Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by the Minister representing the Minister for Agriculture, Drought, and Emergency Management (Senator Ruston) and the Minister for Defence (Senator Reynolds) to questions without notice asked today by Senator Ciccone and Senator Watt relating to climate change.

One of the big issues dominating political discussion at the moment is climate change: its impact on our economy, its impact on jobs and its impact on the environment. One of the reasons why this debate is so alive at the moment is the shocking bushfires that we saw over the summer break and the predictions from the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and many other scientific groups that we face similar—in fact, more and more severe—natural disasters into the future as a result of climate change. That's one of the reasons federal Labor have in the last few days announced our commitment, should we be elected at the next election, to ensuring that Australia becomes carbon neutral by 2050.

To start with, what does that mean? What that means is simply that we would, as a country, absorb or offset at least as much pollution as we emit into the atmosphere. I note, in fact, that the government has made the very same commitment by signing Australia up to international agreements at the Paris convention about four or five years ago. The government has made exactly the same commitment that Labor has announced. You wouldn't know that from the reaction from the government. Many people, from Senator Canavan to the Prime Minister himself, are running around like Chicken Little, saying that the whole world will fall in in Australia, that every industry in Australia will fall over and that every job in Australia will disappear. If that's the case, you have to wonder why it is that the government itself has made the very same commitment. I can't imagine that this government would want to see every industry or every job disappear, and it wouldn't have signed up to that commitment if it actually would have that effect. That's why it is so patently false for the government to continue going around making these comments.

As has already been said by a number of people, in some respects there's nothing revolutionary about this commitment. It's something that more than 70 countries around the world have already committed to, as have some of the biggest emitters in the corporate world in Australia—whether it be BP, Shell, Santos, Origin, Qantas or BHP. These are companies that create a lot of emissions as well as creating a lot of jobs. They've decided that they can reach carbon neutrality by 2050, and I ask the government: why is it that these companies, some of the biggest emitters in this country, are capable of doing this but it's so terrible and disastrous an idea for Australia as a country to do so?

One of the other groups that have made a commitment around carbon neutrality is Meat & Livestock Australia, which represents the beef industry in this country. Not only have they made a commitment to reach carbon neutrality but they are aiming for their industry to be carbon neutral by 2030, 20 years ahead of Labor's commitment to reach this point by 2050. Again, the beef industry, and agriculture in general, is one of the bigger emitting industries in this country. It creates a lot of jobs and a lot of export dollars, but it also creates a lot of emissions. So you would think that, if there were one industry that would be concerned about signing up to carbon neutrality in any decade coming forward, it would be the agriculture industry and, in particular, the beef industry. But they've done that. They are aiming to reach carbon neutrality by 2030, and it's no surprise, because between 2005 and 2016 the beef industry actually reduced its emissions by 60 per cent. This shows this can be done. This does not mean the end of the beef industry or agriculture. This can be done.

Why are they doing so? Their then managing director, Richard Norton, said, 'Achieving this goal'—carbon neutrality—'would put Australia head and shoulders above its competitors.' This is actually an economically sensible thing to do for the beef industry. This is not just about the environmental benefits which we will all gain by reducing our emissions; this is actually the economically sensible thing to do, because the beef industry, like so many others, knows that the cost of doing nothing, as the government would have us do, is far higher than the cost of taking action on climate change.

Senator Ruston in her answers, in the spirit of this government's approach to climate denialism, sought to deny the commitment of the MLA and then went on to deny and reject the premise of the question when we put to her figures that were actually provided by the federal government's own bodies. ABARES, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, has said that over the last two decades more than $1 billion has been wiped from annual agricultural production due to climate change. The agriculture industry knows that becoming carbon neutral is not only good for the environment but good for their bottom line. The claims that government members are making, that this industry and other industries will die, are simply wrong.