Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, may I congratulate our new leader, Senator Minchin, on his appointment, and our deputy, Senator Coonan. My question is to Senator Ian Campbell, the Minister for the Environment and Heritage. Would the minister update the Senate on the Australian government’s progress and involvement in international climate change initiatives? Is the minister aware of any alternative policies?

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Eggleston for raising what is an incredibly important policy question. I did catch the end, or possibly the middle, of Senator Allison’s most articulate contribution to a debate on energy efficiency measures that the government is bringing into the parliament at the moment, wherein she described this as arguably—and it is certainly an argument that is worth having—one of the most substantial policy challenges facing the globe.

Globally, since industrialisation of mankind occurred in around 1850 until about the year 2000 we have pumped just over a trillion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. It is expected that with no change we will pump about another 2½ trillion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere over the next 50 years. This will see the amount of carbon significantly increase and the risk of serious damage to the climate, the risk of serious damage to ecosystems and the risk of damage to mankind and human settlement will become quite substantial. So it does require very high-level, high-quality policy internationally.

Since the parliament last sat, I have been to the United Nations framework convention conference in Montreal, where the world did get together, it did realise that what we have done so far under the Kyoto protocol is simply not good enough and not effective and that a lot more needs to be done. Australia took a positive and proactive role in designing a beyond Kyoto framework that I believe gives great hope to ensure that the foundations of Kyoto will be replaced with something that is far more effective and bring into place a framework and a pathway for action, particularly for developing countries like India and China.

Also since the parliament last sat—and Senator Eggleston’s question goes to this—we hosted the first meeting of the Asia-Pacific clean development and climate change partnership in Sydney in mid-January. It attracted senior cabinet level representation from the United States of America, China, Korea, India and Japan, and we resolved to establish eight new working groups. They cover areas as important as the fast tracking of renewable energy and distributor generation power. That task force will be chaired by the Republic of Korea. It will be co-chaired by Australia. That task force will see, under the Asia-Pacific climate change partnership, substantial new cooperation amongst those economies, including the rapidly growing developed economies of China and India, which are not covered by commitments under Kyoto, for more hard work, more investment and more involvement in new renewable energy technologies and deployment. Equally, the buildings and appliances task force headed by Korea and co-chaired by the United States is trying to roll out the technologies to ensure that we can have a strong economy and strong job security in countries like Australia and, of course, far more efficient buildings.

Senator Eggleston asked about alternative policies. We have seen over the summer period confusion amongst the Labor Party. On the one hand Mr Beazley and others described the Asia-Pacific partnership as just a bit of spin. Mr Beazley’s latest comment was that he would not even sneer at the AP6. They have had no new policy for what is coming up to 10 years in opposition, just the two birds and the parrot saying, ‘Let’s sign Kyoto.’ The only thing to have come out of the Labor Party is Mr Martin Ferguson, a senior opposition frontbencher, imploring the Labor Party to get real on this, to give up its political correctness on this, to stop following the Greens on this issue and to support technological solutions and a fair dinkum approach to climate change—the sort of approach that the coalition has shown leadership on over recent years. (Time expired)