Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for a very important question. I think that any Australian who reads reports about the science around climate change or observes with their own eyes what is happening in their own backyards—people in Western Australia will have seen rainfall fall by around 20 per cent over the last 25 years—knows that the climate is changing. I encourage all colleagues to attend tonight the film evening that Greg Hunt, my parliamentary secretary, will be hosting in the parliamentary gallery of Al Gore’s film, which graphically goes through some of the science and consequences.

I think it is incredibly important that all Australians do understand that we are facing a global phenomenon that requires not only a serious domestic response with serious investment but also a serious global response. You have in Australia a serious dichotomy of policy approaches. You have a coalition government that is investing billions of dollars across a range of portfolios in technology to clean up coal and to capture carbon and store it to stop it going into the atmosphere, investing hundreds of millions of dollars in renewable energy, investing in hundreds of solar projects across the country and investing in Solar Cities. The Prime Minister was in Adelaide last week announcing the world’s first solar city—