Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Patterson is worried about where I am walking. That is okay, I thought she was actually agreeing with me. If the coal industry can acknowledge that this country should have an emissions trading scheme, wouldn’t you think the government should come on board and actually acknowledge that there would be reasons why they have come to that conclusion? Everybody seems to accept that climate change is a real result of human activity on this planet and unless we start to address these issues, and address them now, then the planet will simply become sicker and sicker, and the economic disadvantage—which the government likes to talk about—will be astronomical into the future. This just demonstrates that this is a government that wants to blame everybody else for its own inaction. The best we get is that some 10 years ago the government set up a climate change office. That is the extent of what they can tell us they are doing in a serious way to reduce our emissions of CO in this country. It is not good enough. It is clearly not taking us where we need to go—in fact where the rest of the world is going.

What is the main argument for not signing up to the Kyoto protocol? The government say: ‘A number of major emitters aren’t signed up to it, and we’re not going to do anything to disadvantage Australia.’ The problem with that argument is that we will never have a global system which everyone signs up to. If Australia and everyone else takes the view that until the whole world agrees on a process we will not have one, then we will never do anything. While it is true that Australia makes up only 1.5 per cent of the world’s emissions, per capita we are a heavy polluter. Developed nations like Australia need to develop clean technology, develop emissions trading schemes, and assist and lead the rest of the world, especially the developing world, in an effective approach to addressing emissions associated with climate change. If we cannot do it, if Australia as a developed country cannot do it, how do we expect developing countries to be able to do it?

To run the constant mantra that such measures would put us at some economic disadvantage is, again, a hollow excuse, when we see that in Germany they targeted a 21 per cent cut and they will achieve a 19 per cent cut. The UK, Germany, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden—they are all projected to achieve an absolute cut in their 1990 emissions by the 2010 Kyoto deadline. We do not see all those countries going bankrupt. We do not see the economies of those countries being devastated. In fact, they will reap economic rewards into the future for taking the hard steps now to achieve a reduction in their CO emissions.

But what does Australia do? We just merrily march along and say we are going to meet our Kyoto targets even though we will not ratify the treaty. We know and the government know we are not going to come close to meeting those targets. Then they will say, ‘Well, we’ve got to look beyond Kyoto and, when the rest of the world signs up to a scheme, we will get on board then.’ We say that is too late. We say the hard decisions should have been taken years ago, but it is not too late if the government are serious and start taking them now. But they cannot take them because they are not just sceptical about climate change; they deny it is even happening. (Time expired)