Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This motion is the result of a fundamental misunderstanding compounded by the very much alive strain of climate denial that we continue to see bubble up to the surface in the leftover landfill site that now comprises the federal coalition. First of all, this is a fundamental understanding on the part of the coalition The loss-and-damage fund is not the result of a court process. It is not a legal obligation. But it's a prospective partnership of aid programs. I prefer to think of it as a misunderstanding, as I have often been well guided by Hanlon's razor: to never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Nevertheless, the coalition terminated Australia's aid budget. Under the coalition, Australia has come 21st in a list of 29 OECD countries donating aid money to developing countries. We are wealthier than most of the countries ahead of us on that list. The new Labor government has pledged to rebuild Australia's development program and increase the official-development-assistance-to-gross-national-income ratios each year in an effort to counteract this downward trend.

The Lowy Institute has found that foreign aid has historically not been popular with the Australian public—no doubt the basis for the coalition's dog-whistling. However, in 2022, Lowy found that cuts to the aid budget had become less popular. Forty-two per cent of Australians say spending on foreign aid should be kept around current levels, an increase of six percentage points since 2019; thirty-four per cent say foreign aid spending should be decreased, down by 13.4 percentage points; and 24 per cent say that Australia should increase spending on foreign aid, an increase of seven percentage points. The Lowy Institute also found that Australians are overwhelmingly in favour of Australia providing foreign aid to Pacific island states.

This government is serious about being useful to our neighbours. But don't take my word for it. Let's check a review:

"We warmly welcome this increase in the aid budget, which will make a world of difference to countless people in our region and beyond. We commend the focus on the Pacific and Southeast Asia as our closest neighbours, especially as these two regions have been devastated by the climate emergency, COVID-19 and now the cost-of-living crisis," said Kirsty Robertson, Caritas Australia's CEO.

The other day the Prime Minister said that having a serious climate policy is now the price of entry into productive global relationships. I need to repeat that for the benefit of members opposite: having a serious climate policy is now the price of entry into productive global relationships. Members opposite are rather keen on free trade agreements but they have not yet joined the dots and understood that trade agreements are built on trust and shared interests. In September the head of the European parliament's trade committee, Bernd Lange, visited Australia. He was quoted as saying the Albanese government's enshrining of the emissions reduction target and legislation had removed a major barrier to the finalisation of the Australian-EU free trade agreement, and we expect to have that deal done soon. How ironic it is that if the former government had managed to have a workable climate change policy they may well have been able to close that deal on their watch.

The other thing that has slowed down those negotiations was damage done to our relationship with France by the former Prime Minister, the member for Cook. Prime Minister Albanese has been busy repairing that relationship because our international relationships have to be about relationships. They cannot just be about trade, about seeing how much we can benefit financially from a series of transactions. If our neighbours are not prospering from the relationship then there is a real limit to how much we can prosper from it and a real limit to how much we morally should be able to. The opposition needs to realise that dog whistling is not a substitute for policy development. A climate change policy might be a good place to start. Climate denial is a problem for relationships and for aid, for trade and for good energy policy. When you reject the science you have to cling to something that is not science and there will always be loss and damage accompanying that.

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