Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I do not have the International Energy Agency document to which the senator is referring in front of me, but listening to the question I think the propo­sition is: as China has been growing, its emissions have been growing. I do not think there is anybody who would suggest that that is not the case. We have seen extraordinary growth in China over the last 20 years as well as an increase in disposable income and of course that growth is one of the strengths of the Australian economy. One of the underlying strengths of the Australian economy is the ongoing growth in China. I would have thought that the senator would not be churlish about that.

I would make the point that the opposition have persisted with the proposition that other countries, including China, are not acting on climate change—amongst the array of reasons they put forward against action on climate change. Of course they neglect to remind Australians that China has the world's largest installed renewable energy electricity generation capacity—some 37 gigawatts of renewable power capacity; more than any other country in the world—and that China has also indicated it proposes to introduce emissions trading pilot schemes in a number of provinces, including the industrial centres of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong. The World Bank recently indicated these schemes may be expanded to a national scheme by 2015. The fact is that there are other countries that recognise that to move ahead in the global economy and to be a first-rate economy, you need to be a clean energy economy. On this side, we understand that. Regrettably, those on the other side who did understand that are silent. (Time expired)