Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a government which has been trashing the future, selling out future generations for short-term gain. This has been true of its cuts in education and health, true in terms of rising unemployment, true in terms of running the car industry out of town, but nowhere has it been more true and more serious than in its attacks on renewable energy and its lack of action in relation to climate change.

This is a government which has attacked and undermined the renewable energy industry to such a point that it has been an embarrassment both domestically and internationally. Investment in large-scale renewable energy projects such as wind farms has fallen by 88 per cent. Under this coalition government, investment in the industry hit its lowest point since 2009 and, as our shadow minister has pointed out, both the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Renewable Energy Agency are on the chopping block under this government. We have a government which will not commit to a renewable energy target.

This afternoon I had the privilege of meeting up with people from the University of Queensland Global Change Institute at a forum which they had on climate science, with experts such as Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Professor David Karoly, Professor David Griggs and others. The sorts of points they were making were that carbon emissions have risen from 280 parts per million in pre-industrial times to 400 parts per million now and that, as a consequence of this, our temperatures were at the highest that they have ever been in recorded history in 2014, will be the highest they have ever been in 2015 and will rise again in 2016. The climate consequences of that are extreme weather events, droughts, bushfires, cyclones and floods. They will be very serious for Australia.

We will also be impacted on by climate events in other parts of the world, too—our Pacific Island neighbours, whom I believe we have a responsibility to look after, but certainly places like Bangladesh. If you have Bangladesh made uninhabitable for over 100 million people as a consequence of sea level rise then the consequences of that in terms of people movement are likely to make the present influx of asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East into Europe look like a picnic.

We need to understand what is happening and be prepared to take action—evidence based, science based action—to meet the challenge. We need to transition to renewable energy. I am really proud of the opposition's target of 50 per cent renewable energy by 2030. That is a really important initiative and everyone should get behind that initiative. It will be good for our economy and it is essential for future generations. The second thing we need to do is to be flexible at the Paris conference and be prepared both to push other countries and to make bigger commitments for ourselves. If we do not have commitments at Paris that take the world below the two degrees Celsius increase then the climate consequences of that—the possibility of melting the Greenland and the West Antarctic icesheet—are unknown and uncertain. We have an international responsibility to do everything we can to make sure that that does not happen. Third, we have to support science and technology. We have to support the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. We have to support the Renewable Energy Agency. These are the ways in which we can make change work for us both economically and in terms of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

It is regrettable that this is a government of climate change deniers who have had to be dragged kicking and screaming towards taking action at all and it is also regrettable that we have a Prime Minister who has effectively sold out on climate change action. We know from his past history that he believes in climate change action, but he has sold out on climate change action in order to attain the glittering prize of the prime ministership. That is a dreadful sell-out of this generation and future generations, and the Prime Minister and this government should stand condemned for it.

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