Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to my close friend and colleague the member for Shortland. I see she is supported by the member for Gippsland in the thrust of that question. I think he was jumping up to ask it himself—almost! Of course, the government has taken a number of initiatives to ensure that the best quality information and research is made available for the consideration not just of the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee members on science and other matters but for members of the community generally. As part of the engagement strategy that generally obtains in the portfolio, the establishment of the Climate Commission is a very important part of engagement with the community.

Just quickly, though, I will point to some of the other measures before I go directly to the issue of the Climate Commission. The government, of course, commissioned Professor Ross Garnaut to update his 2008 Climate change review and in particular to focus on significant changes or improvements in expert knowledge that have implications for the key findings from his 2008 review. Professor Garnaut has concluded that update; he published eight papers and they have been consolidated into a recent book that has been published. So there is very comprehensive information about the science, the economics and the state of international negotiations contained in Professor Garnaut's work. The Productivity Commission was also asked to undertake analysis of the carbon pollution reduction policies of key countries around the world including China, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States. It found that all countries examined had adopted major policies. In fact, over a thousand policies were identified in the area of climate change intended to help reduce pollution levels. A key finding from the Productivity Commission was that a market mechanism in the form, for example, of an emissions trading scheme is unquestionably the cheapest and most efficient way of reducing pollution across an economy. Those are just two important measures that the government initiated in relation to climate change and to inform the carbon price debate and deliberations over policy.

Another important one though, as the member for Shortland has pointed to, is the establishment of the Climate Commission. It is chaired by Professor Tim Flannery, a former Australian of the Year. There are a number of other eminently qualified members of the commission, including Professor Will Steffen of the ANU, who is a world renowned climate scientist and who is also advising the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee. Recently the Climate Commission conducted a seminar within Parliament House. It was one of a series that it has conducted to date around the country. It commenced with a public forum in Geelong in Victoria and it has visited a number of other important regional areas around the country, particularly with a focus on communities in areas where there is a lot of employment in emissions-intensive and trade-exposed industries. They have been very successful fora at explaining the science and, to some degree, the economics of climate change.

In addition, the Climate Commission has published an important report updating the science which is titled The critical decade: climate science, risks and responses. There were four key findings from the Climate Commission's report. One of them was that there is no doubt that the climate is changing and that the evidence of this is overwhelming and entirely clear. The atmosphere is warming, the ocean is warming, ice is being lost from glaciers and icecaps, sea levels are rising and global surface temperatures are rising. The member for Tangney will no doubt appreciate this. He is unusually quiet while I am mentioning these matters. He is usually slightly more vociferous.

Dr Jensen interjecting—

The Climate Commission's document makes these changes very clear and states what the science is. Secondly, the report adverts to the fact that we are already seeing social, economic and environmental impacts from changes in the climate. Thirdly, the report traverses the area of the contribution of human activity and specifically the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation as contributing to climate change. Fourthly, it makes the point that this is the critical decision. Decisions that we make from now to 2020 will determine the severity of climate change that future generations have to deal with.

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