Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The fact is that the world is warming. The trend is absolutely indisputable and it is also intensifying. Simply, the numbers do not lie. Sadly, those who misrepresent the facts do lie and they should be ashamed for attempting to deceive the public.

Australia has been warming consistently, decade by decade, since the 1940s. Similarly, decadal averages of sea surface temperature around Australia have increased every single decade since 1900. There has been no cooling effect. Every decade has been hotter than the previous, on land or at sea—the numbers do not lie. Both air temperature and sea temperature are increasing and they are warming with increasing speed.

That these changes are contributed to by human pollution is not disputed by the overwhelming weight of credible science. Global warming is indisputable and is affirmed by every single major national scientific academy in the world.

The National Research Council, established by Abraham Lincoln, has affirmed:

Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for—and in many cases is already affecting—a broad range of human and natural systems.

Those scientists who say it is not happening clearly cannot convince other scientists of the merits of their views. Their positions have no scientific credibility and can only be discounted. In short, they are full of it—laymen who profess superior scientific knowledge. The conclusions of the great majority of qualified scientists directly engaged in the development and peer review of the science inform us that global warming is here and it is getting worse with increasing speed. These are the facts that we must contend with and the forces that we as humans must counter.

Industry has stated emphatically that we need to price carbon. The Business Council of Australia, Origin Energy, TRUenergy, AGL, Santos and Shell Australia have all said that we need to establish a new economic playing field on which industry—very much including these energy-generating companies—can get on with investing in the infrastructure that keeps our society powered and running.

On the basis of the feedback that I have been receiving in my electorate of Hindmarsh, community opposition to the accepted science is absolutely minimal; opposition to decreasing Australia’s emissions is negligible; and interest in the numbers, how the mechanism will work and its effect on consumers is quite real. People are also interested to learn that the USA is now pushing ahead with cuts of 17 per cent, and even China is pushing ahead with 40-odd per cent cuts per unit of GDP. The world is pushing ahead and getting on with doing its part—except, it seems, Australia.

The question is: how do we decrease our emissions? I believe those who do the polluting should pay, not those who are captive to the necessities that industry creates. We have in our midst politicians who want a command economy where big government tells everyone what to do, where their money goes and what they can buy. Like governments of the Soviet era, we have here in this parliament an opposition that opposes and seeks to undermine the principles of market economics. The opposition’s big government will drain taxpayers of $30 billion, handing money over to select big businesses. Australians will still face higher and higher electricity prices, broke and alone, under the opposition’s policy. We have a limited supply and the relentlessly increasing price of electricity and people’s inability to afford this electricity—none of this will change under Tony Abbott’s Soviet style carbon economy.

In contrast, the government will charge the big polluters for their pollution and give a large part of that, possibly $25 billion or so over five years, to the consumers, who will themselves be able to choose how to spend it. Labor is the party of consumer choice. We can have 20 million people making personal decisions on spending money on less carbon intensive goods and services, promoting market forces—(Time expired)

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