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 climate change and the Pacific region.

The Minister for the Environment and Heritage said in answer to an earlier question that it was ‘likely that the Pacific countries would see sea level rises and adverse impacts in their region’. The point I was trying to get the minister to address is the fact that that they are already being seen. There are storm surges, and freshwater supplies are already being inundated with salt water, destroying the livelihoods and the ability of people to live in their existing locations.

The minister said that the government is working in the Pacific on adaptation to climate change. That is certainly very welcome, but these people need options. It will not be easy to adapt when your feet are in salt water, when you have no opportunity to grow your own food, when you need to move ground and when you need to resettle somewhere. Eventually, people in places like Tuvalu and Kiribati will need to do that. It may take 10 years or more before this becomes necessary, but long-term plans need to be made. I think it would be quite nice, to say the least, if as a Pacific Islander you knew there was an option of being resettled either in the Pacific region or in Australia, which counts itself as being part of that region.

I noticed that the minister said nothing about the terrible decision, in my view, taken in 2002, when Tuvalu’s government requested assistance from Australia and said: ‘Some of the pollution that Australia emits through greenhouse gas emissions is adding to climate change; we think you have a responsibility to assist us.’ But this government took the hardline position and said: ‘No. Go away.’

This government is very happy to take the Pacific islands workers to fill gaps in our own workforce. We have just had a debate about that and the changes to the regulations to allow it. It seems to me very selfish that we are prepared to take workers but not necessarily their families. We are not prepared to settle these people in our place. We want their labour; we want to pay them, no doubt the lowest possible wages, for bringing their labour to us but we are not prepared to accept them as citizens in this country, even when they need to be.

The minister trotted out his usual diatribe about how other countries have failed to meet their commitments on climate change. We have done so well, of course! Let us have a look at the figures: between 1990 and 2004, emissions from stationary energy—that is, electricity that is generated—increased by 43 per cent. That was a massive increase in our emissions at a time when we were supposed to be reducing emissions. We had the most generous deal of any country in the world at Kyoto, which was to increase our emissions by 109 per cent. We were given a huge concession for reducing land clearing. No other country got anything like this kind of arrangement put in place. To go on with the figures: there was a 23.4 per cent increase in transport emissions; a 3.4 per cent increase in fugitive emissions; a massive 18 per cent in industrial processes; and 2.2 per cent in agriculture.

What saved the day for us, what allowed this government to save face—if you do not know the true story behind those figures—was the massive 73 per cent credit, if you like, for reducing land clearing, for not doing something that we should not have been doing in the first place. What an extraordinary set of figures! For this government to come in here and claim so defiantly, so triumphantly, that other countries have not managed to meet their commitments so far is really an outrage. The minister said that the Greenhouse Challenge, the Solar Cities program and the PV rebate are the big efforts being made on the ground by the government. The Greenhouse Challenge is entirely voluntary, despite our best efforts in this place to make it otherwise; Solar Cities is very nice, but it is a couple of suburbs out of goodness knows how many around Australia.

We do not need pilot programs to tell us that solar power works, that it generates electricity at peak times and that it should be supported by government. But what is going to happen? The photovoltaic rebate extension is about to run out; unless the minister was hinting today that it might be extended, that is going to go. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.