Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

respiratory illness is being brought to the gorilla populations by humans and not the other way around. We are seeing planetary disaster because of global warming.

Australia had a framework to deal with this. When I came into the Senate, I came to address global warming. As an environmentalist I have campaigned all my life for the protection of the environment. But I realised that no amount of areas saved can survive global warning. Unless you deal with that, you will ultimately lose everything, from marine ecosystems through to terrestrial ecosystems, and you will also see impacts on people. That is exactly what we are seeing and that is why we developed a clean energy package.

We worked very hard. It was a condition that the Greens made with former Prime Minister Gillard, before she became Prime Minister, that we would have a legislated carbon price and that it would come into effect by 1 July, 2012. And that is exactly what happened. It was an incredibly well designed package that was recognised by the International Energy Agency as template legislation for developed countries. We should be really proud of that. Australia took a leading role in the development of legislation that other countries could look to, together with complementary measures—things like the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

It is an emissions trading scheme. The only reason it has a fixed price for three years—and I remind people that former Prime Minister Rudd's scheme also had a fixed price for one year—was that Labor and the Greens could not agree on the level of ambition that was required, and we still do not. The Greens are the only party in this parliament who are prepared to say we have to get to a 40 to 60 per cent reduction by 2030 and zero net carbon by 2050 to give ourselves even a 50 per cent chance of avoiding two degrees. That is the reality of the level of ambition. Five per cent is so far from where it needs to be it is laughable. It was laughable in 2007 and it cannot be taken seriously as a target now, either to address the science or to address the global equity.

If you are trying to get to a 2015 treaty, it has to have a level of ambition that gives us a chance. That is absolutely the commitment the Greens will be making, from one end of the planet to the other—we are represented in parliaments of 70 countries around the world. We want a global treaty on global warming. As part of it, money needs to go to developing countries that, through no fault of their own, are now suffering the consequences of global warming. That is why we have to do that. It is immoral for Australia to stand up in a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and block finance for developing countries to adapt to global warming.

It is not just the fact that we cannot agree on a level of ambition. The idea of setting up the Climate Change Authority came from the United Kingdom, where they have a high-level scientific panel that advises the British House of Commons on what the level of ambition should be. Climate policy has been depoliticised through that process, and that is as it should be. The Climate Change Authority should make recommendations to the parliament. To its credit, the Climate Change Authority here has made some very important reports and recommendations to the parliament, including the recommendation that we get to the 40 to 60 per cent trajectory of reductions by 2030. That is exactly what we should be doing. If you think about that, you know that we have to get on—now.

The other point I want to make is that the rest of the world is already moving. In many ways, the revolution has been won. Renewable energy around the world is expanding at a fast rate. The greatest level of investment in new electricity generation, around the planet, is in renewables. We are hearing that every progressive economy around the world is investing in education and training and decarbonising their electricity system, because they recognise that that is where the jobs, investment and growth are in this century. This is the century of transitioning to a low-carbon economy.