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

Thank you to the member for Makin for those questions on important issues. I had the opportunity, along with my colleague the Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, of attending the international conference under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change at Cancun in Mexico in December last year. During that period of time and during the various discussions over the course of the period that the conference ran for, which was the better part of two weeks, I was certainly not aware of a single country that questions the climate science. There were specific elements of the conference and side events to consider these matters. No serious political leadership, I think, internationally questions the science. The advice governments are receiving internationally is that the science is clear that carbon pollution is contributing to climate change and the warming that is being experienced, and that the response that we need to take is to reduce our levels of carbon pollution.

The Leader of the Opposition, the member for Warringah, and perhaps the member for Tangney stand out internationally in this field. They are quite outstanding from that point of view. No-one seriously in political leadership questions the responsibility that governments have to make public policy to address this problem. We had the Prime Minister of New Zealand address the House of Representatives today. New Zealand is a country with an emissions trading scheme in operation. It is currently under review to extend the scope of its operation and, potentially, the carbon price that is in operation in their economy. I have had the opportunity of speaking with the Prime Minister about the operation of the scheme and, of course, the report is that New Zealand is still there, the sun still comes up and the economy is operating well. They have had a number of challenges and tragedies to deal with, as we all know, but emissions trading is operating within the New Zealand economy effectively and is assisting in driving down carbon pollution. I think the New Zealand government looks forward to the opportunity for their scheme ultimately to link with an emissions trading scheme within our own economy.

On the side of the international negotiations, of course it is necessary. This is a diabolically complex environmental and international economic problem. It requires an unprecedented level of international cooperation to effectively address it. Despite some of the criticisms that are made from time to time of the efforts of the international community to tackle that complex problem, there is no doubt that a lot of progress has been made. The Kyoto protocol has been a very important instrument in garnering support internationally for developed countries making emissions reduction commitments. It has provided an important basis for the development of market mechanisms and a host of other measures that are important foundations for a stronger effort internationally to mitigate the effects of climate change and reduce pollution.

The next UNFCCC conference will be in Durban in South Africa in December of this year. The government is hopeful that that will lead to further progress in the international efforts to deal with this complex problem. There has been an endeavour to popularise, by those who do not support action on climate change, the concept that the Copenhagen conference was somehow a failure. In fact the Copenhagen conference led to pledges by many countries to reduce their emissions. Those pledges have been included for the first time in a decision of the UNFCCC at Cancun in Mexico and will be the basis for the further negotiations to take place during the course of the rest of this year and at Durban for how the international community will go about dealing with this issue and identifying the responsibilities that individual countries will take on.

So it is a process that the government is very committed to, an important one from an international standpoint that this government remains committed to. Internationally, I think that there is goodwill to take this issue further. There is respect internationally for the science and there is certainly an appreciation of the necessity to get on and tackle this problem.

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