Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to welcome the Earth Hour initiative. Earth Hour is an important initiative and event that has been organised and sponsored by WWF and the Fairfax organisation. At 7.30 pm on 31 March 2007, Sydneysiders—businesses and individuals—will turn off their lights for one hour as a sign of their commitment to reducing climate change.

I am very pleased that the Leader of the Opposition and I will have the privilege of being with the Earth Hour team as the lights go out across Sydney. There has been an extraordinary increase in the awareness of the impact that climate change is having and will continue to have on the Australian community. Many citizens right around this country, but particularly in a city as large as Sydney, feel a sense of urgency and a need on their part to make a contribution.

Whilst Earth Hour is symbolic in nature, it sends a very strong message right around the country that people can and should look clearly at greenhouse gas emissions. One of the obvious things we should do, for anyone travelling around one of the big cities in Australia—but particularly in a city as large as Sydney where the lights are indeed bright—is to turn those lights off. By doing that, we recognise the contribution that is made by lighting these buildings at night—quite often they do not have a lot of people in them—to greenhouse gas emissions and contributing to climate change. Additionally, we also recognise that with the simple flick of a switch citizens and businesses around the city can make a difference and enable some focus on the bigger question of climate change.

The lights will go off for only one hour, it is true, but the impact of Earth Hour will be felt for a very long time. It is the hope of the organisers and those who participate that the idea will be picked up nationwide. Indeed, I can imagine it taking hold in other parts of the world as well. Certainly federal Labor would give Earth Hour every backing it deserves to go national.

I hope the Howard government will give it the same support, but judging by their record that may be too much to hope for. There is a very practical thing the Howard government can do to support Earth Hour: turn off the lights of all unoccupied Commonwealth government buildings for one hour at 7.30 pm on 31 March 2007. I call on the government to make that commitment.

I also call on the government to work with Labor to forge a new national consensus on climate change. It is clear that the key elements of a national consensus are evolving. There is consensus around the climate change science. There is consensus about the need for a national emissions trading scheme. There is consensus about the need for a comprehensive portfolio approach to climate change. That national consensus is evolving and growing, but there is one group missing: the Howard government. Howard government ministers still reject the science. The Howard government still has not developed a national emissions trading scheme, and the Howard government does not accept a comprehensive portfolio approach to producing energy into the longer term. The Howard government is obsessed with nuclear energy at the expense of clean coal, gas and renewables. It is extremely important that we focus on the activities that are being undertaken by Sydneysiders and the organisers of Earth Hour and that we highlight the lack of action that the Howard government has displayed on climate change.

Sir Nicholas Stern, the eminent economist, spoke at the Press Club today. He made it crystal clear that early action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions was both necessary and desirable and that a failure to act now to address climate change will impose additional costs on the economy and on the community into the future. The message from Sir Nicholas Stern could not have been clearer. We need to have measures in place which take climate change seriously. We need to have measures in place which ensure that the market can begin to work effectively to enable businesses to take the lead in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Most importantly, we need to recognise that all of us—the people in this parliament, the Howard government, which has been lax and in denial on climate change, and the citizens of Sydney—have a role to play. I applaud Earth Hour 2007.