Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

And, indeed, as Senator Collins herself knows, there is some electoral pain for us at the moment. I sat and listened to Senator Cameron talking about Peter Costello's contribution as the Treasurer of this country. He paid back $96 billion of Paul Keating's debt, he then was able to free up $5 billion to $6 billion a year in interest no longer being paid out and the Rudd followed by Gillard governments then had access to some $20 billion in the bank. The Howard government had no net debt—a government that had a surplus rather than a deficit—so even for Senator Cameron it is very, very difficult to stretch that truth that far.

Whilst I refer to Senator Cameron, if I may, I seek to table as part of my contribution the record of a meeting that I had with the Hon. Tomas Christensen of the Climate Change Support Team of the United Nations last year. I seek leave to table that document.

Leave granted.

I thank my colleagues around the chamber for allowing me to do that. The catalyst for doing that was a contribution that Senator Cameron made yesterday about the impact of bushfires in the Blue Mountains. The document I just tabled is a statement made by a senior UN officer at the time—Christiana Figueres, the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change—in which she referred to the New South Wales fires at the time being due to climate change. I had the pleasure for some years of being the chief executive officer of the bushfires board of Western Australia. My reason for tabling this document is to inform Senator Cameron and advise the chamber, as indeed I did the United Nations when I was there last year, that the bushfires in New South Wales, far from being due to climate change, were due to an absolute abrogation of the responsibility of fire managers, land managers and others, and that was to undertake fuel reduction activities in the Blue Mountains.

I have made many speeches in this place predicting the day when the Blue Mountains would go up. Why? Because, where they should have been attending to five to 10 per cent reduction in fuel levels in those Mediterranean forests, they were down to less than one per cent. Far from Senator Cameron's assertion that those bushfires were due to climate change: if they were due to climate change, they would also have been due to climate change from the 1820s and 1830s, when fires were first recorded in those areas—long before this apparent involvement of human beings in the Industrial Age. They were due to manageable deficiencies that should have been addressed at that time.

It allows me to make the point in this contribution that we have already endured incredible cost under the carbon tax, which of course only went up again on the first day of this month. There has been and there will be no decrease in carbon dioxide emissions levels as a result of that action. As a result of the $500-plus a year that it has cost residences, there has been and will be no loss of carbon dioxide emissions. We know what has happened. We know that Australian manufacturing, often carbon-intensive, has moved offshore to countries where there are far fewer restrictions than we have in Australia, so it is probable that, despite any other action than that of introducing a carbon tax in Australia, the carbon dioxide emissions levels around the globe have actually increased.

And it is a very significant shame that Senator Cameron this afternoon would have made the observation in his belief that the people of Australia are fools. I say to Senator Cameron that they are not fools. I will quote what I believe to have been his words in his contribution this afternoon: 'Australian people misunderstood what we are doing leading up to the last election.' If he goes and has a look at the poll results, he will certainly be assured that the Australian people completely understood the position of the coalition as opposed to that of the Labor Party and the Greens. In my own state of Western Australia there was an increase in our primary and two-party-preferred vote. It is a state in which we now hold 12 of the 15 lower house seats and six of the 12 Senate positions. I think the people of my state understood very well what impact the carbon tax has had. When I have the opportunity to comment on the repeal of the mining tax I will be able to share with the chamber the impact of those two dastardly taxes on the community of Kalgoorlie, where I was the other day and where employment levels have dropped. Unemployment has increased significantly, and people have left the area. I could comment—and I will—in more detail on the town of Karratha, in the Pilbara, where there are now 400 vacant homes. I understand one real estate agent alone in Port Hedland further north in the Pilbara has 400 homes on the market apart from those that are vacant.

So we know what the impact of the carbon tax has been. We know the impact of carbon leakage, where emissions-intensive businesses move overseas. We know what has already happened and we know what will happen again in the future. We hear mention of emissions trading schemes. Having studied this closely, I say don't for any one moment hold your breath if you think that countries around the world are likely to introduce an emissions trading scheme any time soon. The Chinese may be paying lip service to it but have absolutely no intention of introducing an ETS. In the United States, we know, the Chicago market for carbon collapsed for two reasons. First, there was no interest in it. Second, there were already the early signs of corruption, so it was completely wiped off the Chicago markets. We know what has happened to the price of carbon in Europe: as European economies have declined, so the price of carbon has declined to ridiculous levels. For us now to be paying $25.40 per tonne makes a total mockery of any action Australia ought or should take in the absence of a global solution. Others from the other side have mentioned then Prime Minister Howard's comments with regard to an emissions trading scheme, but he always prefaced this with the comments, of course, that we would not move alone; we would move in concert with our trading partners and, indeed, with our trading competitors.

We look at some of the comments that were made in the chamber yesterday by Senator Cameron and Senator Milne with absolute despair at what will, should, could or may be happening dynamically. As a person with some experience in the biological sciences and as a person with some degree of optimism, what I can tell you is that organisms on this planet have always, still are and will always adapt. For example, there has been great dialogue and discussion about the polar bear populations in the Arctic. I recently made it my business to go examine what is happening. I came upon a paper presented only about a month ago—on 11 June in the United Kingdom—by Professor Susan Crockford, herself 35 years an expert in the biology and zoology of polar bears and their evolution. Her conclusion is that there has been no adverse effect as a result of changes in the Arctic Circle.

So I went to the other end of the planet to learn from a paper of May 2014 that the Antarctic sea ice is at its highest levels since measurements were first taken: some 12.965 million square kilometres, which has gone up from 12.7 million since 2010. Those are facts. You can dispute them but they are the facts.

Senator Di Natale interjecting—

The moral superiority of this gentleman, Senator Di Natale, is interesting. If you happen to agree with him on something, that is fine. If you happen to disagree with him, he attacks you personally. Senator Di Natale, yes I do have a scientific background.