Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Reconciliation and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The release today of a major report commissioned by the UK Treasury, the Stern report, makes clear that meaningfully addressing and comprehensively responding to dangerous climate change is the single most important test that any government has. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Mr Blair, says that without radical international measures to reduce carbon emissions within the next 10 to 15 years we might lose the chance to control temperature rise. It is that serious.

But what a performance from the government, and especially from the Prime Minister, who, prior to facing censure in the House today on this very issue, said in response to a question from the Leader of the Opposition:

There is nothing in the Stern report—and I have read the executive summary ... that is contrary to what I am saying ...

The PM went on:

Kyoto was never an effective international agreement ...

In fact, Stern, in the executive summary, says:

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol provide a basis for international cooperation, along with a range of partnerships and other approaches ...

That is what Stern says. That is what the government is not doing. The 700-page report, which looks in detail at the economic costs of failing to address climate change, confirms what Labor has been saying since day one in this parliament about the impact of climate change—that its intensity and reach, if unchecked, will have a profound and damaging effect on this continent.

I very much support the comments that the member for Throsby made previously on this issue. The very real dangers to our way of life associated with a warming planet have been identified—sea level rise and its effect on coastal communities and properties, the viability of rural farmlands facing ever drier weather conditions, the prospect of environmental refugees having to flee from nearby countries—and are increasingly understood. But Stern goes so far as to observe that failure to adequately respond to the threat of climate change will cause economic and, by implication, social disruption on a scale equivalent to both world wars and the Great Depression of the last century.

The Howard government has spent the better part of nine years attempting to downplay and dissemble on global warming, and now we have this crystal clear enunciation of what is at risk if we fail to act. At the same time the government has been exposed as being due to exceed its targets for CO emissions, which, it appears, will now be 16 per cent higher than the government assured the Australian public they would be.

The Treasurer’s response to arguments by Stern about the seriousness of the problem was to seek to blame developing countries for their emission levels. This blame shifting is typical of the confused policy vortex that is the government’s response to climate change. Yesterday we could not act because it would hurt our economy; today we cannot act because China and India are not in the frame. When will the government take some responsibility, take the lead from Labor’s blueprint on climate change, and act?

As we head into a long, hot summer where, regrettably, drought will be the norm, and where climate change is likely to exacerbate the problem, the Howard government continues to fiddle while Australia burns. The Prime Minister has long argued that Australia’s economic interests would be damaged by ratifying Kyoto and getting serious about reducing emissions, but the Stern report shows just the opposite—namely, that the economic consequences of failure to act would be catastrophic, with estimates of damage costing up to 25 per cent of global GDP. The cost of inaction by this government is that high.

Earlier reports from the Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change, comprising a number of Australia’s leading companies, like Visy, BP and Origin Energy Australia, had already pointed the way. They called for a mix of existing energy sources, including cleaner coal and gas, coupled with increased supply from renewables—one of the fastest growing industries in the world—within a decent policy framework which encourages efficiency and greenhouse gas reductions and, where there is a market, enables emissions trading.

These things would mean we could meet our ongoing energy needs and reduce our emissions to the level required to stabilise global temperatures. The only problem is that the government has the blinkers on. It ignores this report and a number of others, consigns the solutions to the bottom drawer and accuses Labor of fixating with a slogan. The Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources is still hanging around the fringes of Sceptics Anonymous, the Minister for Foreign Affairs is floating nuclear enrichment at a time of increased nuclear insecurity and the Treasurer is blaming the likes of Tuvalu for climate change. The effect of the government’s current policy is that we have no meaningful commitment to action on climate change. (Time expired)