Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Well, emissions are increasing. Let's just remember: our emissions are increasing. The reason we are on track to achieve that target is an accounting trick. It is simply an accounting trick with a carryover that allows us to meet that target while our emissions increase. That tells you all you need to know about whether achieving that target is of any meaningful value.

And we have Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull spruiking Tony Abbott's climate targets on the world stage—targets that, again, when it comes to international comparators with OECD countries, are the worst in the world. Based on 2000 levels, which are the benchmark that many other developed countries use, we are talking about a 19 per cent reduction. You can get bamboozled with the facts and figures, the numbers and climate targets and so on, but just know this: if we achieve the targets that have been established by Tony Abbott and taken by the Prime Minister to Paris, we will remain the biggest per capita polluter in the world. That tells you everything you need to know about the level of ambition when it comes to achieving those targets.

All this comes at a time when we have a prime minister who promised to put science and innovation at the heart of policymaking in this parliament. If he is true to those words then the targets we take to Paris need to be based on the best available science, and the best available science tells us that we should be achieving a 60 per cent reduction by 2030 if we are to ensure that what we are doing is consistent with the huge body of expert opinion when it comes to climate change. But it is not just about achieving an environmental imperative, as critical as that is. It is also about driving the innovation that we need in this country to transform our economy from one that is reliant on those sources of generation that helped us to achieve our prosperity over the last century but which will not be the pathway to prosperity over this coming century. We need to recognise that investment in renewable generation is precisely that—an investment—and that, while people discuss the costs of that investment, there is a much bigger cost in not acting.

The Prime Minister should start with a couple of simple things. He should abandon his plans to axe the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, for they are hubs of innovation that have helped to kick-start the transformation we need. And he needs to recognise that if he does not tackle this challenge he will simply be another prime minister who says one thing and does another.