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

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Lilley proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The Government’s failure to secure Australia’s future economic prosperity through its attitude to climate change

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

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

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance on the government’s failure to secure Australia’s future economic prosperity through its attitude to climate change. The complacency and inaction of this government over 11 years on climate change have indeed endangered our future prosperity and our future job security. Dangerous climate change is a serious risk to our future prosperity and our job creation capacity. The longer we delay, the more climate change will cost our water supplies, our jobs and our environment because the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of action.

As we saw during question time today, this PM is only interested in the electoral climate; he is not interested in climate change. We saw today in question time that this government does not have the policy courage, the foresight and the moral conviction to tackle dangerous climate change. We have a government that does not understand the future, and if it does not understand the future then it simply cannot govern it. Parties like the Liberal Party that do not prepare for the future rapidly become irrelevant. There are two pieces of evidence that I want to mention that demonstrate the negligence of the Howard government—there are many more, but there are two that I want to mention up-front.

We had a speech from the Secretary to the Treasury on 14 March to Treasury officers entitled ‘Treasury’s effectiveness in the current environment’. This is the government’s No. 1 economic adviser, speaking only a couple of months ago—one of the most respected advisers in the country and, I would say, of international standing as well. The Secretary to the Treasury, someone who has worked in that organisation for around 15 years, said of this government’s stewardship of the economy and its failure to respond to climate change:

We have also worked hard to develop frameworks for the consideration of water reform and climate change policy. All of us would wish that we had been listened to more attentively over the past several years in both of these areas. There is no doubt that policy outcomes would have been far superior had our views been more influential.

He said that policy outcomes would have been far superior if the government had listened to Treasury. The Secretary to the Treasury continued:

That is not just my view; I know that it is increasingly widely shared around this town.

You could not get a bigger indictment of this government’s lack of stewardship, application and commitment to tackle dangerous climate change to secure our future prosperity and job security. Of course it is not just the Secretary to the Treasury who failed to have his way and to involve all of the expertise in his department in meeting this dangerous challenge; there are many others who are highly qualified who have been unsuccessful in getting their advice through to the government as well.

We saw the same situation back in 2003 where a cabinet submission went to Treasury recommending an emissions trading system. As Stern shows, an emissions trading system that provides the price signal is the most fundamental element required to deliver the innovation and the investment that will give us the new technology to reduce carbon emissions. An emissions trading system is absolutely essential to an economy that we want to be carbon-cleaner; you do need an emissions trading system. What happened then? In 2003 the Prime Minister and the Treasurer refused to put up an emissions trading system, despite the recommendations of a number of departments. This 2003 rejection came on top of a 1998 recommendation from the foreign minister for there to be an inquiry into emissions trading and a 1999 Australian Greenhouse Office discussion paper on emissions trading, so the evidence is there.

Mr Costello, the Treasurer, loves to talk about experience. We come into the House and he says, ‘How experienced that mob over there are in economic management!’ He says that nobody else could be trusted with the economic management of this country because the government are so experienced. When it comes to experience and when it comes to the economic threat of climate change and water, the Costello experience is one of absolute negligence. His experience, when it comes to protecting our future prosperity and protecting us from dangerous climate change, is one of 11 years of negligence and complacency—11 years of denial, 11 years of inaction and 11 years of reckless indifference. If that is experience, this country most certainly does not need it.

When all of this has been exposed, what have the government done? What has been their response? Their only response is not a substantial policy response but a taxpayer funded advertising campaign. That is their response to everything. Of course, it is all part of the cover-up. In this House they are also running a scare campaign to say that somehow early action on climate change will bring damage to the Australian economy and loss of jobs. That is the rubbish we heard from the Prime Minister today, that somehow early action would cost jobs. Early action will not cost jobs, because a strong economy must be predicated on a healthy and sustainable environment. It is the absolute foundation of a prosperous economy.

As we know, the Stern report commissioned by the British government found that the global cost of failing to act on climate change could be of a similar scale to the Great Depression and the two world wars. In the face of this evidence, what did the government do? They stuck their heads in the sand, there was no immediate action and now all we get is more taxpayer funded scare campaigns. Sir Nicholas Stern said that, unless we acted to reduce carbon emissions now, the consequences would be the equivalent to a cut in global economic output by 20 per cent.

Australia will not be immune to this. Climate change threatens serious damage to our agricultural and tourism industries in particular, which combined bring in around $50 billion in export earnings each year. Our tourism industry alone employs more than half a million Australians. The Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change, which includes leading companies like BP, Origin Energy and Westpac, has warned that a two to three degree rise in temperature could cause enormous economic harm. I do not have time to go through it today, but there would be economic harm to our tourism, agricultural and livestock industries. With climate change comes the risk of more severe droughts. Australia will have to face up to 20 per cent more droughts over most of Australia by 2030 and up to 80 per cent more droughts by 2070. What we see here is that the cost of inaction is far higher than the cost of action.

Acting now, prudently and sensibly, is what we should be doing. Just imagine where this country might be in relation to the rest of the world if we had started to tackle this when the government was advised of it some years ago. What we know from all the economists and the modelling is that the longer you delay the higher the cost goes. There is a disproportionate cost the longer you delay. What this government’s negligence and complacency are doing is building a bigger cost for us to deal with into the future and to pass on to our children and their children. That is why we must move this matter of public importance today—because Australia cannot afford another three years of climate change inertia.

Labor’s plan to protect the economy as well as the environment does include a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by 2050. We must set a target. That is what the science tells us we must do if we are to stabilise those emissions to prevent the consequences that Stern is talking about. We must act now; we must certainly act now. It is not just because Stern is out of favour; he is also a European. Despite the fact that he had come from the World Bank, he is out of favour: he is a European. We have this use of the word ‘Eurocentric’ in the House. The CSIRO’s submission—they are all Australians—to the Prime Minister’s own task group on emissions trading recommended reductions between 60 and 90 per cent. Are they all dangerous Europeans? Are they all communists down there at the CSIRO when they recommend to the government reductions of 60 to 90 per cent, or are they sensible scientists such that we in public life have a responsibility to listen to their advice and take it seriously?

We have the UN panel—I will not go into that, because they are all foreigners! But what we do have—someone the government might listen to, you would think—is the business community of this country. What does the Business Roundtable on Climate Change say? It says achieving a 60 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from year 2000 levels by 2050 is possible while maintaining strong economic growth. This is a complete repudiation of everything the Prime Minister has said in this House, over the last four weeks of sitting, about a 60 per cent reduction target. The Business Roundtable on Climate Change has simply blown the Prime Minister away because it has done the work. He has not done the work.

Labor are prepared to do the work. Not only have we committed to the 60 per cent target; we have also committed to a means of achieving it through the Garnaut report, something else that this government would not do. The Treasurer met all the state treasurers in Canberra about two months ago. They put a proposal to him for a review like the Stern report and he knocked them back. It was left to Labor to join with the state governments to get their expertise to bring Ross Garnaut in and put a similar report together. The government would not do it because they are only interested in playing politics.

No wonder the Treasurer would not put climate change on the agenda of the G20 in November last year in Melbourne. That tells you how quickly the government’s political conversion on climate change has come about. What we are getting, and we saw more of it today, is the abuse of those who are out there putting these targets forward. We have seen the Prime Minister having to run away from his earlier endorsement of a Clinton adviser in the last question time. Yesterday he embraced the views of Larry Summers, who apparently does not support targets. We dealt with that yesterday. What about the views of former President Clinton? Former President Clinton had this to say, ‘What a country does with prosperity is just as important a test of its character as what it does when its back is against the wall.’

We are in an unprecedented period of prosperity. On issues like climate change and water, skills and education more generally and infrastructure we have a government that has walked away from its nation-building responsibilities, prepared to coast on the resources boom and the boost to national income that has flowed from that. Meanwhile, here at home, it has not attended to the long-term foundations of our economy. It has not attended to the long-term foundations of our economy in educating our people or in developing modern infrastructure. Most certainly it has not tackled the biggest long-term threat that we face, which is dangerous climate change—which if it is not tackled, as Stern has said and as others acknowledge, does present a serious threat not only to our economy but to our national security as well.

This is why we say that the only commonsense way to deal with dangerous climate change is to tackle it early and bring the community together to have a whole-of-community effort. The business community is crying out for certainty in this area. Decisions about base power load and investment in base power are being held up because this government is playing silly political games. This should have been dealt with years ago. And it claims to have experience! It has the business community telling it day in, day out that they want some certainty in the government’s approach to these questions. But what does the government do? It simply plays political games. That is the problem.

There is no European conspiracy. The fact is that everyone on this planet is affected by dangerous climate change and everyone on this planet must play their part. We in the Australian Labor Party say that we are playing our part. We held a summit and we got the business community together. We put a target out there. We have been in favour of an emissions trading system. We are backing renewable energy. We are backing a whole-of-community effort. And what do we get from this government? We get lectures about how they are experienced.

I will tell you what they are experienced at—short-term politics and quick political fixes. That is why in 11 years we have not had one mention in Peter Costello’s budgets of the words ‘climate change’. Now that the political heat is turned up and global warming is a reality, they are starting to move. They are using their taxpayer funded polling. They are using the resources of the taxpayer to run advertising campaigns to cover up their negligence and their embarrassment. Labor, Kevin Rudd, our spokesman here, Peter Garrett, and Anthony Albanese have put the weight on them. They are not up to it. (Time expired)

Peter McGauran (Gippsland, National Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is entirely right and fitting that we have this debate on climate change here in the Parliament of Australia. The government welcome it. We welcome a debate about future economic prosperity as determined by the government in comparison with the Labor Party’s attitudes and policies on climate change.

However, there is another right, fitting and entirely appropriate place to have this debate and that is out in those regions of Australia that are most directly affected by any arbitrary, knee-jerk policy response by any political party. I could cite my own region of the La Trobe Valley in Gippsland—the brown coal centre of Victoria—which generates about 85 per cent of Victoria’s electricity needs. You could go to Wollongong, the Hunter Valley or the Bowen Basin—some of the great coal export regions of Australia—but also a number of those other resource based regional economies. Let us have the debate there.

I extend here and now an invitation to the member for Kingsford Smith, the shadow minister for the environment, or the member for Lilley, the shadow Treasurer, who just gave his contribution, to debate me. Come down to the La Trobe Valley and debate me on these issues. Let the people decide who has the better responses to climate change to protect jobs as well as Australia’s future economic prosperity. The Labor Party is not taking me up on the invitation. Why would the member for Kingsford Smith especially respond to such an invitation to visit a coal-producing area? After all, he was the one who only a month ago said:

The automatic expansion of the coal industry ... is a thing of the past.

That is what the member for Kingsford Smith believes about the coal industry of Australia. Do not worry about the thousands of direct jobs, let alone the tens of thousands of indirect jobs, at stake here. Callously, cruelly and for politically expedient reasons dismiss their concerns and inject a new level of insecurity amongst those job holders in the coal and resource sectors, especially in the La Trobe Valley.

I ask the member for Kingsford Smith: will you come to the La Trobe Valley and debate these issues with me? He studiously avoids eye contact, let alone responds to me. It is political cowardice for the member for Kingsford Smith—

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister will stop making—

Peter McGauran (Gippsland, National Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

not to come and debate the issues with me at a time and place of the member for Kingsford Smith’s choosing. I want him to explain directly, looking into the eyes of coal workers, his claim that the automatic expansion of the coal industry is a thing of the past.

The problem for the Labor Party when they do attempt to gain political mileage on this issue and link future economic prosperity with climate change, which are the terms of today’s matter of public importance, is that their policy of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by the year 2050 will cripple our export industries and domestically will increase the cost of gas and electricity for every Australian family and business.

It is not just people directly involved in the coal and resource sectors that are at risk from the Labor Party’s policy; it is also, of course, our general standard of living and our economic prosperity. We know this for a fact because ABARE, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, a highly credentialled and well-regarded entity which is independent of mind, produced a report last July entitled Economic impact of climate change policy. It was released on 17 July, to be exact. What ABARE does is model a decrease in emissions of 50 per cent of 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia by 2050. It is very similar to the commitment that the Labor Party has given. Let me remind the House and those who are listening—it is essential that we get this point exactly clear—that Labor has announced that it will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by the year 2050. We have to hand a report by ABARE which models a 50 per cent cut by the year 2050. It is very close to or similar to the Labor Party’s own announced policy.

What does ABARE find? It concludes that, relative to business as usual, petrol prices would increase by around 100 per cent, the GDP growth of Australia would be 10.7 per cent lower, real wages would be 21 per cent lower, oil and gas production would fall by 60 per cent, coal production would be down by 32 per cent, electricity output would fall by 23 per cent and agricultural production would decline by 44 per cent. If Australia were to adopt a 60 per cent cut by the year 2050—and I do not believe that a Labor Party in government would proceed with its electorally structured and ambitious target—Australia’s economy would largely collapse.

When the member for Lilley as shadow Treasurer suggests that Australia’s future economic prosperity is linked to a government’s attitude to climate change, he has got that much right. But what he has got wrong is the Labor Party policy. The amazing thing about the Labor Party’s announcement of a 60 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 is that they did not take into account any of these economic studies or commission any of their own. How responsible is it for an alternative government to arbitrarily announce an economic target without modelling, examining or calculating its economic effect? Regardless of the impact on Australian industry or on Australian jobs, the Labor Party announced this target, believing of course that it is in their political and electoral interests to do so. In reality, the Labor Party’s policy would shut down Australian industries, with thousands of employees being laid off. But it would not reduce emissions by one tonne of carbon, because the industries and the jobs would simply be exported to other countries, especially developing countries, where they have less onerous climate change policies.

As the Prime Minister said earlier, setting a national emissions target is one of the most important economic decisions any government in the history of this nation could take. Here we have the Labor Party recklessly and negligently setting a target without any preparatory work, without any supporting evidence. I will be fascinated to hear other Labor Party contributors to this debate try to explain how the target was set and what its ramifications will be, particularly in light of the ABARE report. The ABARE report, which modelled close to the Labor Party’s economic and climate change policy, found that that target would be devastating for the economy. It is not just some academic exercise; it means that people’s jobs and ways of life would be severely limited, even destroyed.

The second problem for the Labor Party is its policy to ratify the Kyoto protocol. This lays the burden of global greenhouse gas emissions entirely on developed countries such as Australia. That is why the government will not ratify Kyoto. It is the lowest common denominator. Australia and the world can do better than Kyoto because Kyoto does not take the developing countries—especially India and China, which make up a significant proportion of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions—to task. Ratifying Kyoto is a meaningless, symbolic and deceptive policy stance by an alternative Australian government which we will not embrace simply for fraudulent political reasons, bearing in mind especially that Australia contributes 1.4 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. We have a heavy responsibility, particularly with our high standard of living and our general prosperity, to contribute to the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but ratifying Kyoto is just a token gesture.

Unlike many countries that have ratified Kyoto, Australia will achieve its targets under that international agreement in any event. Our record in controlling our emissions is an admirable one. The increase over 1990 emissions is just 2.2 per cent, while Australia’s GDP has increased 61 per cent since then. Intensity, which is emissions per dollar of GDP since 1990, is down 36.7 per cent, while per capita emissions since 1990 are down 14.4 per cent. After all, we are tackling this problem with a range of solutions—with heavy investment in research and development, with the funding of pilot plants especially for clean coal and with our extensive funding in renewable energy. Across the board, we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in renewable energy. We are supporting geothermal energy. Our investment in clean coal runs to $1.4 billion. All of these are leading to a significant reduction in Australia’s emissions. If all of Australia’s industries that make up that 1.4 per cent of the world’s share of greenhouse gases were to shut down overnight, China would make up the difference within nine months. So it is an utterly meaningless gesture, even in its most radical and admittedly unthinkable form, to shut down all greenhouse gas emitting industries in Australia, if you have proper, rational and objective regard for the health of the planet.

So let us be realistic about that. That is what Australia always embraces under a coalition government. We are interested in tangible action—practical and meaningful reductions in our greenhouse gas emissions. We have announced $3 billion worth of projects that will cut the amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere. That includes $750 million for a clean coal power station in the La Trobe Valley, in my own electorate, an $841 million carbon-burying project in Western Australia, the world’s largest solar power station near Mildura and a $45 million methane power plant in Queensland. They are all measurable, practical investments. They have no negative impact on jobs, industries, exports or our economy. You cannot commit to targets without considering and knowing the consequences.

It is the most grossly irresponsible act by the Australian Labor Party to commit to a target of a 60 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for Australia by 2050 without doing any of the assessments as to the impact. Well, we have the assessments, and now I invite, even urge, the Labor Party—and many of my constituents in the La Trobe Valley would plead with them—to revisit that policy. Otherwise the Labor Party are selling out hundreds of thousands of workers in the mining and power-generating industries, and all the consequential and associated industries as well, by agreeing to proposals that we all know will cost jobs. The Labor Party policy on climate change will cost jobs.

The government will always put economic prosperity and jobs ahead of ideology and targets that do not take the consequences into account. The government recognise, as does the Australian community, that there are real challenges posed by climate change. Unlike the opposition, we take our responsibility to balance environmental and economic priorities very seriously. We have not and will not commit to arbitrary targets chosen for political reasons. We will respond with policies which reflect Australia’s needs, and we are not going to peddle nonsense about the difficult choices before the world.

The choice is obvious: reduce significantly, in a measured way, greenhouse gas emissions but recognise that there is no one, silver bullet solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. You need a portfolio of measures and technologies across all sectors of the economy. The solution must be a global one, at the same time, not the empty rhetoric of Kyoto.

Instead, the government are playing a leading role in forming the Asia-Pacific 6 group of countries which together account for 50 per cent of global emissions. We support that group of large nations knowing that, if we make that work, it will of course have enormous ramifications for the world’s greenhouse gas emissions task. Rather than put aside our enormous natural advantage in fossil fuel resources, Australia has to work on ways to reduce the greenhouse gas consequences of using them, so we support the development of renewable technologies as part of that portfolio approach. We have committed $2.8 billion to initiatives that directly address climate change and over one-quarter of a billion dollars more for indirect measures. At the same time, we are doing the responsible thing in considering the full range of possible technologies to reduce emissions, including nuclear energy, which is something the Labor Party will not even consider for ideological reasons, knowing that they have a left-wing component to their Labor Party that is implacably opposed to even considering the issue. The government’s policies are forward looking—(Time expired)

Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government says Australia has a choice between the environment and the economy. The Prime Minister says he will not sacrifice Australian jobs on the altar of the environment. We say Australia does have a choice but it is not between the economy and the environment; it is between acting and not acting. We say it is between choosing to act now or being forced to act later at much greater cost. We will not sacrifice Australian jobs or the environment on the altar of an ideology which refuses to accept that climate change has an impact on the Australian economy.

The Prime Minister says we should not listen to Sir Nicholas Stern because he is from Europe. We say we must listen to Sir Nicholas Stern because he has a world view and the cost of not acting is just too high. Of course, it is politically convenient for the Prime Minister to paint this as a contest between Sir Nicholas Stern and the rest of the world, but it is not only Sir Nicholas Stern who says Australia must act and act soon, and act now, to deal with the economic impact of climate change on this country. It is not just Europeans who say we must act; it is Australians who say this too, and the government are just not listening. It is not just environmentalists who say we must act; it is business people and economists who say this—but the government just refuse to listen. They refuse to listen to the Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change, which consists of companies like Westpac, Origin Energy, Visy and BP.

Over a year ago, the business roundtable released a report called The business case for early action. They said:

As business leaders representing a cross-section of the Australian economy, we believe that climate change is a major business risk and we need to act now.

…            …            …

This research confirms that Australia is particularly vulnerable to climate change. The economic impacts are significant and widespread, affecting in particular Australia’s leading export earners, agriculture and tourism. This will have flow-on effects for the whole economy.

Those are not our words or Sir Nicholas Stern’s words but the words of the Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change: Westpac and VP. They called for a carbon price signal, but the government were just not listening. The report compared two scenarios—acting now or waiting to act later—and they said the impact of acting later would be a ‘major disruptive shock to the Australian economy’, but the government were just not listening. They said waiting would destroy jobs and wreck the Australian tourism industry, but the government were not listening.

The government were not listening to the Economist magazine. I have to confess that the Economist is my favourite magazine. I am sure the member for Rankin looks forward to getting his weekly edition as well, and I suspect some members opposite like the Economist magazine—maybe even the member for Boothby—because it takes a free-market approach to most issues. I enjoy reading the Economist magazine. This is what their climate change special said:

... although the science remains uncertain, the chances of serious consequences are high enough to make it worth spending the (not exorbitant) sums needed to try to mitigate climate change.

That is the Economist, the bible of free market thinking around the world, and the government were not listening to the Economist.

Not only are they not listening to the Economist; they are not listening to economists generally. Just a couple of days ago, 271 professional economics academics, including 75 professors of economics, signed an open letter and said:

Global climate change carries with it serious environmental, economic and social risks and preventive steps are urgently needed.

…            …            …

The refusal by Australia and the United States to ratify the Kyoto Protocol is undermining global efforts to tackle climate change.

That is what 75 economics professors said, but the government are just not listening. Even though they were quick to leap on one US economist yesterday, they will not listen to 75 Australian economics professors today.

Let’s look at what business is saying in the United States. There is a similar group to the business roundtable set up in the United States, called USCAP, which was formed in January to lobby to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 60 to 80 per cent, to create business incentives and to act swiftly and thoughtfully—not a coalition of environmentalists; a coalition consisting of companies like General Motors, BP, Duke Energy and General Electric. The Bush administration are not listening and their ideological soul mates here, the Howard administration, are not listening either.

People have been warning about this for a long time. The Kyoto protocol was written back in 1997—10 years ago. For 10 years the world has been looking at this question, and unfortunately Australia has had the Howard government all that time. In 2002, Environment Business Australia wrote a submission to the government saying:

… Australia should ratify the Kyoto Protocol for environmental, trade, health, and economic reasons.

But the government were not listening. We know now that, back then, the government were considering introducing an emissions trading scheme. Back in 2003 they had a cabinet submission to do so. They had the chance to act, they had the knowledge in front of them and they ignored it. They just were not listening. When four government departments supported a cabinet submission on an emissions trading scheme they did not even listen to them. I cannot put it better than Lenore Taylor, who says:

Turns out cabinet was being asked for in-principle endorsement of a domestic emissions trading scheme, to take effect after the first Kyoto Protocol commitment period ends in 2012, where the initial cost was to be kept low and the impact on big trade-exposed emitters was to be mitigated.

She goes on to say:

That’s right. After almost four years of indignation and inaction, we’re likely to end up right back where we were in 2003.

But they rejected it because they did not believe in climate change then, and they do not believe in climate change now—a government which comprises the ultimate climate change sceptic, the Prime Minister. And let us not forget the industry minister. Do you remember him—tall bloke, raspy voice? You might recall him. We do not hear much from him these days because his views are not very fashionable in an election year. Ian Macfarlane is a climate change sceptic who said that climate change was not really happening. Those views are not very fashionable when there is an election coming on, so he is in hiding. He is probably locked up in a room somewhere. We have not heard from him for months. But, when you have got a government with an industry minister who has those sorts of views, they are not going to act, because they do not believe it. They say it is because the economic costs are too high but it is because they just do not believe in climate change.

Do you remember when we were told as a nation that the economic costs of equal pay for women were too high?

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

The sky was going to fall in.

Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The sky was going to fall in. The Australian economy would grind to a halt. Do you remember when we were told that the cost to business of the superannuation guarantee was too high? Do you remember that? It is the same argument from the same people; they just do not get it. Their response to everything is that the Australian economy will not be able to cope, but they just do not get that the world moves on. They hate change, they hate improvements, they hate progress and they hate people who argue that climate change is going to affect this economy, because it will. But they just do not get it.

At five minutes to midnight, after 11 years in office, when the Prime Minister has poured scorn on emissions trading—he poured scorn on the states when the states put up an emissions trading scheme; he said it would wreck the Australian economy, ruin the Australian way of life, wreck the Australian coal industry—it is all okay. Yesterday we heard for the first time that targets were okay after 11 years. Ten years after Kyoto, four years after a cabinet submission on an emissions trading scheme, three or four months before an election, targets are now acceptable.

When it comes to climate change, you are either part of the solution or you are part of the problem. The government are part of the problem because they do not believe it. If you are part of the problem, you cannot be part of solution. By their inaction, they have made themselves part of the problem because they just do not believe that climate change is real. They just do not believe that it is happening.

As was pointed out during question time, taxpayer funded polls have told them climate change is happening and we have had a road to Damascus conversion: emissions trading and targets are okay. The government have been ignoring the Economist, ignoring the Business Roundtable on Climate Change, ignoring 71 economics professors around this country who wrote an open letter saying that urgent action is required. They ignored their own government departments, including the Treasury, four years ago and failed to act. The Australian people are paying the price, and the Australian economy will pay the price because it will be affected by climate change, more than many others. Plenty of people have been telling the government, but they have not been listening because they just do not get it.

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Looking at the whole issue of climate change and the differing approaches of the Labor Party and the government, Labor’s argument seems to be that they believe and the government does not believe. The Labor Party’s approach, though, is a triumph of the symbolic over the substantial. The Labor Party’s policy on climate change for the last 10 years has been that we should ratify Kyoto. That would have no effect at all on Australian greenhouse gas emissions; not one molecule of carbon dioxide would that change.

Where has the Labor Party been in the last 10 years? Over the last decade, long before Al Gore won an Academy Award for An Inconvenient Truth, the Howard government launched Australia’s National Greenhouse Strategy. Since then, $2.8 billion has been set aside to fight climate change. This has resulted in an 87 million tonnes per annum reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2010—that is equivalent to a reduction of the entire emissions of the Australian transport sector. But there has been a whole raft of activity going on: $6½ billion of private sector investment into technological development looking at ways to address the problem of climate change. Why would we have done all of that if we did not believe that climate change was a serious problem that required addressing?

Global warming is one of the key challenges for this century, and any global response requires the involvement of all major emitters: the United States, China, India. So what has Australia been doing? We have got the $500 million Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, which is looking at things like leveraging private sector investment, carbon capture and storage, and solar power stations. Carbon capture and storage has great potential to sequester a large portion of our emissions. There is $200 million to reduce global deforestation; $100 million for the Renewable Energy Development Initiative; $75 million for the Solar Cities trial, including one in northern Adelaide; $20 million for the Advanced Electricity Storage Technologies Program; and $14 million for a wind energy forecasting program.

In addressing the issue of climate change, we need an Australian solution for a global problem. Australia has a specific resource profile. We are not the same as Europe but we are on track to meet our Kyoto targets, which a lot of other countries are not. What we need is a balanced approach— (Time expired)