Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is always a bit challenging and daunting to follow the member for Kennedy, because he speaks with such passion and across a wide range of areas in speaking to particular bills—talking particularly about water, mining and industries. It all has relevance to the bill before us, but it is a little bit daunting to follow him. In the electorate of Page, we have a project underway to do with ethanol, one of the things that the member talks about all the time, and I am pleased about that.

I rise to speak in support of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Amendment Bill 2009. The then Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change—now Minister for Defence Personnel, Materiel and Science and Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change—said it makes minor but important changes to the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act, and indeed it does. They may be minor, but they are very important. I will recap the purpose of the principal act and then outline the nature of the amending bill’s changes, the specific impact and the general impact. I will conclude with a few general comments on the broader framework this principal act and this amending bill respond to, which is climate change.

The principal act established a general framework for mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and energy production and consumption by industry. This framework is important in facilitating the operations of the government’s efforts to reduce the deleterious effects of climate change, and these effects are not in dispute. There is discussion around the quantum in some areas but not around the fact that climate change is a fact. Climate change is global warming, but it is a result of human activity. I know there are some on the opposite side of the chamber who try to dispute that climate change is a reality, because we do have climate change deniers in this place, but the evidence supports the other view: that it is a fact and we have to deal with it.

I also wish to emphasise this point because, wherever the emissions come from, it is really human activity, and that is what we have to deal with. We have to take action to respond to and deal with it. My point is that humans cause it as the primary base and we humans in government and the community are responsible for changing it. The government does that by leadership. That is what it has done and what it is doing, despite what I would say is the reckless political posturing of the Liberal and National parties. I know that in the National Party—the whole nine of them in this place—there is absolute climate change denial, and even—

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