Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It's absolutely beyond doubt that climate change is costing us big time—the catastrophic fires we've seen this summer, the devastation to communities, to local businesses, to the ecosystems, and the disruption to our gross national product. It's all there for anyone who has eyes wide open.

While I acknowledge that these are environmental problems—climate change is an environmental problem—it does surprise people when I tell them, yes, of course climate change is an environmental problem, but first and foremost it's an economic problem. Anyone who has a basic understanding of economics and business and finance knows about externalities that are created from business activities. Climate change, CO2 pollution and other forms of greenhouse gas emissions are an externality—an economic cost. It never ceases to amaze me that those on the other side, who claim to be champions of markets, don't understand that if they applied basic economic principles they would understand that you need to use those tools to tackle climate change and, therefore, price the cost, price the externality to our economy and efficiently deal with it.

Because it's an economic problem, Acting Deputy President Griff, I'd put to you that nearly every environmental problem I could name, and many social problems, are first and foremost economic problems. And because these all come from business activities, they are also ultimately a political problem. You can't fix a broken system without doing that through parliament and through politics. This is where it gets really interesting with this mob on the other side. They are in the pockets of special interests—they always have been, especially the fossil fuel industry—and they refuse to act. They tore up the world's best package on tackling greenhouse gases and CO2, purely for cynical political reasons and to support their big backers in the fossil fuel and mining industries. Now we have absolutely nothing—zero policy to cost.

Australians are waking up to the fact that there are costs of inaction. We heard ad nauseum from Mr Tony Abbott about 'axe the tax' and the costs of climate change. But we've never had an acknowledgement at all from the other side—from so called conservatives who understand economics and finance—that there are costs of inaction. Go and speak to the insurance companies if you want to understand what the costs of inaction are. Go and speak to local governments, go and speak to the fireys, and go and speak to the communities who are facing increased extreme weather events—droughts, floods, cyclones and bushfires, and it is only going to get worse. The best available science tells us if we don't act on climate now it is going to get worse, and it is going to cost us billions of dollars more. The estimates I've heard so far from these bushfires—and we'll get into this next week at Senate estimates with Treasury—are at least $100 billion in cost to our economy. That is one event. So, if you want to have an honest debate, yes, there will be costs of transitioning our economy to a clean energy future, but those costs are by far outweighed by the costs of inaction. There are opportunities for transitioning out of coal and out of other fossil fuels towards 100 per cent renewable energy.

I'm proud that my party has been the party of renewable energy. We are the party that negotiated $10 billion for wind farms and $10 billion to invest in ARENA and in the CEFC to supercharge and drive this transition. We will be the party that will be introducing a Green New Deal that Australians will vote for and that will be jobs rich and actually solve the problem, solve the externality, tackle the economic problem and tackle the political problem, because we are the only party with a— (Time expired)