a whole-of-community effort. The business community is crying out for certainty in this area. Decisions about base power load and investment in base power are being held up because this government is playing silly political games. This should have been dealt with years ago. And it claims to have experience! It has the business community telling it day in, day out that they want some certainty in the government’s approach to these questions. But what does the government do? It simply plays political games. That is the problem.

There is no European conspiracy. The fact is that everyone on this planet is affected by dangerous climate change and everyone on this planet must play their part. We in the Australian Labor Party say that we are playing our part. We held a summit and we got the business community together. We put a target out there. We have been in favour of an emissions trading system. We are backing renewable energy. We are backing a whole-of-community effort. And what do we get from this government? We get lectures about how they are experienced.

I will tell you what they are experienced at—short-term politics and quick political fixes. That is why in 11 years we have not had one mention in Peter Costello’s budgets of the words ‘climate change’. Now that the political heat is turned up and global warming is a reality, they are starting to move. They are using their taxpayer funded polling. They are using the resources of the taxpayer to run advertising campaigns to cover up their negligence and their embarrassment. Labor, Kevin Rudd, our spokesman here, Peter Garrett, and Anthony Albanese have put the weight on them. They are not up to it. (Time expired)

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