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

I am pretty pleased, actually, that there is finally an interjection because it gives me a chance to get on to some of the comments that Senator Boswell made. I am very interested in Senator Boswell’s quite ridiculous intervention on this matter, because we are talking about our commitment as a government to moving forward on climate change. Senator Boswell is still off fighting the old Work Choices battle, so when we talk about climate change, he starts talking about unions. Senator Boswell should understand that the coalition have actually lost that battle. They were thrown out, mainly because of Work Choices but also because of the very progressive position taken by the Rudd Labor government and its acknowledgement of the need to actually tackle the issues that are important to this country.

At the forefront of that are two issues which Senator Boswell seeks to completely ignore. It is as if he has been sitting over there and has not realised that he has changed sides in this chamber. He ought to start taking notice of what it is that the Australian public wants from a government that actually has a long-term interest in this country at its heart. That is what we are doing. Senator Boswell, through you, Madam Acting Deputy President, we are tackling the hard issues. Of course, tackling greenhouse emissions and climate change is one of those key areas. It is no wonder Senator Boswell tried to intervene on this very serious debate in the ridiculous way that he did, because over there on that side of the chamber they are absolutely full of climate change sceptics.

Let me go through what some of the senators on that side of the House think about climate change. Let us talk about what Senator Cory Bernardi, a member of this chamber, said last year:

I have come to believe we’re seeing a distortion of a whole area of science that is being manipulated to present a certain point of view to the global public, that is that the actions of man are the cause of climate change.

He went on to say:

... I have examined both sides of this debate and when the alarmist statements are discounted, the scientific evidence that remains does not support the scenario that is being presented to us. The facts do not fit the theory.

How out of touch is Senator Bernardi? Really, the world has moved on, Australia has moved on, the Australian public knew that this debate had to move on and we have moved on. And we are going to tackle these hard issues regardless of your scepticism, Senator Boswell, and regardless of the scepticism of most of those on the other side of the chamber.

Let us talk about what Ian Macfarlane, the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources when the coalition was still in government, said about climate change. There are a few interesting quotes here:

For every two scientists who argue that there is a connection between global emissions and global warming there is another scientist who will argue the opposite.

That is reminiscent of the old tobacco debate about whether tobacco and smoking cigarettes cause cancer. Yes, you can always roll out the old climate change sceptic scientist, but that does not take away the fact that the science community has overwhelmingly considered these issues and come up with a unanimous conclusion. But you will always find a redneck, and of course rednecks are attracted to those opposite. They love their rednecks, and they gravitate to those opposite because they are full of sceptics. Ian Macfarlane also said:

There is still a degree of uncertainty in the connection between global warming, which we accept that it appears as though the globe is warming but only slightly, and whether or not that is entirely or largely due to human activity. The jury’s still out on that.

Again, it is not. The jury is not out on that, and there is no better jury than the Australian public, who want firm action on climate change—and that is what the Rudd Labor government is going to deliver.

Let us talk about a report of the former House of Representatives Standing Committee on Science and Innovation which was prepared under the former coalition government. Its members included Dennis Jensen from WA, Jackie Kelly from NSW, Dana Vale from NSW and David Tollner from the Northern Territory, who were all members of the former coalition government when they were in power, which seems so long ago now that it is not long enough. In an extraordinary dissenting report to the House of Representatives science and innovation committee report on the inquiry into geosequestration technology, those members wrote that those who believe humans are causing climate change are fanatics. Really? People who believe that humans are causing and contributing to global warming are simply fanatics! Perhaps the most extraordinary claim made by those then government MPs in the coalition government is that evidence of global warming on other planets, such as Mars and Jupiter, makes it unreasonable for humans to take pre-emptive action on Earth. Of course, the real question is: what planet was the coalition on when those members put in that dissenting report? While those MPs were happy to accept claims about global warming on far-flung planets—ones that Australians can never hope to visit, much less live on—they continue to deny the very real evidence we see of climate change in our own backyards, such as more intense drought and extreme weather events.

The truth is that 1,200 of the world’s leading climate scientists contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fourth assessment report of 2007 and found that temperatures on earth rose in the 20th century and will rise at an even faster rate in the 21st century. So, Senator Boswell, through you, Madam Acting Deputy President, when you want to make some serious contribution to this debate, we would welcome hearing it. We would welcome any serious contribution to the climate change debate from anyone in the opposition. They lost the plot when they were in government, they ignored this issue at the peril of Australia, and we are not going to allow that to happen. We are going to take firm action and we are going to show leadership—not just for today and tomorrow, as was so common a theme of the previous government, but in the long-term interests of Australians, their children and their grandchildren. So I welcome your next intervention, Senator Boswell.

The usable and relevant data, the collection of which this bill addresses, will be released publicly to allow Australia’s best thinkers and scientists to find new and innovative solutions to tackling climate change. That data will underpin the government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, which is to be introduced in 2010. Even prior to the election last year the Prime Minister—then Leader of the Opposition—showed how serious Labor is about tackling climate change. From opposition last year the Prime Minister initiated the National Climate Change Summit to explore the critical challenges of climate change in the 21st century. The summit explored environmental and economic impacts that are likely to result from climate change.

This sits in stark contrast to the members opposite and their steadfast refusal to acknowledge the concerning realities of climate change. Sitting opposite me are many of the same people who, for 11 years, failed to act in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence. Not only have they failed the Australian people that elected them but they have failed the future generations of Australians. For too long we have poured greenhouse pollution into the atmosphere, and we are continuing to do so at an alarming rate. We are starting to feel the effects of this pollution: changing temperatures, rainfall patterns, more droughts, floods, water shortages, rising sea levels and extreme weather. Australia is a dry country—the driest inhabited continent on Earth—and we are particularly vulnerable to climate change.

In my state, Victoria—which is the smallest mainland state but the most densely populated and urbanised—we are already feeling the effects of a decade of coalition inaction. Victoria is expected to become warmer with more hot days and fewer cold nights. It is predicted that this will result in increased bushfire risk, less snowfall in alpine areas and more frequent and more severe droughts. Uncontrolled climate change could put a substantial proportion of agricultural production at risk, with a projected decline in Victorian farm production.

I would have thought that Senator Boswell might have intervened at this point of time, as I am talking about the effects on the constituency that his party professes to represent. But it was quite adequately demonstrated by their inaction over the last 11 years that not only do they not care about people who live in urban and built-up areas but they also do not care about people in rural and regional communities, either.