Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Nash, it is actually what Senator Williams said. I do not think it is reasonable for senators who oppose action on climate change to try to fudge the facts to assist their argument. They can argue it, if they wish, on the basis that they do not believe the science—which is some of them—or for whatever reason, but it is not correct to say that we are acting alone. The second point I would make is by way of a quote—and this is, I think, quite interesting, when you consider that this was the report commissioned by then Prime Minister Howard:

.... waiting until the truly global response emerges before imposing an emissions cap will place costs on Australia by increasing business uncertainty and delaying or losing investment.

              …              …              …

After careful consideration, the Task Group has concluded that Australia should not wait until a genuinely global agreement has been negotiated. It believes that there are benefits, which outweigh the costs, in early adoption by Australia of an appropriate emissions constraint. Such action would enhance investment certainty and provide a long-term platform for responding to carbon constraints.

That was the advice to Prime Minister Howard. Perhaps the best way of describing that is the way in which Dr Peter Shergold described it on the Four Corners program, which was interesting viewing. He said the advice was ‘go soon’. That was the advice to you in government, and that was why the emissions trading scheme policy was adopted by the Howard government and taken to the last election. In relation to Senator Boswell’s polling questions, I suggest that action on climate change was something that was a significant aspect of the last election campaign.

In relation to Senator Williams’s questions, the proposition behind what Senator Williams seems to be suggesting is that we should not do anything because others are not doing enough, we should not do anything because others are bigger or we should not do anything because—I am not quite sure what the other reasons were. Senator Boswell made a comment last week in which he said, ‘I pay my share of the rent.’ This is our share of the rent. If we accept that this is a nation vulnerable to climate change—if we accept, therefore, that we need a global agreement—then we have to be prepared to do our bit. That is what we are proposing: to do our bit, to not stand back and say, ‘You go; you do it.’ That is for two reasons. First, it is not fair. Second, it is because we have an interest in acting and getting the world, as much as we can in pressing, to a global agreement, because if we do not get a global agreement it is our farmers, our land, our natural assets and our economy which will be hit hard. So we have a self-interest as well as a public interest in acting.

The figures I have given in this chamber perhaps a dozen times—I might be exaggerating; maybe half a dozen times—are that at 2020 a five per cent cut would yield about a 138-million-tonne reduction, a 15 per cent target around a 194-million-tonne reduction and at the 25 per cent target around a 249-million-tonne reduction.