Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Chair. It is very much related because all of these measures are completely about Australia's efforts to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. They are about what we do in Australia in deciding whether or not land access for agricultural production is part of the criteria to pursue carbon farming initiatives under this legislation and whether these will have an impact on our contribution as part of the global community to try to address global greenhouse gas emissions. We have to put our efforts under this legislation, and under the carbon tax, into the context of what our trade partners and competitors in other parts of the world do. I draw your attention, Chair, to the fact that in China emissions will go up from about 10.3 billion tonnes now to about 17.9 billion tonnes of CO2 in 2020 according to the government's own Clean Energy Future modelling. That is an increase of 7.6 billion tonnes, which is more than 10 times the amount of annual emissions that we put out here in Australia.

The figure that really struck me was that back in 2008, when the government did this really comprehensive modelling on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, Treasury thought that China by 2020 would put out 16.1 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions. Just in the last three years, the government's expectations of how much CO2 emissions will be put out by China have gone up by 1.8 billion tonnes. Just the variation is more than three times as much as Australia puts out in a year.

Amendments like this one that we are talking about now are quite important, but we always have to put in context what our efforts here in Australia can do and put those into the context of what is happening currently in China. The government often talks about emissions intensity. I make the point very quickly in the short time that I have remaining: emissions intensity in Australia is lower than it is in China. It was 0.8 kilograms of CO2 per year per US$ of production in 2005 when it was 1.38 in China. In 2010 it was 0.66 in Australia and it was 1.06 in China. (Time expired)