Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to complete this debate on the MPI by restating the words that were used by the shadow minister for climate change, environment and urban water in introducing the debate today. He said:

Climate change is real. It is important. It is significant. But it takes substance, not symbols …

On this side of the House I think we can all agree with the sentiments expressed by the shadow minister, but the great tragedy for our nation and the great tragedy for the international community is that over 11 long years those sentiments were never translated into any decisive action on the part of the Howard government. The last speaker really should reflect on the fact that this is the first week of the 42nd Parliament, the first week of the Rudd Labor government in power. I would argue, and I think the Australian community accepts, that the Labor Party and the Labor government are doing a lot more in terms of practical policies and proposals to address an issue that is of great concern to the whole community. I have no doubt that the environment and the dangerous impact of climate change were very high on the list of issues that saw the defeat of the Howard government and the election of the Rudd Labor government. That and Work Choices were the decisive issues that swung a lot of people out there in the community behind a very clearly articulated program and policy approach by the Rudd Labor team.

I might say, for the new members present in the chamber, that it is really hard to contemplate but there are still members on the opposition benches who are sceptical about the science of climate change. I am delighted to see my new colleague the member for Lindsay in the chamber. The former member for Lindsay was one of the very notable people contributing to a minority report on a House of Representatives committee inquiry last year, together with the member for Tangney and others, who, even as late as late last year, doubted the science behind climate change and global warming. I think the opposition has a lot to answer for. It is a pity that the new shadow minister for the environment, who I think is genuinely quite sympathetic to the issues of climate change and global warming, was not in cabinet to convince the sceptics on the then government benches about the importance of this issue.

The TV program last night was really fascinating. One of the fascinating points that came across was the rather belated acknowledgement by the former Treasurer that in hindsight, yes, the government should have ratified Kyoto. ‘In hindsight, yes,’ he said, ‘we should have ratified Kyoto and we should have done it a lot earlier.’ But the truth of the matter is that they did not. They had 11 long years to really get their act together on an issue of substantial global challenge and they failed the task. It is not surprising that they failed. They had a senior industry minister saying to Laurie Oakes on the Sunday program:

I am a sceptic of the connection between emissions and climate change.

Really, for a senior minister to profess to scepticism on this issue beggars belief. When Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth was shown—and I think it was a very important consciousness-raising exercise—the same minister said of that really important documentary that it was ‘just entertainment’. The truth is that the people who were then on the government benches were well behind community opinion. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming, in the dying days of the Howard government, to acknowledge the importance of this issue. They have got a hide now to come into the chamber to try to castigate a government that is sitting in its first week. Within days of our election to office, the first official act of the new Rudd Labor government was the ratification of the Kyoto protocol. That was important because, for the first time, Australia had a seat at the table when it had previously been missing in action.

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