Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I am sure you will get your chance, Senator Macdonald. As a farmer in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria or South Australia, what is the risk framework approach to climate change? Farmers are already experiencing sufficient evidence of climate change and the impact of climate change. The resilience of regional and rural Australia is being tested as farmers are increasingly impacted through lower rainfall and more frequent drier periods—in other words, drought. As the climate change effect progresses we will see large abandonment of farms across the nation as they become unworkable due to lower rainfall, and we have known this for a long time. Brisbane and Adelaide are on stage 5 water restrictions; Melbourne is on stage 4 with a threat that it will be more serious soon. Do we need to ask suburban mums and dads who are consciously collecting shower water in buckets to put on their gardens what their risk management approach is? No.

The Prime Minister shows contempt for the scientific community and the international panel on climate change by casting doubt as an excuse for his government’s inaction. It is wrong of the Prime Minister to give Australians a sense of false hope that the water crisis will soon be over and that the drought is within reasonable and historical bounds. We need deep structural change in our economy to be able to adapt to the impacts and to mitigate the effects of climate change—and drought is one of those. A new way of thinking about water management is required, as is a new way of infrastructure planning. The introduction is required of responsible climate change policies that will assist industry to adapt to a carbon constrained future.

Similarly, the repeated statement of this government that it will not act on climate change because it will disadvantage the Australian economy is irresponsible in the extreme. Since 2004, the states and territory governments, through the National Emissions Trading Taskforce, have been undertaking economic modelling of the costs of a national emissions trading scheme. Their fact sheet states:

The preliminary modelling indicates that the introduction of an emissions trading scheme may increase the Victorian real electricity price by between 4 and 6 per cent on average above business as usual (BAU) over the 2010-20 period, depending on the scenario. This will increase the average real Victorian household electricity bill by between $20 and $40 per year on average above BAU over this period.

That is as little as 40c per household per week. Yet today we had the Treasurer say that increasing prices for electricity and emissions trading would cost enormous amounts of money and that households would be paying through the nose. It is not going to break the bank and it is not at the level of dire economic impact on households that the government is suggesting.

The introduction of carbon pricing will result in more electricity from gas and renewable energy, make alternative transport fuels more competitive and encourage people to change their behaviour and reduce energy and fuel consumption. Australia’s emissions may only be 1.6 per cent of the global greenhouse gas emissions but that makes us the 10th highest in the world and, alarmingly, the second highest in terms of per capita emissions. So this is not just a practical issue; it is a moral issue in our view. Climate change and its impacts are real, as are the costs, which will far exceed money spent adapting our markets and industry to a carbon constrained economy.

After 10 years of personally raising the issue of climate change in this place it is heartening that there is now a real debate engaging all the political parties. The Prime Minister has been forced to take his head out of the sand and confront the science on this issue. I understand how difficult this is for him. It is not easy. In fact, I have no doubt that it is quite painful when you hold an ideology that is so much at odds with the concept that the way humans are using the planet’s resources is unsustainable. When you have to finally acknowledge that your belief system is based on a false set of assumptions and that other political parties, particularly the Democrats, had it right in the first place, I am sure it cannot be easy. I can understand why, having scoffed at the Democrats for so long, it would be hard to come around to agreeing that something must be done very soon and that the problem would not be so serious had action been taken when it was first raised in this place.

How did we get to be the 10th largest emitter in the world with our tiny population? We are just behind Britain, that tiny country which has about 60 million people, in terms of overall emissions.