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

That is in fact a very good question and I welcome a question from the Labor Party on an environmental issue of such substance. I welcome the support of the churches for action on climate change. They make a very important point: we do require effective action here in Australia. That is one of the reasons the Australian government is investing in renewable energy. We have seen the biggest upsurge in renewable energy in Australian history under this government. There were fewer than a dozen wind turbines in Australia when Labor, Senator Polley’s party, was last in power. Through our policies, 700 wind turbines will be built in Australia. We have rolled out 12,000 solar rooftops under our photovoltaic rebate scheme. We have announced three solar cities: one in Adelaide, one in Townsville and one in Blacktown.

We know—and this is what the Labor Party should focus on—that we need to bring a whole range of technologies to this task. One of the projects we need to pursue is the capture and burying of carbon, putting it back from whence it came. We know that, if the world is to address climate change, it will need to rapidly expand the role that nuclear power plays. Labor and the Greens have said, ‘No, we can’t have nuclear. We don’t care enough about climate change to bring nuclear in.’ We know that the Greens and Carmen Lawrence of the Labor Party want to stop the export of natural gas.

It is incredibly important that those business leaders and the churches focus on practical solutions to reduce greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere. It will require billions of dollars worth of investment, such as the $6 million we have granted to Origin Energy—one of the signatories to the statement—to develop sliver cell technology. This is a technology that, in partnership with Origin Energy, we are investing in to massively reduce the amount of silicon that is required to build a solar cell. We are investing in the biggest solar power station in the world, to be constructed in Mildura, and we are investing $60 million in the biggest carbon capture and storage project anywhere on the planet.

None of that will make any difference to Australia or to the world unless we have a robust, comprehensive agreement on climate change to act internationally. At the moment the Kyoto protocol seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but, because it excludes most of the economies in the world, greenhouse gas emissions will actually rise under Kyoto by about 40 per cent. That is because it excludes China and India—the rapidly industrialising economies. I think those who have signed the common belief document, including Origin Energy and some churches, are quite serious about climate change.

If we are to address climate change we need to engage China and India. The Prime Minister has shown leadership by not only getting behind the formation of the biggest international collaboration on technology efforts through the Asia-Pacific climate change partnership but also by raising it within APEC. This is a constructive way forward to engage the countries of our region in serious action on climate change, rather than the slogans and the rhetoric that the Labor Party have been able to get away with over recent years. It is time for the Australian Labor Party to get serious about climate change policy and I urge it to do so. (Time expired)