Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Temporary Chairman, I appreciate your fairness. There was a 19-minute discussion—a speech which we have heard previously—and a suggestion of a question right at the end. We are actually trying to deal with this legislation very sensibly. We have a lot of amendments, but we are not going to be assisted if the Greens political party keep making 15-minute speeches to pursue things that they have said previously—and we are all aware of how the Greens operate on this basis.

I do have some questions for either the mover of the amendments or the minister, and I am happy to have either respond. Senator Milne talked about the Great Barrier Reef—which she often does. I always respond by saying that I live up off the reef and I know people who make their living out of it. It is a very, very important icon for Australia’s tourism industry and therefore jobs. It is something that everyone wants to protect. Senator Milne quotes scientists—as does Senator Wong—in relation to the Great Barrier Reef. As both of them would know, not all of the scientists most closely involved with the reef share the same pessimism. They do have a pessimism about the reef, but it is not so much in relation to climate change as it is about water quality and other impacts on the Great Barrier Reef. Were we able to fix the water quality and the run-off into the Great Barrier Reef lagoon—if we addressed those man-made difficulties for the Great Barrier Reef—we would give the reef, so I am told by serious scientists who work daily with the reef, a chance of properly adapting to a climate which has been changing, as I said in my speech in the second reading debate, for over 100 million years now.

I suspect that nobody is actually a climate change sceptic—although we are often accused of that by both the minister and Senator Milne. The climate is clearly changing. I do not think anyone can deny that. Whether it is man made, as I always say, I do not know; I am not a scientist. If you take the top 20,000 scientists in the world, they come down fifty-fifty. But I am always of the view that you take out risk insurance—and, if everyone else is going to do it, by all means Australia should do it. That has always been my position. I have never resiled from that.

But there is a question I want to put to either the mover of the amendments or the minister. As I understand it, Australia produces less than 1.4 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. My understanding is that if this legislation is passed as it is—and I say this by way of a question—then Australia’s emissions would drop from 1.4 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1.2 per cent or thereabouts. If Senator Milne’s amendments are agreed to and it goes up to, say, 40 per cent, I would assume that Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions would drop from 1.4 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions to about one per cent. Correct me if I am wrong. I ask that by way of a question.

I was also going to raise a matter which I think Senator Milne also raised. The American legislature has not legislated for any greenhouse gas target at this stage and is unlikely to, certainly before March and perhaps not even after that. There is no greenhouse legislation in the United States. President Obama, as I understand the American system of government, is unable to make the law. He has to say what his target is, or he has to say what he hopes to achieve, in the hope that Congress might approve, but he is not a one-man band in the United States. I heard it reported this morning that he was going to Copenhagen with a target, as I recall, of five per cent of 1995 levels, which was pointed out to be something like 3½ to four per cent of 1990 levels.

I heard Senator Milne’s throw-off at former Senator Robert Hill, who did a fabulous job at Kyoto. Senator Milne, as is her left wing bent, criticises all the glorification and partying that took place when they came home from Kyoto with the deal. Of course, when a subsequent government put a bit of ink on some paper and signed the protocol, Senator Milne was one of those out there applauding Mr Rudd for signing off on Senator Hill’s work. It is always that hypocrisy of the Greens that gets to me—attack Senator Hill for getting the Kyoto agreement but applaud the Labor Party when they simply sign off on what Senator Hill did.

I have been diverted from my question. Are those figures correct? The real question I want to ask, and I have asked Senator Wong this in estimates and in questions without notice—I have asked and asked and can never get a response—is what impact will Australia reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 0.2 per cent have on the Great Barrier Reef? Assume that America, China, India and Russia do nothing, and there is no suggestion at this stage that they are going to. President Obama is going to breeze in there for half a day. You can understand what he thinks is likely to happen in Copenhagen—not very much. But making that assumption, my question is: what will Australia legislating for a 0.2 per cent reduction do to help the Great Barrier Reef? How will it save it? Can someone explain that to me?

I am with the minister if China, India, Russia, the United States, Colombia and Brazil do it. If they reduce their emissions by between five and 20 per cent, then perhaps it might be meaningful and by all means Australia should be in there—perhaps even edging it up a bit. We have got to be in there, but we should not do it in advance of anyone else for no benefit to the environment. In fact, it will be to the detriment of the environment because you will export jobs and industry overseas to a regime that has a less restrictive carbon emission regime than Australia does. So you make the environment worse, you destroy jobs of working families, you destroy industries, you destroy the Australian lifestyle—