Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for the Environment and Heritage (Senator Ian Campbell) to a question without notice asked by Senator Allison today relating to greenhouse gas emissions.

Sadly, the minister made no attempt to answer my question. It goes to the whole issue of low-emission technology and nuclear power that this government seems to be relying on to reduce emissions. Of course, this government has refused to ratify Kyoto. The Prime Minister confirmed that just the other day in an interview. The Prime Minister said:

… I have no intention, as Prime Minister of this country, of exporting the jobs of Australian workers to other countries.

He also said:

… if we signed the Kyoto Protocol we would destroy a lot of Australian industry and we would send Australian jobs to countries like China and Indonesia and India.

As we all know, jobs have already gone to China, Indonesia and India from this country. In the textile sector and manufacturing across the board, Australia has already lost those jobs.

But leaving that aside, the Prime Minister’s head is well and truly stuck in the sand if he thinks Australia can isolate itself, cannot be part of a global environment where our contribution to greenhouse gas emissions remains one of the highest globally —the highest, as far as I recall—and if he can say this is not something we have to take responsibility for. That is a complete cop-out, and it is time this government seriously addressed how it is going to do it. The best scientists, including our own—CSIRO scientists and other scientists involved in looking at climate change—are telling us that a 60 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 is going to be necessary to avert the most damaging climate change. Already we are seeing climate change in this country. Sustained droughts, lower rainfalls across the whole of the middle part of Australia were predicted years ago, and now it is a reality, as are water shortages around the country, temperature increases, coral bleaching and massive amounts of damage done by higher temperatures already.

This is going to get worse. More extreme events are going to affect Australia. Not just farmers but the whole economy will eventually be damaged unless we do something. It is all very well to say, ‘There are other countries in the world that Kyoto doesn’t include.’ That is true, but the Asia-Pacific agreement, which Australia has signed up to along with United States and which does include those countries, has no targets. It might as well be nonexistent. It is a pointless exercise to include those developing countries if you have no targets and no mandatory means of achieving a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

In fact, the figures we have show us how much Australia has already gone beyond the 1990 levels that we committed to: 43 per cent for power generation, 23.4 per cent for transport, 18 per cent for industry, 2.2 per cent for agriculture. The only reason we look like getting even close to the commitments that were made by Senator Hill when he was environment minister is because of the tricky land-clearing consideration that we had written into our agreement at the time—72 per cent offsetting of those increases has come about because of that land-clearing agreement.

But the real crux of the matter is that the government is not prepared to encounter some sort of mechanism or price signal that would bring about change. Even ABARE, and we all know how conservative ABARE is on these issues, has prepared a report that shows the cost of carbon capture and storage of CO, which the government is relying on for the future of greenhouse gas reductions, would increase the cost of electricity by 17 per cent. CSIRO says it is much higher than that; it is more likely to be up to 50 per cent. We know through MRET, the mandatory renewable energy target, that you have to have in place mandated measures to force industry to move in this direction. They will not do it of their own accord. It will cost money, but so will damaging climate change in this country. Australia has to face up to the most obvious in this debate. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.