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

No wonder I was laughing. I was laughing at you and your ridiculous propositions and not at the issue of climate change. Senator Lundy again misrepresents the answers to questions in the Senate today. It is quite clear that the coalition have not had any sort of conversion. As Senator Eggleston rightly pointed out, right back in 1996 we established the first greenhouse office in any government anywhere in the world. Labor did not have one when we took over. The coalition have been conscious of this issue and working towards addressing greenhouse gas emissions since our very first day in office under the direction of Senator Hill, quite a significant and very far-sighted environment minister at the time.

Over the 10½ years since, this government has taken a great number of initiatives to help address greenhouse gas emissions and climate change problems. No one single solution is available for the problem of climate change. Quite clearly, the major thing that has to happen in the world, Senator Lundy, is for the big emitters—that is, the United States, China and India—to come on board. So far they have not, although, as an initiative that Senator Ian Campbell was very much involved in, these big emitters are now very seriously engaged in the question of greenhouse gas emissions.

The solution of the Labor Party has been for several years now to simply sign the Kyoto agreement and that will fix climate change. It might be an easy solution for the Labor Party but it will have no impact at all on greenhouse gas emissions because the big emitters are not parties to the Kyoto agreement. Australia attended the initial conferences and agreed to do things, and we have met the targets that were given to us by Kyoto. But simply signing a piece of paper will not help greenhouse gas emissions. You have to get the big emitters involved—China, India and the United States—and our government has been attempting to do that. So there is not just one answer; there has to be a suite of answers. That is one of them: reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

In relation to alternative energy that does not require fossil fuels, this government has spent enormous amounts of money. Just before Christmas the Treasurer, Peter Costello, launched an alternative power plant in Mildura with a huge contribution—$1 billion, I think it was, though I do not have the figure before me. It was a huge Commonwealth government contribution to that power plant. As well as that, we have had any number of initiatives to assist with wind power, solar power and hot rocks power.

And, of course, we are looking very seriously at uranium and nuclear energy. I am not quite sure what the position of the Labor Party is today. Some of the Labor Party bury their heads in the sand and say that this is no good and that we cannot have it. Other more sensible members of the Labor Party are looking at that a bit more seriously because they realise that nuclear not only is effective power but also has some greenhouse gas advantages. I always smile when the Labor Party raise issues like how good the UK and the European Union are with their greenhouse gas emissions. They should realise that in places like Russia 70 per cent of their power comes from nuclear energy. They do not have a lot of greenhouse gas emissions because most of their power comes from nuclear energy.

There are a number of other issues I would like to raise but time is going to beat me yet again. The Murray-Darling Basin was mentioned. Senator Lundy, if you had sat on the ministerial council of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission as I had and seen the fights between Queensland and New South Wales, between New South Wales and Victoria and between South Australia and everyone else then you would understand that trying to get the states to agree just does not work. (Time expired)