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

The Australian Greens’ perspective is very clear: developed countries have caused the problems we now face with climate change and we have a responsibility, because of the historical legacy, to assist developing companies to mitigate and adapt into the future. There is no doubt that, if we do not contribute our fair share, there will be no global agreement and we will be going beyond the tipping point and the whole planet will suffer. This is a matter of justice. It has to be built into any negotiation.

I want to come back to this issue of Australia’s fair share, justice and the need for this principle to be here. In the negotiations with the coalition it is clear that billions more were found for the coal-fired generators but there is no income stream identified in the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme to provide this finance. I have heard the minister say that Australia has said it will pay its fair share, but I have not heard any undertaking from her as to what the government has thought the parameters or the formula for a fair share should be—or, indeed, how Australia is going to find the money for that fair share. I believe it will be, and should be, in the quantum of the figures that I have discussed earlier—that the European Union, that Britain and that Japan have put on the table, for early and fast financing out to 2020.

I asked the minister a minute ago to give us an unequivocal undertaking that this will not be to displace Australian overseas aid, that it will be additional to that. I think there is some obligation for the minister to explain to the parliament, given that billions could be found for the polluters, how billions are going to be found for those who deserve the billions. They are the people who are suffering around the world now, as the minister well acknowledges and that is clear to everyone who follows this debate. Millions are suffering already. A billion people live in the four big river valleys of Asia. If you have the glaciers in the Himalayas retreat and disappear, they will have no fresh water for six months of the year. This is a humanitarian crisis, quite apart from an ecological crisis.

In moving this amendment, the Greens are trying to secure a real commitment and an identification of where the income stream is going to come from to pay our fair share. If this is public financing coming out of budgetary lines for which the government of the future will say ‘there is no money to pay’ then we have no hope of getting a global agreement that is just and fair, and therefore we will not get a global agreement, because I am sure that developing countries will not sign on unless they have a high degree of confidence that each of the developed countries is signing on for something real in terms of a figure. I have heard the minister say that she is not going to say anything more on this issue. I think that is unfortunate, because other developed countries have felt they are able to say something on this issue. At least please assure this Senate that this will not be a substitute in part for overseas aid but that it will be additional to our Millennium Development Goals obligations and our current overseas aid obligations.