Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Employment (Senator Abetz) to a question without notice asked by the Leader of the Australian Greens (Senator Di Natale) today relating to emissions reduction targets.

Senator Di Natale, Leader of the Greens, put to Minister Abetz, 'Hey, what about that 70 per cent of Australians who actually want climate action, according to the latest survey, and who want our economy transformed to a pollution-free, job-rich economy?' Senator Abetz, somewhat perplexingly, started a tirade that, in fact, we were the ones with an extreme ideology, and he also claimed that the Greens would never be happy with any target that the Abbott government proposed.

Sadly, it seems that he was probably right about that last part, given that this government continues to ignore the scientific advice from a whole raft of sources but, most importantly, from the Climate Change Authority, which is the independent body that is set up to advise governments, no matter what political persuasion they are, on what the science says needs to be done so that we can tackle global warming and even take advantage of the ability to create new, clean jobs in renewables, in innovation and in ecotourism in the low-carbon economy.

The Climate Change Authority have recommended that this nation adopt targets of 40 to 60 per cent by 2030, based on the year 2000 as a baseline that Australia has been using for a long time now. Prime Minister Abbott, of course, is rumoured to be going absolutely nowhere near that. I hope that that reporting is inaccurate and I hope that, when cabinet have those discussions tonight, they do in fact pay attention to the science, maybe even follow the science and maybe even pay attention to that 70 per cent of Australians who support tackling global warming and genuinely retooling our economy for productivity in a clean future. Instead, we see rumours that in fact the Prime Minister will artificially inflate the figures by choosing a totally different baseline year. Prime Minister Abbott is now moving almost unilaterally to 2005, with no explanation. We know that 2005 was the year that Australia had its highest carbon pollution, so of course the Prime Minister is trying to artificially inflate his likely pathetically low figures.

Senator Abetz also talked about energy poverty and how, somehow, Australia's coal is going to be a solution to energy poverty. If only that were the case. In fact, even the World Bank, joining a chorus of others, now says what we have known for a long time: coal is no solution to energy poverty—particularly not in India, where much of rural and regional India does not have an electricity grid and where, even if they did have a grid, that coal is going to be far too expensive for them to afford. The chorus of experts is that energy security and the solution to energy poverty is distributed, clean, renewable energy. That is where Australia could be not only pulling our weight globally but actually genuinely helping people and making money at the same time. That is the sort of positive, clean-energy economy that we could have. Instead, we have the Prime Minister with his wagon hitched just to coal. None of the science supports that and, clearly, the vast majority of Australians do not support that, so the only conclusion you can draw is that he has been bought by the fossil fuel industry, which makes very generous donations to his party and, I might add, to the other side of politics as well.

So, once again, we have faux outrage from Minister Abetz, making, sadly, all sorts of nonsense remarks. When we asked this question about climate change—and I want to flag this because this is an important point—one of the senators from the Nationals' quadrant here called out, 'You and your frogs!' That is the level of debate that a member of the government thinks of when we are talking about global warming that threatens our entire economy, our entire planet, our very way of life, human life and biodiversity—all of the things that we know. To that particular senator it was about 'you and your frogs'. Maybe this is what happens when you sack most of the CSIRO scientists, who were formerly advising the government on climate policy. You get this fundamental tinfoil-hat brigade and an absolute denial of climate science.

Senator Di Natale raised some very important economic figures on the drop in global coal demand. I do not know why the government will not listen to science, but usually they listen to money. In this instance they are not even listening to the money. They are not even factoring in that China's coal imports have reduced by 38 per cent and that India has experienced an 11 per cent drop in coal imports in just one month. The writing is on the wall. The opportunity here for Australia is to do our bit and to retool our economy positively for prosperity and a clean future. The government is not up to that job. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.