Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am going to make a very daunting prediction after Senator Wong’s contribution. On these amendments of Senator Milne, which would bring Australia into line with the aim of a 25 to 40 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over 1990 levels by 2020—that is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Australia’s leading climate change scientists say we should be aiming at—we will see Senator Wong, Senator Fielding and all of the National Party voting on the same side of the chamber. It is easy to make a throwaway political line about seeing Senator Brown and Senator Fielding on one side, but I suspect you are about to find yourself voting on their side on this motion, Senator Wong. That is because this is not a formula for getting underway constructive movement towards a 40 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020; it is a blocker.

You will be aware of the legal advice we have released—and I have had no comeback on that from the government—coming from Brian Walters, senior counsel in Melbourne, and Matthew Baird, a barrister in Sydney. It says that this legislation does not allow us, or a future government, to move on to 25 per cent to 40 per cent by 2020 without risking a massive compensation claim from the big polluters—who are already set to get up to $24 billion, including the $5 billion transferred out of households under the package that Senator Wong and Prime Minister Rudd have negotiated with the Turnbull opposition in the last few days.

But back to Senator Milne’s very responsible, and science based, amendment which is now before the chamber. That is where we should be going. To quote the Prime Minister, if we were to be accepting our existential position and aiming to save our children and our grandchildren from catastrophic climate change, that is where we need to be going. It is not the government’s five per cent, which has failure written into it and which will, for example, lose the Great Barrier Reef this century, but it is the targets brought forward in this amendment by Senator Milne—the 25 per cent to 40 per cent—that we have to achieve as a minimum.

I have before me the document Senator Milne was referring to, The Copenhagen diagnosis, which was released this week by the University of New South Wales and the Climate Change Research Centre headed by Professor Matthew England. Amongst other things it says this:

New ice-core records confirm the importance of greenhouse gasses for past temperatures on Earth, and show that CO2 levels are higher now than they have ever been during the last 800,000 years.

Let me explain that. Since 1750, the start of the Industrial Revolution, we have seen industrial activity and the burning of fossil fuels and forests putting us in a situation where the atmosphere is stuffed with more greenhouse gases threatening the planet than throughout all that period during which humanity came to secure its foothold on the planet. It had the ability through agriculture to be sedentary, to go on to discover the wheel and great artworks—which are part of cultures right around the planet—and then through the scientific age to give us the extraordinary wherewithal we have now.

Suddenly all that is at risk because we cannot take action commensurate with what the scientists tell us is urgently needed to recover an atmospheric level of greenhouse gases which will take us from the lip of the chasm of catastrophic climate change. The target in this legislation, negotiated and agreed upon between the coalition and the government, manifestly does not even go close to doing that; it is a failure. That is why Senator Milne’s motion to amend the legislation regarding the critical matter of targets is before the Senate chamber. We accept this amendment is not going to be given a Senate majority imprimatur here, but I refer back to Senator Milne’s second reading speech: do not let anybody in this chamber in future say they did not know.

The Copenhagen diagnosiswhich is available to everybody via newspapers in this country and it was on the air during the last few days—says that the threat of climate change is not receding but accelerating. All the signs, the scientists are working out, as against the sceptics’ witchcraft, are not getting better but are accelerating in the wrong direction. The Greens proposal for a 25 per cent to 40 per cent target is then seen as possibly being at the lower end of the range which is going to save us from catastrophic climate change. Everybody in here knows the literature. Everybody takes the responsibility for voting against this amendment if they do. I inveigle everybody to vote for it.

We are in a very critical period of human history and wealthier countries like Australia have to take stock. My colleagues in this chamber from the National Party were saying just a moment ago, ‘What percentage difference is it going to make if Australia takes action now?’ My answer to them is, ‘What percentage difference does it make if your inaction leads to the further destruction of the Murray-Darling Basin as predicted?’ Senator Wong gave this prediction to the chamber earlier today: there would be 90 per cent reduction in the Murray-Darling Basin’s food producing capability through failed climate action change. In terms of the world food production that is much less than one per cent. The National Party’s theory is that it does not matter because it is not really very much. This logic that the National Party brings forward abandons the farmers of the Murray-Darling Basin—