James Bidgood (Dawson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts. How is the government addressing the barriers to practical action to improve Australia’s environmental sustainability by reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions?

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

I thank the member for his question. Everybody listening, and everyone in this House, knows that climate change is the greatest challenge that this and subsequent generations face, and most of the Australian community and most of us in this place are aware of the immensity of the challenge. I know for certain that members of Pacific island states—neighbours of ours—continuing to experience the prospect of rising sea levels are too. Fundamentally, this government understands that the basic point is that the cost of inaction on climate change is greater than the cost of action. That is the crucial point, and that is why we are taking action now, committing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 on 2000 levels, adopting market based instruments, including an emissions trading system, to be introduced by 2010, and mobilising the tremendous willingness of households and schools—and of the business community—who are all frustrated by a previous government, which viewed any action on climate change as an overreaction.

If there is any doubt about the genuine concerns in the Australian community about the challenges of dangerous climate change, that doubt was put to rest last November. The electorate sent a very clear message that 11½ years of denial and delay on climate change should be brought to an end. In fact, I think the community realised then that the former government was actually light years behind the Australian public on the climate change challenge. I say ‘light years’ because, if we cast our minds back to last September—and it is not that long ago—we had backbenchers of the former government disputing the scientific basis for climate change. It is the case that it was the former members for Solomon and Lindsay and the current members for Tangney and Hughes who, incredibly, disputed the validity of the scientific consensus that human activities are contributing to global warming, citing evidence that:

… warming has also been observed on Mars, Jupiter, Triton, Pluto, Neptune and others.

They were lost in space, light years behind the Australian community and the international community. As it was said at the time in this House, they were definitely on another planet. That was last September. One would have thought that times had moved on, that times had changed. In fact, they did, because a new government was elected and its first official act was to ratify the Kyoto protocol—and I note the comment made by the Leader of the Opposition that ratification is important.

I was asked in this question about the barriers to practical action on climate change. We were reminded of one of the biggest barriers to practical action in a speech given last week by the former Prime Minister, when he said:

Global warming has become a new battleground. The same intellectual bullying and moralising, used in other debates, now dominates what passes for serious dialogue on this issue.

If we want to talk about serious barriers to action on climate change, it is the Liberal Party that for 11½ years dismissed a growing scientific consensus as ‘alarmism’, as ‘moralising’ and now, apparently, in this form of revisionism by the previous Prime Minister, as ‘intellectual bullying’. This was the party that in government demonised former Vice President Al Gore. This was the government that refused to put the issue of climate change on the agenda for the South Pacific nations. And this is the former government that has a member who made an interesting contribution in the House just last month. I refer to the contribution by the member for Barker, who spoke on climate change in the parliament in 2008 and offered a scientific analysis from which he concluded:

… it follows that—

climate change—

cannot be attributed solely, or even partly, to human origin.

Let me take this opportunity to refer the member and other members to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 1995 it said:

The balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate.

In 2001 it said:

There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.

There is more of this. Just last year it said:

Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.

Is this intellectual bullying? Is it moralising? The fact is that there has been no greater barrier to serious action on climate change than the remarks and the thoughts—

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. This diatribe has been going for more than five minutes now. I ask you to bring the minister back to the question. He was not asked about alternative views. If he does not have a proper answer, we have plenty of questions over here.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister was asked about barriers to greenhouse gas reductions. The minister will bring his answer to a close.

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

The member for Barker went on to advise that the most sensible approach to climate change would be ‘to adapt’. The Australian community adapted. They took the most sensible approach to climate change—and that was to elect the Rudd Labor government, a government that would take climate change seriously.