Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Campbell. Will the minister inform the Senate of the action the Australian government is taking to combat and prepare for the effects of climate change? 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

Thank you for a very important question. I think that any Australian who reads reports about the science around climate change or observes with their own eyes what is happening in their own backyards—people in Western Australia will have seen rainfall fall by around 20 per cent over the last 25 years—knows that the climate is changing. I encourage all colleagues to attend tonight the film evening that Greg Hunt, my parliamentary secretary, will be hosting in the parliamentary gallery of Al Gore’s film, which graphically goes through some of the science and consequences.

I think it is incredibly important that all Australians do understand that we are facing a global phenomenon that requires not only a serious domestic response with serious investment but also a serious global response. You have in Australia a serious dichotomy of policy approaches. You have a coalition government that is investing billions of dollars across a range of portfolios in technology to clean up coal and to capture carbon and store it to stop it going into the atmosphere, investing hundreds of millions of dollars in renewable energy, investing in hundreds of solar projects across the country and investing in Solar Cities. The Prime Minister was in Adelaide last week announcing the world’s first solar city—

George Campbell (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator George Campbell interjecting—

Paul Calvert (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator George Campbell, shouting across the chamber is disorderly!

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

transferring entire suburbs in South Australia across to solar energy. We are investing in a range of important domestic programs but also, very importantly, engaging internationally through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. I will be visiting Zurich next week, invited as a friend of the president of the conference of the parties on the framework convention, to help the world steer towards an effective post-Kyoto regime. You need to engage effectively internationally and you need effective domestic policies. Through the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate with the United States, China, Korea, Japan and India, we are working amongst the world’s biggest economies, with roughly 50 per cent of the world’s population, to develop an effective international mechanism to get secure energy in the future but also much lower emissions.

There is an alternative approach: there is the Labor Party’s approach. The Labor Party’s approach is to have a unilateral cut in Australia’s emissions by 60 per cent in the next 40-odd years. We know, for example, that in the Hunter Valley the Labor Party are opposing the Anvil Hill coalmine. Their solution is to close down coalmining and put people out of work. In fact, this is how Kelly Hoare, the member in the Hunter, describes the Hunter Valley: ‘The Hunter is one of the world’s carbon capitals and home to a rapacious coalmining industry.’

That is the Labor Party’s view of coalmining, and their policy of a 60 per cent cut in emissions in Australia would have catastrophic consequences for the Australian economy. The Labor Party policy, which proposes a 60 per cent cut, has been modelled by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, which shows that, apart from a 10 per cent lower GDP growth and a 44 per cent reduction in agriculture, it would cause a 20 per cent reduction in wages. That is Labor’s policy. If you are a nurse on $820 a week, the Labor policy on climate change would cut your salary by $170 a week. If you are a teacher on $889 a week, Labor’s policy on climate change would cut your wage by $184 a week, and if you are a labourer on $679 a week Labor’s policy on climate change would reduce your wage by— (Time expired)