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

I will briefly respond to some of the subject of Senator Macdonald’s contribution. He asked why we need to do this before Copenhagen, and I say two things to him. First, we want to go to Copenhagen with a plan to meet our targets. I would have thought one of the things we in this chamber all agree on is that this is a significant reform. We will be reducing emissions for the first time in our history whilst continuing to grow our economy. We have never before achieved that. We want a plan to meet our targets. We want to be able to do it at the lowest cost. We accept the advice that was put to your government. I was just reminding myself of your own election commitment, Senator Macdonald—with lovely pictures of Mr Vaile as well, with Senator Nash, and Mr Howard and Mr Costello on the front—which was to establish ‘an emissions trading system, the most comprehensive in the world, to enable the market to determine the most efficient means of lowering greenhouse gas emissions’.

The second question is: what is wrong with doing it by press release? Well, press releases do not fix the climate. We want a plan to meet our targets. The point about the press release issue is that there was a suggestion by Senator Boswell that somehow we ought not to rely on a public announcement by the President of the United States. The important point we keep asserting—and I have to wonder how it is that the party that used to pride itself on being the superior economic manager, according to its rhetoric, could advocate for a position of continued economic irresponsibility—is that we know that delay will increase the costs. We know that delays will increase the costs, so the people in this debate who say we should delay are actually arguing for Australia’s price tag for action on climate change to grow.

Finally, I will just make this point: we have in fact designed the scheme so that we can take account of what happens at Copenhagen. That is why we will not commit to our targets until we are clear about what has occurred. But, again, I pose this question—and Senator Macdonald may not be in this camp but I suspect he will be: does any one of you believe that those who have done what they have done over the last week will change their minds in February? Does anyone honestly believe that?