Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The protocol adds nothing at all to reducing greenhouse gases around Australia, Senator Milne, and I think you know that. I am quite sure that the Greens are well aware that the Kyoto treaty is a flawed treaty, a meaningless treaty—it is a symbol of concern about climate change. That is the only thing that it is. The Australian government has done more to address the issue of climate change than any other government in the world. We have a very proud record of having done that. We have no intention of signing the Kyoto treaty because, as I said earlier in my speech, the great emitters of the world—the developing nations, China, India and the United States—are not signatories to the Kyoto treaty. Until we have a treaty that does cover all the great emitters of the world, the Australian government will not be a party to such an agreement.

But, as I said earlier also, the Australian government is working on an international treaty agreement, the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, which will bring together key developing and developed countries in the region, including Australia, the United States, India, Japan and Korea, to address the challenge of climate change, energy security and air pollution in a way that strives to encourage economic development and reduce poverty through the development and deployment of new, clean technologies.

So Australia has a very fine record in managing our environmental programs. As I said earlier, we have some world firsts. We were the first country in the world to set up a Greenhouse Office and we were the first country in the world to have an oceans program. We have a long list of achievements in the environmental area, including the establishment of the Natural Heritage Trust, which was set up when this government first came to office and funded initially with $1 billion from the sale of Telstra. There is now NHT2, and in total something like $3 billion has gone into the Natural Heritage Trust. We have the Australian government Envirofund and we set up the Green Corps, which has meant that all over Australia some 13,000 young people have participated in 1,300 projects around this country since 1996. We have a program to tackle salinity and water quality, two of the greatest environmental problems this country faces. So, in general terms, this government has a very fine and outstanding record on environmental policy. We do not need to sign the Kyoto protocol to do what we are doing. We are meeting our greenhouse targets and we are very proud of our record. I believe the Senate should simply reject the proposal put up by Senator Carr, because it is impractical, unrealistic and will achieve nothing.