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

Dealing with the first point that the honourable member raised, which is the underspend, this is a furphy that was originally raised by Kelvin Thomson, I think, late last year. The Australian Greenhouse Office in 2005-06 fully expended its budgetary allocation and it was also very close to doing that in 2004-05. The government to date has allocated about $2.8 billion for direct climate change measures and that is achieving results. We will contribute to an 87 million tonne a year cut in CO equivalent emissions from 2010—that is equivalent to eliminating all the emissions from the transport sector.

The climate change measures are administered principally through the Greenhouse Office and the Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources and include the more than $740 million worth of measures that have been announced this financial year, with the program starting from 2007-08. Solar Cities is a visionary new energy concept. It is experimental and involves demonstration. As with almost all of our solar energy measures, the idea is to demonstrate the technology and provide the demand that will in turn drive cost reductions through better technology, learning through doing and so forth. Four Solar Cities have been announced so far: Adelaide, Townsville, Blacktown and Alice Springs. They will receive close to $60 million of the $75 million for the program. That program is on track; it is doing well. I was in Alice Springs recently and there are some very innovative elements there. Solar has a great future, particularly in areas like Alice Springs, where the cost of grid connected power is so much higher than it is, say, in a big city like Sydney or Melbourne and so the cost differential is that much lower.

The honourable member attributed to me a statement in which I supposedly said that Australia was doing more than any other country in terms of addressing climate change. I do not know that I have ever put it quite that high, but Australia is certainly a world leader. I remind him that the great untruths that the honourable member spreads about the government’s climate change policy fly in the face of facts. Let us look at some inconvenient truths.

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