Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

It seemed that way to me anyway. Maybe I was manager for too long. Maybe you are right and it is all comparative. But you were manager for a very short and ineffective time. I think the person who took over from you is doing a good job, as the person who has taken over from me, I suspect, is doing a better job than I did. I am happy to congratulate Senator Ellison and Senator Ludwig because I think they are managing the affairs of the chamber well.

Of course you will always get an interjection when a fact lands on the table that Senator Carr does not like. But every state Labor government says that they do not want this trigger. There was one government that said they did not mind the trigger. We could play the Senator Abetz game of ‘who said it’ but of course it was in fact Jon Stanhope. I think the mining and industrial activities within the ACT might lead you to wonder why that was. All of the other states said no. So the Labor Party, root and branch, rank and file, right across the country said no to this—and for good reason.

Senator Brown asked a serious question about the science. I accept the consensus of the science. We spent about $32 million of Australian taxpayers’ money on developing the best quality science across the country on a whole range of greenhouse gas and climate change issues. One of the most important reports was one by Professor Will Steffen that we commissioned from the ANU. We asked Professor Steffen to analyse all of the best research across the world to I guess, in a way, give us a lead towards which will be in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that we will see next year.

His predictions are that generally the last IPCC report’s predictions were more likely to come in on the earlier range rather than the later range in terms of warming. Professor Steffen made the point—and I do not have the report at hand—that, yes, you could get sea level rises of some metres if you see, for example, the Greenland ice shelf melt. I think the prediction is for something like 7 metres. But, when he was questioned on that, he said that sea level rise would occur over a period of 1,000 years. When questioned about sea level rises in this century, I think his report said that the consensus is around about half a metre over the next 100 years. From the preliminary briefings I have had about the intergovernmental panel, they would coalesce around that figure as well. I accept those figures.

I think that practical, sensible action domestically, tied with international agreements, processes and policies that deliver real outcomes, are a matter of vital significance for Australia and the world—contrary to what Senator Carr says when he verbals us as saying that the Kyoto process is a waste of space. Regardless of what he may think, perhaps he should sit down with Anthony Albanese one night and talk about what the Australian delegation did at the Nairobi conference. Mr Albanese was a member of the Australian delegation, and he saw what we did over there. If there were any parallel between what he said to me and what he says to his Labor Party comrades on the performance of the Australian delegation, Senator Carr could not possibly say that we were not deeply involved in the UN FCCC processes. The processes, contrary to what Senator Milne said on Friday, where we were deeply involved—