Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a)

notes that at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Bali, Indonesia in December 2007, an action plan was agreed to, which, inter alia, resolved to:

(i)

urgently enhance implementation of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change,

(ii)

respond to the findings of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that delay in reducing emissions significantly constrains opportunities to achieve lower stabilisation levels and increases the risk of more severe climate change impacts, and

(iii)

adopt a decision at the UNFCCC meeting in 2009 on the sustained implementation of the convention, through long-term cooperative action after the end of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012;

(b)

agrees that it is in the interest of current and future Australians that the Bali Action Plan succeed in producing an international agreement which minimises the risk of dangerous interference with the climate; and

(c)

calls on the Government to contribute in good faith to a timely successful implementation of the Bali Action Plan.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate—

(a)

notes that:

(i)

in December 2007, the Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, said that the government believe that ‘climate change represents one of the greatest moral, economic and environmental challenges of our age’,

(ii)

on 6 February 2008, the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Mr Tanner, announced funding cuts to climate-related programs, including $3 million from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s Research Vessel Southern Surveyor, $6 million from the Biodiversity Hotspots program and $42 million from the Renewable Remote Power Generation program, and

(iii)

in 2007, the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology in Sydney calculated that perverse subsidies supporting fossil fuel industries amounted to between $6.4billion and $7.2billion in the 2005-06 financial year; and

(b)

calls on the Government to phase out perverse subsidies to the fossil fuel industry and to reverse its decision to cut funding to research into climate change science and renewable energy programs.

Question put.