Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The question goes to the level of support for those associated with the lower lakes, and that is what I am responding to in terms of the package which I put forward, and put forward considerably in advance of that which has been referred to by the Leader of the Opposition. I would draw his attention to the whole challenge of taking back water entitlements for the system by a system of purchasing on the open market, which is what we have been doing. What I cannot understand—and presumably that is why those opposite interject—is why, in 12 years in office, they did not purchase back a single gigalitre of water entitlements from the entire Murray-Darling system. For 12 years, they had all that time to act; they had the money to act and they failed to act. In nine months of office we have already begun the buyback program.

I conclude my answer to the question of the Leader of the Opposition by again going to the third element of the challenge for the Coorong Lakes—that is, the impact of climate change. The matter has already been raised by the minister for agriculture and the minister for the environment in response to questions in the House today. The other part of dealing with this challenge in the Coorong Lakes is the impact of climate change on water inflow into the entire Murray-Darling Basin. If you are going to continue to position yourself on the side of the climate change deniers, which those opposite do consistently, and say that climate change has nothing to do with what is happening either in the lower lakes or in the Murray, you cannot even get to first base in dealing with this problem for the long term.

Last night the Leader of the Opposition stood up on national television and answered the question, ‘Do you accept what is happening to the lower lakes and right up the Murray is also related to climate change?’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t.’ I find that remarkable. Last night a series of questions was put to the Leader of the Opposition by the interviewer where he presented the Leader of the Opposition with a series of scientific reports. The question on Lateline was, ‘How do you know it’s not climate change?’ The Leader of the Opposition answered, ‘It’s not a consequence of climate change.’ He was then asked, ‘How do you know that?’ And there was no answer to that. In other words, he says that it is not a consequence of climate change because he says it is not a consequence of climate change. That is what it is all about. Can I say to the Leader of the Opposition: you need to get with the science on this. Look at the technical report put together by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology which says—and I ask the Leader of the Opposition if he agrees with this statement:

Recent Australian drought has been accompanied by higher surface temperatures due to anthropogenic warming.

That report was in 2007, when you lot were in office. Then there is the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report 2007: Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability.

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