Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to follow up in the same vein in terms of the targets. Minister, I have the explanatory memorandum in front of me. Page 6 says—and it is on the public record—that the medium-term national target is to reduce emissions by five per cent to 15 per cent of the 2000 levels by 2020. An article in today’s Examiner on page 11 talks about the various countries and their targets. Some have just been recently released and I think the US indicated a target last Thursday. What I would like to get is an update on the target for the various countries—like the US—compared to Australia at 2000 levels. We have five to 15 per cent of 2000 levels. That will be the cut by 2020. This report says the US, one of the world’s biggest emitters, has promised to cut emissions by 4.5 per cent by 2020 based on 1990 levels.

Could the government correlate that and put it into figures so that we can compare at 2000 levels? I saw a report on Friday which compared the cut to a 12 per cent cut and I saw another one on the weekend—I think it was in the Australian Financial Reviewthat talked about a 17 per cent cut. I would really appreciate that if the government could provide that information. I am sure the government would have done that research to compare apples with apples. We can then get the US target comparison. Likewise, Senator Williams referred to China. From what I read from this report, China is the biggest greenhouse polluter. It has promised to cut its carbon intensity emissions per unit of GDP by up to 45 per cent by 2020 compared to 2005 levels. Minister, can you help us by comparing apples with apples? Likewise, can you give us the figures for the European Union, Japan, Brazil, India, Russia, Africa and other relevant countries? I am happy for you to table a document to summarise that. That would be greatly appreciated.