Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

The government did make a decision about what it regarded as being both an ambitious and a credible target, being a target that we could reach. I understand the Greens position that they would seek a 40 per cent target—that is well known. That is not the government’s position. The government took the view that a 25 per cent reduction, as the upper end of the likely 2020 target range for consideration, was an appropriate and responsible target. It does, of course, imply a very substantial reduction between 1990 and 2020. My recollection is that that is something in the order of a 48 per cent reduction in the carbon footprint of every Australian over that period, which is a significant reduction. So the government made a decision as to what we regarded as sensible and appropriate targets to model, and that has informed the decisions that were made. We also took the advice in relation to this of Professor Garnaut, who considered that 25 per cent by 2020 was an appropriate target for Australia in the event of an ambitious global agreement.

One of the difficulties or challenges in this debate is that there is a lot of focus on one milestone, which is the 2020 milestone. We have to remember that 2020 is one of the milestones on the way to a far deeper reduction in emissions. That is what the world has to do and that is what Australia has to do. The government’s election commitment was to a 60 per cent reduction by 2050, which is obviously very significantly beyond 25 per cent. The Prime Minister made clear—last year, I think—that in the event that we believed a more significant midcentury reduction should become Australia’s target he was prepared to make it so, subject to receiving a mandate for same at a subsequent election.