Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Through you, Madam Acting Deputy President, Senator Wong should be quite familiar with the fact that, in the Murray-Darling area, there is no evidence that drought has increased over that period. We had large droughts both at Federation and at the turn of the century, but in between we had record rainfalls, as we have also had very recently.

We do face incredible uncertainty about how the climate might be changing and about how sensitive it might be to carbon dioxide levels. We face uncertainty in many parts of our lives and we often do not know what action to take to mitigate the risks. I do not know when I am going to die, but I do have life insurance to mitigate that risk, in case it unfortunately occurs. But, if I received information that I am healthier than I thought, that I do not have as much to worry about, of course I would change how much insurance I buy or make sure the costs of that insurance were not greater than the costs of the actual risk that I faced. The risk of dangerous climate change has reduced since Copenhagen. That is confirmed by the IPCC and by the actual evidence on temperature data, extreme weather events, drought and sea levels. Accordingly it holds that the policy action we should take in response should be less ambitious, less costly and less binding than what was envisaged at Copenhagen six years ago.

I support the moves to make aspects of any new international agreement non-binding and reviewable. There is no clear global solution to this issue. We should instead let nations make their own decisions about how to respond in a cooperative and flexible manner. The evidence that there is dangerous climate change is not as strong and we should therefore not impose large costs on the global economy, especially for developing countries. In addition, rigid policies that are hard to adjust as the evidence becomes more definitive, one way or another, are unwise.

So proposals to introduce economy-wide carbon taxes or emissions trading schemes are not the right solutions. Proposals by the Labor Party to slash our carbon dioxide emissions by almost half in less than 15 years are ridiculous and put at risk major industries and thousands of jobs. Worse, they will do nothing for the environment during this time but cost our economy a fortune. The right approach is to act in a no-regrets manner. We should adopt policies that will have other benefits independent of their impact on greenhouse gases, that are agile and do not impose large costs or transition costs on our economy.