Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I pick up the point made by Senator Sherry, particularly as it relates to the meeting held on 7 and 8 November in Edinburgh, at which, as Senator Sherry quite correctly said, our Treasurer, Mr Swan, represented Australia. It was a meeting of the G20 finance ministers, who were pushing very hard for a decision to be made there and then in advance of Copenhagen. The decision they wanted agreement on I think was an expenditure of some US$150 billion annually by the developed countries. Treasurer Swan quite correctly said that there was no way that Australia could contribute prior to Copenhagen—there was no way that Australia could make that commitment prior to Copenhagen. He said that we should wait until after the meeting in Copenhagen before any commitment should be made by Australia. That is critically important, because any reasonable, rational person would agree with him.

It was interesting that the Europeans were pushing very hard, because they, of course, are low carbon emitters. The reason many of the European countries are low carbon emitters is due to their reliance on nuclear power for electricity generation. For example, 80 per cent of France’s electricity is generated by nuclear means. On the very same weekend as the meeting, 7-8 November, the Labour government in the UK announced that they were going to build 10 new nuclear power stations. So the Europeans were trying to wedge countries like Australia, making the observation that we should be committing. The figure that I have seen advertised that Australia should make as our contribution is some $7 billion annually. We could find ourselves in the ironic position that China, being one of the developing countries, could be the recipient of Australia’s $7 billion annually, and who would we look to to borrow the $7 billion from but China. Most of the borrowings that have taken place, certainly by the United States and probably by Australia in the purchase of our government bonds in recent months, have been from China. So we find ourselves in the unusual position of borrowing $7 billion a year from China to give it back to them on the basis of them being a developing country. This is untenable and unconscionable. The Treasurer was quite correct in his statement that we should wait until after Copenhagen. Of course, it simply emphasises and underpins that we should be waiting more generally until after Copenhagen.

The only comment I will otherwise make at this moment relates to China, because there has been so much mention of it in recent times. The minister has referred to the possibility of the Chinese indicating that they might show some interest in introducing some sort of a carbon-reducing plan sometime in the future. I do remind the Senate that it was only this time last year that the central government in China admitted that they have no idea how many illegal coal fired power stations are being commissioned each month.

We should all recall in this discussion—and I will bring it up at a time more relevant—that the central governments of countries like India, China and Indonesia do not command the sort of relationship with regional and state and territory governments as we in Australia do. A very simple example of that is the Stern Hu case, where the central government had to defer to a local mayoral government. We had the example recently in Indonesia with the Oceanic Viking, where an agreement was struck between our Prime Minister and the President of Indonesia only to result in the local regional government simply ignoring what had been struck. It is important that in this debate we understand that when a central government in those countries makes an indication or an expression or a commitment they simply do not have the capacity to be able to honour it in the same way that we have in our country. More on that later, but on the point that Senator Sherry raised—which was the engagement of our Treasurer, Mr Swan, on that occasion of 8 November—his statement at the conclusion was that we must not make a commitment until after Copenhagen.