Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Certainly: the Hon. Peter Beattie MP, Premier of Queensland—great guy. Some describe his winning approach to elections as the Luna Park smile: ‘Trust me; this is a problem.’ In fact, you should talk to Premier Beattie about how to fix climate change, because he would fix that in the same way he has allegedly fixed everything else: he would give everyone the Luna Park smile and say, ‘Yes, this is terrible. We’ve got to do something about that. Trust me and I’ll fix it.’ He did that with the health system. Regrettably, my fellow Queenslanders fell for the line.

Gee, if they had a go today they would not fall for it, as they carry their buckets of water around between five and six in the morning to water their most precious prized plants. They would not be so forgiving these days. But again the Hon. Peter Beattie MP smiled at them, gave them that very famous smile: ‘Gee, this water’s a problem. The fact that I’ve been here for eight years and should’ve done something about these dams in those eight years, don’t you worry about that. I understand now it’s a great problem. The smile on my face and the sincerity of my promises will tell you that we’re going to fix the water problem in Queensland.’

Perhaps the Labor lot over on the other side of the chamber should have got Premier Pete—I am sorry; the Hon. Peter Beattie—to come onboard and smile and tell everyone he is going to fix climate change. He seems to think that he can do all those things, even though it has nothing to do with him. But on a more serious note, he understands that by signing Kyoto all you do is put a lot of Queenslanders out of work, and he is not very keen on doing that. He is, after all, a politician. He, as a Queenslander, would like to see his state do as well as it could. I suspect there are a few other Labor premiers in the same position. They are not quite so gung-ho on this Kyoto agreement, because they realise as well that by simply signing a bit of paper you are not going to cure climate change. All you are going to do is put Queensland and Australian industries at a disadvantage. So it is not the Labor Party, it is the federal Labor Party that sees in this approach some votes from the cafe latte set around the capital cities.

As opposed to that, what the coalition government wants to do is to seriously address climate change and try to bring onboard the big emitters so that we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the United States, China and India, and in that way do something serious about climate change. The ridiculousness of the idea that Australia, with less than one per cent of emissions, signing a bit of paper is going to cure the drought, cure the water shortage and fix the Australian farm industry is just so nonsensical I cannot believe allegedly clever people that live opposite in the chamber could be promulgating that argument.

But then you get onto the Greens and, I regret to say, even the Democrats with some of their solutions for fixing climate change. Senator Allison spoke, and I think Senator Milne spoke—I only half heard her. One of their solutions to fix greenhouse gas emissions was to stop logging of old-growth forests. How illogical! How contrary to the facts can you be with that argument from Senator Milne? She should know that growing forests—and I do not mean old-growth forests that grow a very small amount each year—are really greenhouse gas sinks. What Senator Milne would have us do is stop all logging of old-growth forests in Australia. It would mean that our annual trade deficit of $2 billion in forest and wood products would escalate much higher, which would have a bad impact on Australia’s balance of payments and our general economy. But it would also mean that Australia would still have the need for those forest and wood products. So if we ban it from Australia, where do we get it from? We get it from places like the Solomons, New Guinea, Malaysia and, I understand, parts of China, where there is large-scale slaughter and clearing of native forests—rainforests that are growing and sucking in a lot of carbon emissions. But Senator Milne would have us stop it in Australia where it is so very well controlled.

In Australia, if you clear some forest land—if you harvest some forests—it is immediately replanted with new trees. The trees grow, and during their growing cycle they actually consume a lot of greenhouse gases and help with that. But the Greens’ approach is to stop that in Australia where it is very carefully controlled and sustainably managed, and let all the forest and wood product collections for Australia come from forests around the world which are not at all well managed and which do have an impact with their clearing arrangements.

How does that help the climate change issue in the world? I ask Senator Milne: when you stop Australia’s sustainable and very carefully managed harvesting of old-growth forests in Australia and push that onto the uncontrolled clearing of land in places like the Solomons and Malaysia, how does that conceivably help climate change in the world? Doesn’t Senator Milne understand that we are in a global situation here? It is not so much what happens just in Australia. That seems to be all Senator Milne is interested in: ‘Stop sustainable managed forestry in Australia but let it go unchecked elsewhere in the world.’ She does not seem to realise that the impact in Australia is only infinitesimal compared to the impact that these uncontrolled clearings have in other parts of the world.

That is the sort of stupidity we continue to get from the Greens. This week I think the Greens are all in favour of wind power, but I can remember the times when the suggestion of putting up wind farms anywhere in Australia was totally opposed by the Greens. Wind farms created visual pollution or noise pollution or perhaps they even caused some damage to wildlife—perhaps even orange-bellied parrots—and the Greens were then totally opposed to them. Now they have had some sort of a conversion.

They also cannot seem to understand, as many of their counterparts in the rest of the world can, that if greenhouse gas emissions and climate change is the real issue for the world at the present time—and many of us think that perhaps it is the greatest confrontation that the globe faces—then they would have to concede that nuclear power should at least be looked at. Certainly in Australia we have to have the debate on nuclear power and we have to get the facts and figures together. I agree with respected commentators, I think, who say that perhaps today nuclear power is not economically feasible for Australia, but that does not mean to say, as the Labor Party and the Greens do, that we should not even think about it.

Again I have to correct myself, Mr Acting Deputy President Marshall: it is not the whole of the Labor Party that thinks like this. I know that there is a huge division of opinion in the Labor Party. Martin Ferguson, one of the more sensible policy frontbenchers for the other side, agrees with the government that there needs to be debate on the nuclear option. For Australia we need to look at all of these avenues, and of course the Australian government is doing that. The Australian government has put so much money into development of low-emissions technology, renewable energy development, solar cities program, advanced electricity storage technologies, wind energy generation, the greenhouse gas challenge—the list goes on of the initiatives that the Australian government has taken to address our energy needs in a greenhouse gas sensitive way and we have a very good record on that. But it does need Australia to look at all options, including nuclear.

I also think that we have to look again at hydropower. I accept that I am a bit simple when it comes to these sorts of things. I, like most other Australians, cannot quite understand the arguments of the Greens that hydropower is not really much good for you. They will not allow any more hydroplants to come on stream and yet there you have a source of energy that really is harmless. It provides very good power and does it, I would have thought, in a very environmentally sensitive way. I think the argument must be that some parts of our vast country would go underwater for the dams that would be needed for hydropower. But we have got a big country and surely we can give up an infinitesimal part of that land mass for water storage to allow for hydropower that would really help with this climate change problem.

So I find this bill the Australian Labor Party introduced before the parliament today a bit difficult to understand. I think that it is a bit disingenuous. It is an attempt to garner a few votes in the capital cities by those who are attracted by these sorts of superficial arguments. I would certainly hope that the Senate has the good sense to reject the bill and endorse the government’s approach to this difficult problem. (Time expired)