Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It seems yet again today we have heard the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources talk a lot about leadership. Again and again he talked about that. When it comes to issues relating to the environment, just do it, Minister: ratify Kyoto. You could have saved us 15 minutes. You could have got up and said: ‘That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to ratify Kyoto.’ That is what we have been saying for a long time. That is what we want to hear—not constant waffling about leadership, Minister.

I fully support the member for Kingsford Smith’s remarks regarding the Howard government’s 11 years of inaction on climate change. There is no doubt—and it is something that we on this side of the chamber have long acknowledged—that climate change is one of the greatest challenges that we face as a nation. Federal Labor has long believed that climate change is not just an environmental issue; indeed, it is at the core of the challenges we face to secure Australia’s future prosperity and job security. The fact is that, without a comprehensive plan to tackle climate change, this country does not have a comprehensive plan for our future. It is that simple. It is that straightforward. But this is an issue that the Howard government do not understand or want to understand. They are not focused on the major challenges that we confront as a nation. The time for debate is over and the time for spin that we hear from the government is over. What is left now is action. That is what a Rudd Labor government will deliver—action on climate change.

The Howard government has walked away from so many of its responsibilities. One of the greatest examples of this is the government’s lack of responsibility and lack of action over the past 11 years in relation to climate change. The fact is that both the Liberal and National parties have never been serious about climate change. They have always been climate change sceptics and in total denial about the very urgent need for action in relation to climate change. Those that sit opposite have in fact sat on their hands to the extent that they have often ignored the issue or indeed attacked those who are prepared to stand up and say, ‘We demand action; we need to have it.’ While the need for real action, for real leadership, has become obvious to even the biggest sceptics, this current government has still done nothing.

Throughout this country, people are extremely concerned about the effects of climate change, whether it be at a local, national or international level. Their concerns are both environmental and economic. We as a nation need to do more, and Australians deserve leadership from their federal government on this issue. It is often quite hard to believe that many years ago Australia was a leading international voice on the environment and the threat of climate change. It is hard to believe that many years ago we had an international reputation envied around the world. Federal Labor is committed to restoring our international credibility on this issue. A Rudd Labor government will immediately ratify the Kyoto protocol because we understand how important it is. As we saw recently at the APEC summit, Chinese Premier Hu said that the Kyoto protocol is ‘the most authoritative, universal and comprehensive international framework’ for tackling climate change. This begs the question: why has the current Australian government not come to the same conclusion?

Why have they not reached that point? The simple truth of the matter is that, despite their very recent public posturing and the many statements made today by the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, the Howard government still do not take the threat of climate change seriously—and their scepticism will be to the detriment of our future generations. If the Howard government truly took this issue seriously, we would have seen action. We would have seen them ratifying Kyoto, setting emissions targets and actually having the decency and honesty to admit that they were wrong to be sceptical of the science of climate change to begin with.

It is only now that the Howard government have started talking a little bit about climate change, and they are doing it now because everybody else in the country has been talking about it for years, and they are talking about it louder and louder, right throughout the nation. So it has suddenly dawned on the Howard government that this is a major issue. Indeed, this is a major issue in this year’s federal election, so now the government are starting to talk about it a little bit. But the true mark of this government and their attitude towards climate change is not the very recent public statements we have heard; their true attitude is that of the past 11 years when we saw nothing.

There were no words and no action—just derision and ridicule for all those in the community who have long taken the threat of climate change very seriously. As evidence of this attitude, we need to look no further than the recent dissenting report from Howard government members expressing scepticism about the science of climate change which was presented to parliament merely weeks ago. These government members exposed exactly what their leader believes: that climate change has no basis in fact and that no attention should be paid to dealing with this issue.

The only solution we have seen from this government is a plan for 25 nuclear reactors across the country to be operational in 15 years time. We on this side of the chamber, as well as the Australian public, know that if your only plan for climate change will come online in 15 years time then you do not have a plan at all. That is the reality of it. Of course, federal Labor is totally opposed to the building of nuclear power plants anywhere in this country.

Let us have a look at what we have got from this government. We have seen no real, serious attempts at renewable sources of energy, no serious attempts to provide incentives to businesses, no serious investment in future technologies. We have not seen anything serious from them at all. Federal Labor has long acknowledged that the cost of inaction far outweighs the cost of action when it comes to climate change. It is vitally important that we see this action not just from an environmental view but also from an economic one, because this inaction really does endanger our future prosperity and our job creation capacity. The longer we delay our action, the more it will cost us.

This is of great concern to many people in my electorate of Richmond for a whole variety of reasons, one of which is the huge tourism industry, which I will come to in a minute. The potential of rising sea levels due to the lack of action on climate change is a major threat to our entire coastal region, associated businesses and our local economy. With the real threat of rising sea levels, many locals are rightly concerned about the future existence of any coastal areas at all. In the electorate of Richmond, from Tweed Heads to Lennox Head, the worry for many people is that our region will not exist and will be lost to the sea in future years.

Indeed, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, your electorate of Page and the neighbouring areas are in a beautiful coastal region of our country. I know many people there have expressed similar concerns about whether that will indeed be lost to the sea as well. I echo the words of my colleague the member for Hindmarsh who, when speaking in this House not long ago about his concerns about rising sea levels and the effect on his area, said that it is one thing to lose your seat to your opponent, but it would be horrendous to lose it to the sea. That certainly is a sentiment that is echoed in my electorate.

Within our nation, our tourism industry alone employs more than half a million Australians. That is a huge amount. As I have said, in my electorate of Richmond, many people are concerned about the costs of inaction. Over 1.5 million people visit Byron Bay per year. That is what sustains the local economy around that area. So there are concerns about rising sea levels and a concern that many people raise with me, which is that of the migratory patterns of whales being less predictable due to changing sea temperatures. That is an issue that people raise with me all the time and, again, it is directly related to many years of inaction by the Howard government when it comes to climate change.

As I said, many locals approach me. I have had many environmental forums in my electorate and I speak to locals all the time. The issue that they raise is climate change. They want to see actions taken for the future of our region, our country and internationally—and that is exactly what a Rudd Labor government will provide. As well as immediately ratifying Kyoto, federal Labor will offer Australian families $10,000 interest-free loans for solar panels, water tanks, and investing in clean, renewable energy such as wind, solar and geothermal technologies. Very importantly, federal Labor will develop an emissions trading scheme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by 2050.

We need to move beyond the aspirational targets in the Sydney declaration that came out of APEC. We need to move to practical national and global targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As we have heard, the Prime Minister’s own foreign minister has made remarks about aspirational targets just being a code for a political stunt. The future of our country and our planet needs and deserves a lot better than just political stunts. When the foreign minister speaks of aspirational targets, I, all of us on this side of the House and most Australians understand what that means. It means that the government are, yet again, doing nothing. That is what we have seen time and time again.

In 2006 we saw the wide-ranging effects of climate change in the Stern report. What did the government do in the face of all of that evidence? Yet again, it did nothing. Climate change threatens our tourism industry and our agricultural industry as well. Those two industries combined bring in about $50 billion in export earnings each year, so the economic effects as well as the environmental effects will be absolutely disastrous if we do not see some real action on climate change.

When it comes down to it, the fact is that we desperately need to act now—immed-iately. And the only way that that is going to happen is with Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister. Then—and only then—will Australia have a Prime Minister who understands climate change, acknowledges climate change and is committed to addressing climate change. And only under a Rudd Labor government will we have a Prime Minister who will act decisively on the massive environmental challenge that climate change poses for us.

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