Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

I am not going to take at face value that particular analysis of our spending. What I am prepared to inform the Senate about is the fact that we have already committed some $3.4 billion to initiatives that directly address climate change. Around $1 billion is to ensure that Australia does meet its Kyoto target. While we did not sign up to the failed and hopeless Kyoto target, because it does not include the world’s biggest emitters, we have a target. We have committed to meeting our target for Kyoto and we are spending $1 billion to do it.

There is another $2 billion in new funding for research and development and the demonstration of low-emission technologies. We have introduced the world’s first mandatory renewable energy target, and that is support of some $3½ billion in new investment. We have helped establish the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. Through the Prime Minister we have, as hosts of APEC this year, flagged and set and got agreement to the APEC being focused primarily on climate change so that, through APEC, we get the world’s biggest emitters—China, the United States and others—working together to ensure there is a cooperative international response to climate change.

What the government is committed to doing, unlike the Labor Party, is to approach this in a sensible, concerned and responsible fashion—not go out chasing Green preferences by adopting, without any analysis whatsoever, a 60 per cent reduction target for greenhouse gas emissions. That will do untold damage to Australians working in manufacturing and other industries reliant on the cheap electricity which this country has always provided. That will do enormous damage to working families in this country. They have not done the economic analysis to back up their 60 per cent target. As the head of the IPCC said, they should not rush in and adopt targets without any economic analysis.

You have to do the hard work to work out how you achieve these targets without destroying your economy. That is what we are going to do. We are committed to it. We are proud of our record on climate change. Woe betide those electing a Labor government which comes in chasing Green preferences and does untold damage to this economy through its 60 per cent reduction target.