Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That this House:

(1)

censures the Prime Minister for:

(a)

refusing to acknowledge the reality of climate change;

(b)

failing to join the international community in ratifying the Kyoto Protocol;

(c)

ignoring the need to develop a long term comprehensive plan to combat climate change; and

(d)

failing to act while Australia is exposed to the catastrophic economic and environmental impacts of climate change detailed in the Stern Report; and

(2)

demands that the Prime Minister adopts Labor’s systematic climate change plan in the national interest.

The Prime Minister has had about seven different positions when it comes to the issue of climate change and what ought to be the country’s response to it. When you take a look at what they had to say about Kyoto—when they signed Kyoto, I might say, and negotiated it—you see that what the government of the day then said was full of pride. It was full of pride in the fact that they had got themselves, as opposed to their European counterparts, a very substantial benefit in the form of being permitted to actually see an increase in greenhouse gas emissions from Australia.

The Prime Minister signed Kyoto in the full knowledge that a number of countries were, as he described them, annex 2 countries, not yet committed to any particular set of targets, though anticipating that, subsequently, targets would cover all of them. He signed it in the knowledge that any emissions trading scheme and all the other arrangements placed, or contemplated, and targets contemplated within the framework of Kyoto would have different application in some countries from applications in others. He signed it with all his ministers saying that the targets that were being suggested for Australia contained no problems as far as our minerals industry and our manufacturing industry were concerned and that there were a set of targets agreed by the Australian government that would be eminently achievable within the sorts of constraints that the government considered economically perfectly acceptable in terms of providing employment opportunities in this nation.

Something happened after that. It was not the position of China and India; that had not occurred. It was not the issue of the particular achievement or otherwise of the targets associated with our European counterparts. The thing that changed after that was that he had a discussion with a new administration in the United States, and that is a tragedy.

Paradoxically, the one piece of advice I have seen recently by George Bush, in some way or another related to this debate, that the Prime Minister chooses not to follow was the one piece of good advice that George Bush has given—and that is that he wishes to see no other uranium enrichment plants established anywhere on earth, because of his concerns about the proliferation impact of it. The Prime Minister does not mind standing up here, in question time after question time, challenging that piece of advice from the United States. But he does mind standing up and committing himself to his original position. Even though he gets up in this place and lays out this panoply of horror—for Australian workers, he says—in the same breath the Prime Minister says, ‘Of course we’ll achieve our targets.’

The two go together. If on the one hand the targets are going to create that unemployment, which seems to be his argument, why would you put it in place? Despite the fact that the United Nations has now tumbled to the fact that we might not achieve those targets, are you still insistent that we will? And are you still insistent that achieving it is okay? Prime Minister, you cannot have both. You cannot on the one hand have your argument that the targets created under Kyoto create enormous problems for us, and on the other hand that you are going to achieve them—and without creating those problems. You do not know what you are doing on this, Prime Minister. You are all over the place.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Leader of the Opposition will direct his comments through the chair.

Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister is completely confused. He told his party room today, Mr Speaker, that they should not be—and I quote him, apparently across the airwaves—‘mesmerised by one report’. So what the Prime Minister is saying to his party room is: ‘Don’t worry about the science; worry about the perceptions. It is just a political problem. Wait until next winter and it will go away.’

I want to say a couple of things at the outset of this debate, because not only is this a censure motion; it has the positive proposition that the government ought to commit itself to what we have released in the blueprint we put forward on climate change. We are absolutely fair dinkum about climate change. We will fix this situation for our kids. We will be enthusiastic participants in the international arrangements for this. We will be enthusiastically giving all our potential industries that are capable of exploiting this commercially a go. We are going to be absolutely determined to ratify the Kyoto targets; to set real emissions targets; to establish an emissions trading system; to invest in renewables, not in reactors; and to fast-track clean coal technology. We are going to do all those things and be good international citizens and good supporters of Australian industry as a result of that.

The simple fact of the matter is this: we are an inventive nation when it comes to the possibilities of renewable technologies. We are an inventive nation when it comes to working through how we make our fossil fuel industries environmentally friendly and emissions-target capable. We are prepared to do that. And we also understand that if we are going to be taken seriously internationally, if we are going to be able to participate in the international trade in this, our companies ought not to have to go under a Fijian flag or somebody else’s flag—a nation which has not only signed up to the protocol but also ratified the protocol—in order to be able to export that excellent product. But that is what the Prime Minister does.

It is an extraordinary thing that those small projects they have announced so far have basically been dependent upon emissions reduction targets set by the states. They have been able to go ahead and they have been economically viable because of what the states have done. If they had relied on what the Commonwealth has been prepared to sign up to to this point, none of those projects would have gone ahead. If you take a look at that wonderful achievement of the company that was so proudly announced by the Prime Minister with his minister in China recently, that same company, Roaring 40s, is saying, ‘Actually, we’re going to have to cancel projects in Tasmania and South Australia—projects worth over $500 million—because the Commonwealth will not sign up to additional mandatory renewable targets here.’

All of what I have been saying so far of course relates to jobs, job opportunities, innovation in Australian industry and the rest of it. But you have to take a look at the Stern report to understand fully what is at stake here. It is an extraordinary document. The new thing it presents, off the most modest of the calculations the science now presents to us, is the economics. That is the new thing in the Stern report; the science in the Stern report is not new. What it conveys is this: if all the rest of the globe is as short-sighted as this Prime Minister, if all the rest of the globe demonstrates the fossilised attitudes that this Prime Minister has, if all the rest of the globe is not prepared to step out and take an initiative—and of course it would be desirable that everybody signed up to it, but somebody has to make a start—and if all the rest of the globe adopts that position, we will be facing, on reasonable calculations of the economic effects, the impact on the globe of the combined effects of the two world wars and the Great Depression. What would that do for jobs?

We know what that would do for jobs. We already know something about the economics of this because there are other reports around, including reports that the Prime Minister has received, which say that in all likelihood the impact of these changes of climate on sea levels is going to produce a situation where 90 per cent of the coral reefs of the Great Barrier Reef go and where Kakadu goes, salted up. That is the result, again, of a most modest set of calculations based on the science of global warming. In Queensland that means 200,000 tourism jobs. Heaven knows what it means for tourism jobs as far as the Northern Territory is concerned!

And then we see the calculations that he has. The Stern report is more global, although we do come into its ambit for consideration. We see the calculations about what impact it has on rainfall in this country. The Prime Minister has got reports which indicate something like a cut of 25 per cent in rainfall in the south-west and south-east corners. Whatever the Prime Minister may think about this, there is a growing conviction amongst our farmers that, while they are experiencing droughts in ways we have experienced them in the past, the intensity, the breadth and the frequency of them have changed. That is what is happening now around this nation. They have changed as a product of forces beyond those which have been immediately calculated with regard to our geography; they have changed as a result of global warming. There would not be a farmer in this nation who disagrees with me, but you cannot resolve the water problems confronting this nation unless you resolve the consequences of global warming. There would not be a farmer in this nation who disagrees with this proposition.

Thanks to this Prime Minister’s short-sightedness, we are already 10 years behind. He has failed our children and our grandchildren. Frankly, this Prime Minister does not have a plan for their future. Why would the Australian people believe him now when suddenly he says climate change is real, when everything that he has been saying—insulting us in this place about it over the last couple of months—is going to be retracted and he will now reposition himself in a slightly different direction, suddenly paying lip-service to the notion of climate change? Everyone in this parliament knows that this Prime Minister’s heart is not in it. Every one of us knows that. That is why he could say things before the political urgency came upon him. People could talk theoretically about what might happen in Australia and the planet 50 years from now—he is not interested in that. Well, the rest of the world is. The rest of the world and the rest of this country is. The rest of this country understands that this Prime Minister’s heart is not in it.

We need decisive national leadership; we do not need this Johnny-come-lately to the climate debate. He has one answer that he brings into this parliament, and that is his answer in relation to nuclear power. Let me make this amply clear: there is neither economic nor environmental requirement for nuclear power in this country. There is no requirement for it. The Prime Minister is dredging up a debate of his youth, from back in the 1960s when it looked like a new and hopeful technology. The Prime Minister is extraordinarily capable of compartmentalising in his mind two different debates as though the two do not interact and the two do not matter.

Right now there is a massive global concern about nuclear proliferation. There is an understanding and a fear around the globe that new nuclear powers—whether or not they say their nuclear systems will be devoted entirely to domestic purposes—will begin a nuclear arms race. There is concern on the part of the United States—

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Downer interjecting

Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can stand up all you like, foreign minister, and argue the notion that we ought to have uranium enrichment here, but Putin and Bush have simply said: there ought to be no additional enrichment facilities anywhere on earth, because they directly threaten a proliferation regime. They absolutely do. Until we have dealt with issues on the possible extension of nuclear weapons in Iran or North Korea there is a high level of possibility that, if we fail with regard to the non-proliferation target that we seek in North Korea and Iran, the next set of nuclear powers around the Middle East, and likewise in North-East Asia, will all be contemplating the opportunity to develop a nuclear weapon. To be sitting down and talking about this, in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, as a serious option is frankly ridiculous. It is ridiculous—

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Irresponsible.

Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and, as my colleagues behind me are saying, irresponsible. It is both ridiculous and irresponsible. It is no solution. It is a solution to start to deal with the opportunities to develop research on clean coal technology. It is absolutely essential that we do that and that we look at the possibilities for gas to liquid conversion and coal to gas conversion. All these things offer very substantial possibilities for us in relation to our coal and gas industries, and we must engage. But if we happen to be signed up and ratifying the Kyoto protocol, if we happen to be at the forefront of dealing with international environmental issues, how much more trusted will we be as a focal point of investment in these areas and as a producer of those technologies? Or are we going to find ourselves in the same position then that we now find ourselves in in relation to our renewables, where projects are shutting down in this country or where those particular firms are badging themselves overseas? To be associated with Australia or operating in Australia finds you no assistance at all, effectively, from the policies of the government, and finds you on the outer because the government is not a ratifying power to Kyoto.

This government is so far away from where this nation now needs to be in dealing with the consequences of climate control. It is so far away from arriving at the solutions that this nation must arrive at both to advance ourselves economically and to protect our people. The public is so far away from this Prime Minister. I happen to be one of the few Labor members who represent a seat which borders the ocean. And I know darn well that, on the projections over the next 20 to 30 years of rising sea levels—on modest assumptions—my constituency will be massively affected. But the truth of the matter is the vast array of those constituencies on the coastline are held by our political opponents. At the next election, your constituents around the shoreline of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane ought to think very seriously about what you mean to them.

I see the Prime Minister has just destroyed his chair! Unfortunately, that is a bagatelle compared with the destruction that he is effectively threatening ordinary Australians with by his complete unwillingness to confront reality when it comes to issues of climate change. Once, the Prime Minister had a sensible view. It was a long time ago. That was when the Prime Minister said the Kyoto protocol is ‘a win for the environment and a win for Australian jobs’. Once, the Prime Minister was influenced by sensible points of view on the part of his frontbenchers. John Anderson, former Deputy Prime Minister, said:

... the Kyoto agreement permitting Australia an 8% increase in emissions of 6 greenhouse gases by 2012 over 1990 levels will preserve the interests of farmers, miners, manufacturing industry and the economy in general.

Once, the Prime Minister had the view that he shared with his former Minister for Resources and Energy, who said:

The Kyoto protocol provides a sound basis for protecting Australia’s export competitiveness …

But the Prime Minister has changed. He has had seven different positions since then and two or three different positions in question time today. There is no time to waste. Thanks to John Howard’s short-sightedness we are 10 years behind. He is now paying lip-service to climate change, but his heart is not in it. It never has been; it never will be. He is a Prime Minister obsessed with his past, not Australia’s future. He is a Prime Minister who is a climate change sceptic, despite a tsunami of science. He does not believe it, and he will not act to protect our future. John Howard is living in denial. His denial is selling out the future of our kids. This is a new challenge and a modern challenge—a challenge that only a future party can meet. We are the future party. (Time expired)

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind all members that they should refer to others by either their title or their seats.

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not customary in this place, I suppose, to thank oppositions for moving censure motions, but I do feel like thanking the opposition for having moved this motion. It does give us the opportunity to try to put into proper context the growing debate in this country about climate change. Let me start by replying to the arguments advanced by the Leader of the Opposition. Let me start where I believe any political leader should start in a debate of this kind, and that is with the immediate national interests of our country.

The immediate national interests of our country require us to understand one thing above all else, and that is that the Kyoto model is essentially a product of European thinking, originally conceived to accommodate the interests of European countries. Although it has been extended to include many other countries, we should keep that very much in mind. If those opposite think that is just my invention for the purposes of the debate then I remind them of some words that were uttered on 16 January this year not by the member for Batman on this occasion but by somebody else when he said: ‘Kyoto is basically a European model and it is true that it is flawed. It is not without its difficulties. It is pretty much dead in the water.’ That was the member for Hunter, the opposition spokesman on small business. He is somebody, I might point out, who represents a constituency that has very close links with the resource industry in this country.

So my opening plea to all who are interested in the Australian national interest is to understand that our interests in this debate are not necessarily the same as those of Europeans. They are not necessarily the same as those of Americans and we must understand that, if we do anything in this area that throws away the great natural advantage this country has from its resource sector and all the endowments that it brings, we will be doing a great disservice to the people of this country. We heard a lot from the Leader of the Opposition about our children and our children’s future. Our children’s future is still very much bound up with the economic prosperity of this country and there is nothing more critical at the moment to the economic prosperity of this country than the continued health of the resource industry in this country.

This motion is, of course, brought out of the publication of the report and the analysis by Sir Nicholas Stern. I do not pretend to have read the whole 700 pages. I have, however, read his accompanying press statement. I have read the extensive executive summary and it is very clear that he is of the view, as most thinking people are, that climate change does represent a challenge to the world and there needs to be a multipronged response to it. There is no one single solution and there is no one single response. He also makes it very clear that if the world does not act then the economic consequences in some decades time and certainly by the year 2050 will be very serious indeed. Whether or not you believe his very pessimistic scenario that it will be the equivalent of two world wars and the Great Depression—nobody can prove that; that is just pure speculation on his part—we can all accept for the purposes of this debate that it is a major challenge.

The question is: what do we do about it in the future? We can debate the sins of omission or commission of the past. We could argue about whether we should have ratified what is now the old Kyoto. The real issue, the real challenge for this nation, for this parliament, for this world in 2006 is to agree on a path forward that has a measurable impact on greenhouse warming. We have to ask ourselves: what is that path forward? I agree with Sir Nicholas Stern that that path forward must involve all nations agreeing to establish a framework that will enable the creation of an international emissions-trading system. I have no argument with that; it makes sense and this government will support an international framework for emissions trading provided it has everybody in it. What can possibly be wrong with that? But I do insist it has to have everybody in it. I am not going to lead a government that sells out the jobs of Australians, sells out the jobs and investment that are so important to our future. Unless we have the world’s emitters in the framework, it will not work. If we sign something that does not have the world’s emitters, we are betraying the interests of all of our resource industries and we are betraying the future of our children.

We keep hearing all this rhetoric from the Labor Party about the Kyoto protocol. The mantra is: ‘Sign the Kyoto protocol and a new dawn will descend on the world. All of our worries will roll away, the clouds will disappear, the world will be a beautiful place and there will be no more global warming.’ The problem with that theory is that it is false. It is false because Kyoto does not include the major emitters. How can an arrangement which does not include the United States, China and India, which account for 50 per cent at least of the world’s emissions, be effective? We are told that if only we ratified Kyoto then we would solve the problem. It does not embrace the major emitters. It has been acknowledged that, if there had been no Kyoto, the greenhouse gas emissions would have risen by 41 per cent but with Kyoto, and with everybody behaving and meeting their target, they would rise by 40 per cent, which is a gain of just one per cent. That does not represent the simple solution.

Let us move on from the old Kyoto. In question time, I coined the phrase ‘a new Kyoto’.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ah!

Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ah!

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

‘Ah,’ they say. Ah! They are excited about the concept of a new Kyoto. I am glad the opposition is excited about a new Kyoto, because the old Kyoto was not the source of any real enthusiasm or any real excitement. What form might this new Kyoto take? To start with, it would include all of the world’s major emitters. What is the bridge that joins Australia to all of the world’s major emitters? It is the Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate. It includes Australia, it includes the United States, it includes India, it includes China, it includes Japan—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Albanese interjecting

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Grayndler will have his turn in a minute.

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and it brings together all of those countries whose inclusion in a future agreement is absolutely essential if that agreement is to have effect. Clearly, the Asia-Pacific partnership points to the future. Clearly, if we can reach an understanding between all of the world’s major emitters and all of the nations of the world, it is possible to have an international emissions trading system. That is a path forward to which this government is committed.

But, in order to achieve that, we have to understand some realities about the energy situation not only of Australia but of the world. We have a situation at the moment where the cheapest source of power generation is what they call in the trade ‘dirty coal’. It is infinitely cheaper than anything else. If we had no problem with greenhouse gas emissions, Australia would be in the most wonderful position in the world because we have these vast reserves of coal—we are the largest coal exporter in the world—but, unfortunately, it is dirty and we have to do something to clean it up. But, as you clean it up, you make its price higher. If you are going to clean it up, no matter how rapid the technology is, the cost of using coal to generate electricity is going to rise. That is where the word that dare not speak its name in the councils of the Australian Labor Party comes into it—and that is ‘nuclear’. On many of the estimates, the cost of using coal rises as you clean it up, so you reach a point where potentially within the foreseeable future nuclear power could be cheaper than the use, in a cleaner fashion, of fossil fuel.

Are we going to say to ourselves, ‘We deny our nation the opportunity of taking advantage of that?’ You will never—and I have no greater authority on this than the member for Batman—be able to replace power stations, dirty or clean, with solar, wind or wave power. It is just not possible. Baseload power can only be generated in the foreseeable future by the use of fossil fuels or nuclear power. You cannot hope to use renewables in order to do that; so, if you are going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, you inevitably face a comparison on baseload generation between cleaner coal, which will be dearer, and nuclear power. The point at which those two cross each other is, at this stage, impossible to precisely determine. When we have Ziggy Switkowski’s report, we may have a better idea of where the two relate to each other.

In the end, this country may well face a choice, if it is going to make a contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, about whether it does go down the nuclear path as well as the cleaner fossil fuel path—acknowledging all the while that renewables can make a contribution at the margins. I have never argued to not have renewables. All I am saying is that they can assist in peaks and at the margin but they cannot replace baseload power generation, which at the moment is done by dirty coal and in the future will be done either by clean coal or by nuclear. They are the choices. Stripped of all the verbiage, ranting and raving and rhetoric that has come from the other side, they are the choices we face.

We are in favour of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To do that, we have to clean up coal and, as you clean up coal, you make it dearer and, as you make coal dearer, you make nuclear power economically more feasible. Do not say nuclear power cannot be considered. Sixteen per cent of the world’s electricity is generated through nuclear power. Nuclear power is a given in the nations of Europe. The idea that this country, the holder of the world’s largest reserves of uranium, would set its face against nuclear power is beyond comprehension. It is beyond my comprehension and it is also beyond comprehension to the member for Batman, who brings to this debate the credential of speaking from the heart when it comes to the working men and women of Australia. He knows that there are jobs at stake in this debate. He knows that if a mistake is made on this issue then the people the Labor Party used to represent, but no longer do as effectively as we do, are going to pay a very heavy price.

Let us strip this debate of all the noise and all the talk about who is for the future and who is part of it and who is against it and who believes in it and who does not believe in it and just understand the essence of this debate. This debate is about reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the future. It is about slowing the rate of climate change. It is about getting all of the nations involved because without having all the nations involved we will not get an outcome. That is what Sir Nicholas Stern said. He said a lot of other things, but that is in essence what Sir Nicholas Stern said.

Where does Australia come into that? We enter this debate with this enormous God given endowment of fossil fuels, this great resource that we have been given by providence. Are we going to throw that way? Of course we are not going to throw it away; we are going to sensibly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and, as we clean up the coal, reduce the emissions and invest in the technology, eventually we are going to reach a point where we are going to have to look at the big N option, because in reality the big N option is part of it.

I simply say yes to an international agreement that includes everybody. That can be the framework for an international emissions-trading system. I say no to the old failed Kyoto because it did not include the world’s major emitters. I certainly would say yes to a new Kyoto because a new Kyoto could only be on the basis that it has everybody in it. If everybody is in, I am prepared to lead Australia in. But I am not going to lead Australia into an agreement that is going to betray the interests of the working men and women of this country and destroy the natural advantage that providence gave us. (Time expired)

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second this censure motion and say that this is indeed a debate about leadership. Never before in human history have we seen a fossil flip-flop. During question time those opposite said that I wanted to get rid of fossil fuels. Well, there is one fossil I want to get rid of—and he, the Prime Minister, just spoke in the debate—because he is an impediment to the action that is required if we are going to avoid dangerous climate change.

Let us have a look at what we saw today. We saw at least seven different positions put by the Prime Minister between two o’clock and a quarter to four this afternoon. We saw a Prime Minister struggling for relevance in a debate about the future, because he is stuck in the past. He does not have the courage to show the leadership that is necessary, not just for this generation but for generations to come. This is a Prime Minister who has been in the job for too long. He has changed. On 19 December 1997 he described the Kyoto protocol as a win for the environment and a win for Australian jobs. That was consistent with statements from John Anderson, Warwick Parer and Robert Hill, the last Minister for the Environment who actually was prepared to stand up for the environment. On 30 March 2000, at the Australian Financial Review’s Third Annual Emissions Conference, after the release of a discussion paper in 1999 calling for a national emissions scheme, Robert Hill said:

There are those who foolishly believe that Australia has something to win by derailing the Kyoto Protocol.

Well, we know who the fool on this hill is. He sits opposite there and he is unable to make the decisions that are necessary. Today is a historic day. The Stern report is a comprehensive analysis of the economics of climate change, of what will occur if we take action and of what will occur if we do not take action. It makes three main points. The first is that you need to be a part of the international agreement and, as it highlights, that international agreement is the Kyoto protocol. Today we heard a change in the rhetoric. The Minister for Foreign Affairs discovered climate change two weeks ago, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, even though he was the foreign minister when we signed Kyoto. We heard him refer to the second commitment period of the Kyoto protocol which was undertaken in Montreal at the international climate change conference last year. By consensus, the international community—at that stage, 158 nations, now 165, that have ratified the Kyoto protocol—every single nation in the industrialised world except for Australia and the United States, agreed to begin the discussions for the second commitment period post 2012.

We are establishing the biggest global market in the world, the carbon-trading market. But what do the government say—the government that are allegedly committed to the operation of the market? They do not want a bar of it. They want command economy style solutions. They will provide up-front funding for one-off projects, but one-off projects will not be enough. You need to harness the power of the market if you are going to be able to deliver whole-of-government solutions to address climate change—and that is the key of the Stern report. Recommendation 2 of the Stern report says that emissions trading is the key and that you need to move to an international emissions-trading scheme.

What is happening at the moment? You have a European trading system off and running, you have the north-east states in the US establishing an emissions-trading system, you have California establishing an emissions-trading system and you have discussions taking place right now between Europe, Japan and the north-east states of the US about linking those systems so that you build a bigger market and get the technological change through. We are not a part of it. In two weeks time when the conference of the parties meets in Nairobi there will be two parts of the conference. The first will be the UN section, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and we will be there. The second will be the meeting of the parties to the Kyoto protocol, which will discuss the architecture of the post-2012 system of the most important economic driver in the global economy, but we will not be represented at the table. Now, if you are the United States, if you are 25 per cent of the world economy, maybe you can get away with that. But, Prime Minister, for Australia it is a complete abrogation of responsibility. That is the second point that was made.

The third point that the Stern report makes is about technology. You need technology transfer. Everyone agrees with that. How do you get that technology transfer? You need market based mechanisms. It clearly identifies that is the case, and in practice in question time today we saw the evidence of why that is necessary. We had a question from the member for Throsby about the Roaring Forties project opened in China, which the Minister for the Environment and Heritage was happy to open. He did not put it in the press releases that it was being funded under Kyoto, but it was a project that was backed 100 per cent by the clean development mechanism of Kyoto. They talk a lot and they essentially blame India and China—it is all those poor countries. I am waiting for them to blame Tuvalu and Kiribati for their sinking! It is an offensive position. They are all international agreements. What has occurred under every significant UN agreement is that the industrialised world takes the lead. We created the problem; we have a responsibility to show leadership.

It was always envisaged that the second commitment period would involve the developing world. But how do you integrate them into the system? You do it through the clean development mechanism of Kyoto. And here is what Stern says:

The Clean Development Mechanism is currently the main formal channel for supporting low-carbon investment in developing countries …

Game, set and match. There is $133 billion worth of projects approved already under the clean development mechanism of Kyoto and Australia cannot participate in it. The Roaring Forties company, a Tasmanian based company, had to enter into a joint venture with a Chinese company—51 per cent Chinese owned, 49 per cent Australian owned—in order to get access to CDM. What Roaring Forties say—and I have spoken to the CEO and Roaring Forties representatives—is that if it was not funded under Kyoto it simply would not have proceeded. If you are a wholly Australian based company, because of Australia’s isolation you are being forced to go offshore, just as Pacific Solar and other Australian companies are registering in New Zealand and Fiji so they can get access to these market based mechanisms.

All three major points in the Stern report are absolutely consistent with the leadership shown by the Leader of the Opposition when he launched the climate change blueprint in March this year. We have been ahead of this game and the government have just been playing catch-up. Why? Because they simply do not believe it. Now in the lead-up to an election campaign we are seeing these one-off announcements. The low-emission technology fund was created by the white paper in June 2004. What happened? For almost 2½ years was one cent of this fund spent? No, because we know that this is a government that only spends money in an election year because it is all about the politics, not about the policy. It is all about the Prime Minister’s past, not about what is needed for the future. Solar Systems in Victoria have said that, unless the Bracks Labor government is re-elected in Victoria and the Victorian renewable energy target is maintained, that project might not be able to proceed. That is consistent with what we have seen with the collapse of the renewables industry in Australia.

The Prime Minister is obsessed by reactors—they are his one solution. He will not say where they will go. He will not say where the waste will go. This is a virtual debate; you can have a nuclear industry without any reactors or without any waste. We will not let him get away with it. We will be arguing for renewables, not reactors. We have seen a tragic collapse at the same time as we are seeing the emergence of a trillion-dollar world industry in renewables. What was the percentage of solar in 1996 when we left office? I will tell you. Australia had 10 per cent of the world market—one in 10. What is it now? It is two per cent of the world market.

China, which the government criticises, is spending $9 billion on renewables. China, which the government uses as an example, is moving forward. More than half of the world’s solar hot water systems are in China. What was happening in Australia while the Stern report was being released? We were having a debate in this parliament about the major piece of environmental legislation that exists at the Commonwealth level—the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. There were more than 3,000 amendments, over 409 pages, to that act. Do you think climate change got a guernsey anywhere in the act, in the amendments, in the explanatory memorandum, in the debate? Not a word.

We moved amendments to the legislation to include the objective in Commonwealth environmental legislation of avoiding dangerous climate change. It should be objective No. 1. This mob voted against it. We even separated out the amendments to make it easy for them. They did not have to adopt the sorts of measures that are needed—a climate change trigger in the act and other draconian changes they were pushing through. We made it easy for them. It was a very simple amendment to acknowledge that climate change was the most important challenge facing us in terms of environmental issues.

Of course, we know that the Stern report bells the cat. It is not just about the environment; it is about our economic future. What does the Stern report say about that future? It says that we are facing a 20 per cent loss in global GDP. It says that we are facing the losses of two world wars and a great depression—a great depression just like the last one but with much worse weather. That is what we are facing if we adopt the path that this mob want—the path of inaction, the path of inertia, the path to the past. We see this continually in the quotes from the government. In September the Prime Minister said, ‘I’m not interested in what might theoretically happen in 50 years time.’ I have to say that that was topped by the member for Dawson today. The member for Dawson showed that she lives not in the last century but in the one before. She said:

Economists there—

in the United States—

were worried that the whole of America, because they were using horse-drawn carriages, was going to be covered in about three feet of you-know-what.

I tell you what: there might be a lot of you-know-what if we do not take action on climate change. But it will not be because of the horses; it will be the responsibility of the Howard government. I conclude by issuing a challenge to the industry minister, because the government’s rhetoric continually changes. Did you hear emissions trading described as a tax by them today? They changed position: it is no longer a tax. Their position changed between The World Today debate I had with the environment minister at 12 o’clock and later today. They know their position is intolerable. They are poll driven rather than being driven by the science and the economics. (Time expired)

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What an astounding address that was: based on fear, as we are so used to from the Labor Party, and based on exaggeration—

Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Answer the arguments!

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I certainly will, and I have something special for you too. It was based on exaggeration, based on fear, based on the worst-case scenario if Australia does nothing—based on the worst-case scenario if the world does nothing. It is all about the Labor Party jumping to Kyoto and jumping to carbon trading before they even have solutions. It is all about the Labor Party living in the past with Kyoto, which is already destined to be remembered as a protocol which did not deliver significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The reality is that the Labor Party continue to pretend that Australia is being left out. Can I just correct the record: Australia is at the centre of discussions in relation to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The promoters of the Stern report met with Australia when I was in Monterrey, Mexico six weeks ago and highlighted the fact that Australia had a lot to offer. You do not have to take my word for that. You can quote Margaret Beckett, who said of Australia this morning on AM:

They certainly were involved in the wider conference that has become the Gleneagles dialogue. And played quite a major role there.

I cochaired the session with the Minister for Trade and Industry from the United Kingdom, Malcolm Wicks. If that is being ‘left out’, I cannot believe that the member for Grayndler could make such an outrageous and preposterous suggestion. Australia is involved in this process.

The Leader of the Opposition says he is going to fix it. He is going to fix it for the member for Cunningham; he is going to fix it for the member for Charlton; he is going to fix it for the member for Hunter, when he is not thrown out of this chamber; he is going to fix it for the member for Capricornia; and he is going to fix it for the member for Newcastle.

Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ms George interjecting

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Dawson is opposing that and supporting the people in her electorate who derive an income from the coal industry and the steel industry. The people who are going to fix this are those in the Howard government. The reality is that the government is doing something about lowering emissions in Australia. The government agrees that there are real issues to be dealt with and there are real challenges to be overcome. But who has laid out the clear, well-enunciated strategy on dealing with this?

We get more from the opposition. Yesterday, the member for Grayndler sat in his seat—continually interjecting as he always does—and pointing the finger and saying that we, the government, are doing nothing. What sort of suggestion is that? What sort of suggestion can ignore the energy white paper handed down in June 2004—more than two years ago—which is a clearly enunciated policy, or ignore the fact that Australia has seen 58 per cent economic growth while at the same time the government has put in place emission-lowering policies which have seen emissions rise by only 2.3 per cent? By any measure, this white paper and the government actions that go with it are extensive responses to the lowering of greenhouse gas emissions.

In our suite of programs there is a $123 million expansion and extension of the Renewable Remote Power Generation Program, a $100 million Renewable Energy Development Initiative, a $75 million Solar Cities program, a $51.8 million Photovoltaic Rebate Program, a $20 million advanced electricity storage initiative and a $14 million advanced wind-forecasting capability. Coming after this and on top of all of those things is the centrepiece: a $500 million Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund. When you add that all up, you are approaching $1 billion. If you add to that the specific programs run out of the Department of the Environment and Heritage by my colleague Senator Ian Campbell, that brings you to almost $2 billion. The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate is a partnership which could do more—in fact, 26 times more—to lower greenhouse gas emissions than Kyoto; modelled by ABARE, the AP6 approach could in fact see global emissions reduced by up to 26 per cent by 2050.

This is about a partnership. It is about involving the large emitters of the world. It is about involving countries like the United States. It is about involving countries like China. It is about involving countries like India. It is about involving countries like Japan and Korea. With those countries, Australia has not only a very strong and important role to play but also a trade relationship that it needs to be mindful of. We are in a situation where the Labor Party are trying to claim some sort of inaction by the government, and yet here you have $2 billion worth of policies costed, announced in the budget, backed up by a white paper, backed up by the conference that we saw at the beginning of this year, the Asia-Pacific partnership. These are real programs achieving real gains in reducing emissions while the Labor Party cling like men at sea on a life raft to Kyoto. If we are going to have a meaningful answer to global emissions, we need to have the technology to do it.

The second mistruth promoted by the Labor Party is that we have somehow fallen behind in technology. We have lost a decade or more, they say, in lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Let us just get a few facts on the table in this regard. Australia has double the renewable energy percentage that the United Kingdom has—as admitted this morning by David Miliband on AM. Our percentage of renewable energy is eight per cent. On the UK’s percentage, David Miliband admitted on AM this morning:

... our current level is four per cent, so you can draw your own conclusions.

Secondly, in terms of the meetings that Australia is having at the moment, countries like the UK and including—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Albanese interjecting

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry, what was that?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Are you going to the meeting of the parties to Kyoto?

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, the member for Grayndler interjects, as is his wont.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think he was encouraged.

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It would be the first time he has been encouraged today, and not the first time he has interjected. In terms of the G8-plus meeting, not only did I cochair the meeting of the ministers but I also met afterwards with Sir Nicholas Stern and with Sir David King. What did they want to talk to me about? Two key issues. The first one was how we were proceeding with the public-private partnerships, the public-private partnerships that will ensure the development of low-emission technology. He recognised, even though the Labor Party pretends it does not exist, the important role that industry will play in solving the low-emissions technology challenge. He recognised that Australia will in fact lead the world in public-private partnerships. The Minister for Trade and Industry, Malcolm Wicks, said to me, ‘That Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund is a great idea; we’re thinking about that.’ We are already doing it. We are already rolling out a $500 million fund. We are already investing with industry in the solutions to greenhouse. We are already seeing the $250 million that the taxpayers have invested in lowering emissions being not matched by industry, not matched twice over by industry, but matched five times over by industry. While the Labor Party tries to claim, in their pretence, that we are not doing anything, we are seeing industry and government combined in $1.5 billion worth of projects to lower greenhouse gas emissions. And that is just the start, as we move forward on this challenge.

I heard the Leader of the Opposition beginning to give this House a lecture on drought. He may be a knowledgeable man but, until I see some evidence that he knows anything about drought, I can assume his comments today were simply aimed at pulling at the heartstrings of farmers who are experiencing an extraordinary circumstance. Can I say to those farmers: don’t be misled. Don’t be betrayed by this man—signing Kyoto will not break the drought; signing Kyoto will not lower emissions by more than half a per cent. Most of the countries that are signatories to Kyoto will not reach their targets.

An interesting point comes from that. Let us have a look at the countries that will reach their targets. Let us have a look at countries that have more than one per cent of the world’s emissions and that are judged as meeting their Kyoto targets: Russia, Poland, France and the United Kingdom. What do those countries have in common? They will all be nuclear electricity generators. There is one other country on that list: Australia. We are here today having a debate about low emissions, the need for technology and the need to lower our global emissions, and the Labor Party’s last pretence is that nuclear power is not part of the solution. They sit there and say, ‘It doesn’t matter what everyone else in the world is doing; we don’t want to do that.’ That is just after the member for Grayndler and the Leader of the Opposition have said, ‘Whatever the Europeans tell us to do, we have to do, but don’t talk about nuclear.’ The member for Batman talks honestly—

Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Talk about MRET for a change.

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will talk about MRET if I have time: $5 billion worth of cross-subsidy from industry, $3 billion worth of investment going on as a result of MRET. I am happy to talk to you about MRET, but let’s go back to the issue of nuclear energy. Australia needs to consider nuclear energy as an option. The Leader of the Opposition can stand up there and talk about carbon trading, talk about Kyoto—and, most recently, throw in carbon capture and storage—but when we put all our technologies together you cannot leave out the one proven technology that generates baseload electricity without emitting CO. That is the harsh reality.

What we have in Australia under the Howard government is a set of policies designed to not only meet our Kyoto target, to not only participate if there is a global scheme following Kyoto, but also ensure that, while the debate goes on about how we establish a global scheme, we are putting in place practical measures that will lower greenhouse gas emissions, practical measures that see industry partner with government to ensure that Australia continues to lead the world in technologies like building the largest solar electricity generator in the world—which, as its own promoter, David Holland, said in his own words last week, would never have happened without the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund. Whether we ever see the technologies developed that rely on further investment by industry will depend on the continuation of this government. (Time expired)

Question put:

That the motion (That the motion (Mr Beazley’s) be agreed to.) be agreed to.