Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the alternative government, the opposition, I welcome Australia’s formal ratification of the Kyoto protocol which comes into force today. Climate change is real, it is important and it is fundamental. In that context, climate change presents us with two great challenges. Both are major but achievable challenges. The first is to allow the poor of the world to develop and achieve the benefits of a modern economy and to encourage the continued improvement of health, freedom and prosperity in the already developed societies. The second is to progressively shift from a high emissions economy to a low emissions economy. Managing climate change will be one of the great challenges of our time—indeed, it already is. It represents an important economic shift and will require a portfolio of responses. In Australia’s case, we are moving towards progressive pricing and the cost of carbon in the way our economy operates, and this will be essential to any agreement beyond 2012. This is big history in the making, as the member for Flinders has observed, perhaps the most significant economic decision in a generation. With such a profound change, we need to make sure that we get our policy responses right. For businesses and households, the impact of climate change will be far reaching and will present both major challenges and opportunities.

By ratifying the Kyoto protocol, Australia has committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 108 per cent of 1990 levels by 2012. We are on track to meet this target thanks to the practical coalition government programs to fight climate change introduced over the last 12 years. These include the $500 million Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, which leveraged over $3 billion in private sector investment for significant projects, including the world’s largest carbon capture and storage project; investment of more than $1 billion to promote renewable energy, including nearly $18 million under the Advanced Electricity Storage Technologies program to look at more efficient ways of storing electricity from renewable power sources; and an $8,000 rebate for Australians to install renewable solar energy in their homes—a very important and practical measure. On energy efficiency, the previous government led the world in announcing the phase-out of inefficient incandescent light bulbs that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated four million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year by 2015.

The ratification of the Kyoto protocol is important, but it will be meaningless if we do not also redouble our efforts to create a truly inclusive international agreement on climate change, one that commits all countries—developing and developed—to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Australia’s annual emissions are around 560 million tonnes of carbon dioxide or around some 1½ per cent of the total global emissions, which are around 40 billion tonnes every year. It is forecast that, on current trends, Australia’s emissions will be one per cent of global emissions by 2050. The developing world at the moment is 50 per cent of global emissions, forecast on current trends to be 75 per cent by 2050. To put this into perspective: by 2050, China’s and India’s emissions, without any change, at one-third of total global emissions, will exceed those of the United States, Europe, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Canada and Australia combined. We in Australia have an important role in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for the challenge of climate change, but any real solution to climate change must be global and it must take in the world’s biggest emitters, including the United States, China and India. Carbon does not respect borders.

I urge the government to take seriously the damaging impact of deforestation on global greenhouse gas emissions. Deforestation in developing countries accounts for around 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The Global Initiative on Forests and Climate, launched by the coalition government last year, was designed to immediately and practically reduce global deforestation and promote reforestation in developing countries in our region. I call on the government to commit to continuing this important program and provide practical steps to protect the world’s great forests.

A carbon trading scheme, as I said, is an essential part of our post-Kyoto framework. The government has also expressed concern about effectively addressing climate change but, ironically, has refused to sell uranium to India needed for the development of its domestic power industry—one of the largest and growing emitters of carbon throughout the world. Australia alone cannot save the world from climate change, but if we make the wrong decisions we will cause irreparable damage to our children’s economic and environmental legacy and we have a responsibility to the next generation to know precisely what it is that we are signing them up for before we move further beyond Kyoto and the agreements beyond 2012.

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