Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of Senator Abetz’s answer to Senator Sherry’s question on Senator Ian Campbell’s visit to China. I note with interest that Senator Campbell is going to China to open a Roaring 40s wind farm. It is a great photo opportunity for Senator Campbell but what the media has failed to report is that the construction of this wind farm in China has got zero to do with federal government policy, absolutely zero. The federal government has not put a cent into it. AP6 is a mirage; the Asia-Pacific partnership for the export of coal and uranium to India and China is a mirage in terms of technology transfer to China. Roaring 40s was driven offshore by the government’s failure to extend the mandatory renewable energy target, and Senator Ian Campbell is now going for the photo opportunity of opening the wind farm in China, in spite of the fact that his government’s policies have driven this company out of Australia.

This is an absolute disgrace. He has taken the jobs from Roaring 40s out of Tasmania and out of South Australia to China, just as he has driven Vestas offshore. Now we have the Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation, Senator Abetz, standing up and defending the fact that the government did not extend the mandatory renewable energy target, saying that if you support renewable energy development it will cost jobs and will increase costs. Senator Abetz, the minister for conservation, is a climate change sceptic. He made a complete fool of himself at the Australian Weeds Conference in Adelaide recently, called ‘Managing weeds in a changing climate’, which might have been a bit of a clue for most people. The minister said at that time:

I’m not going to get into the debate about whether the current drier-than-average season that most of this country has experienced this year is the result of man-made climate change, or simply natural variation.

He went on later in his speech to talk about the ‘the unclear danger of climate change’. He concluded his speech with another statement:

It’s no good talking about what climate change might or might not do to Australia’s biodiversity in 100 years ...

Senator Abetz is wrong. Climate change is happening right now, and the government’s policies are making it a lot worse.

All of those people out there in the bush suffering in the drought at the moment should be shutting the door in the government’s face when it turns up with its supposed concern. In this year’s budget, Senator Minchin, there was not even a mention of climate change. Treasury papers did not acknowledge the impact of climate change or the onset of drought. In fact, they projected that agricultural figures would be the same. How is that? How can it be that Treasury did not wake up to that in May this year, when every scientific institution in the country was warning the government?

The fact of the matter is that the Howard government did not take climate change seriously, does not take climate change seriously and is now scrambling about to adopt the rhetoric as it realises that the country is drying out, that we are going to suffer the most extreme drought this summer, and that we are going to suffer extreme bushfires. When the communities turn to the government and say, ‘What have you done about climate change for the last decade?’, the government is going to be bereft of an answer—absolutely bereft of an answer.

Perhaps Senator Ian Campbell can come back into this House and go out into rural communities and explain why he is actively opposing the development of renewable energy in this country and why the government is actively opposing putting a price on carbon. Senator Abetz’s answer was all about power prices going up if we invest in renewable energy. What he failed to say was that power prices will go up when there is a price on carbon because the government did not get out of coal fired power stations when it should have and did not get into renewable energy when it should have.

It is because of the government’s recalcitrance in dealing with climate change, because of its love affair with the coal industry, that we are going to see Australians suffer even more than they are suffering now. I am sure that out there in rural Australia people who have known—who are living—the effects of climate change will feel enormously resentful that the minister who is supposed to be responsible still doubts whether climate change is real or whether its impacts are going to occur within a hundred years. Senator Ian Campbell’s being in China is a fraud on renewable energy, because right here in Australia he and the Prime Minister talk up nuclear power while trying to talk up renewables in China and undermining them in Australia. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.