Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I had to laugh then. It is not often you get a laugh during this part of the day on a Thursday afternoon in a take note of answers debate, not even on the issue of broadcasting legislation. Senator Crossin—after I do not know how many years she has been here—has finally made me laugh. She thinks that Senator Campbell should not be Treasurer. She has the audacity to venture such an opinion—a senator who will not even see government, a senator who is fighting for her own preselection, a senator coming from the Northern Territory. She is very lucky, other than her factional support, that she is even in this parliament. Yet she dares to venture such a proud and arrogant boast. She thinks not. You have no say over it, Senator Crossin, just as you have no say about the government of the day. I suppose inside this chamber everyone thinks they are a little bigger and more puffed-up in importance than they really are. I can assure you that the two previous speakers really do think that they are better than they are. Have they ever walked past a mirror? Have they ever analysed their own careers? Have they ever dared look into themselves to see what trashed-up careers they really have, particularly the first speaker? Fancy wheeling Senator Carr out. He had already done his research on Senator Campbell.

Senator Carr asked a question today on housing affordability. On the face of it, it was a fair question. We are always happy to receive economic questions on this side. We encourage the other side to ask economic questions to establish their economic credibility. So the opposition got Senator Carr to ask a question on housing affordability. He did not take the opportunity to follow up his own question. There was sincerity in Senator Carr’s question. He had already done his home research on Senator Campbell’s previous careers, previous portfolios and quotes from the Bulletin. It could not matter what Senator Campbell ventured to say today in question time. Senator Carr gravitated to what he knows best—that is, personal attack.

I thought there was something funny and suspicious about question time today. I had an inkling that the Labor Party had completely given up. They spent the first four days asking questions with regard to the Telstra float. That is fair enough. Senator Minchin responded. He obviously browbeat them down so that they could not extend it just one more day on the Telstra float. It would have been more credible than solar panels. That was an issue you picked up from the Sunrise show, anyway—an issue that has been running on the Sunrise show for the last several weeks—but someone now has just got the bright idea it has become a populist issue: ‘Let’s run it.’ But it does not outweigh a more important issue, such as the Telstra issue. I would have given the opposition more credit and so would Senator Minchin. He had probably briefed up before question time on more Telstra questions, but you could not sustain it. You could not sustain a whole week on Telstra questions.

As Senator Abetz even said, ‘Where are all the questions on industrial relations?’—an issue that Labor have said they will make the cornerstone of the next election. This is the No. 1 issue for you. For all you unionists across there—all of you—almost 100 per cent of you are former unionists and certainly belong to a trade union at the moment. Where is the No. 1 issue that you will take to the next election? You have told us that the sky is falling in, that it is detrimental to the Australian worker. Wouldn’t you think you would ask one question in the last five months or so in this chamber? Instead, you raised the issue of solar panels and you used this period of questioning to attack Senator Campbell. Unfortunately, I got distracted. I cannot defend Senator Campbell enough, who, from the moment he came in here, has been a rising star. He is now in cabinet. He has been a junior minister—he has gone through the ranks quicker than most—and is now in one of the most successful cabinets that this country has ever seen.

Senator Campbell brings with him a background, prior to entering government, in small business. This is a man of broad knowledge that is valuable to the parliament, and he has undertaken issues within his own environmental portfolio with distinction. I particularly applaud him for his stance on the whaling issue—an issue that covers all spectrums of the environment that both the conservatives and the radicals in the environmental debate would support him on, and it has been a most difficult political issue to handle. (Time expired)

Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We learnt a few interesting things from the Minister for the Environment and Heritage in question time today. We learnt that the rebate under the current solar panel subsidy program has been halved and it is due to end in 12 months, and he is not sure what he will do after that, and we learnt that he is off to Nairobi. Yet again, he is off to a conference. We are not quite sure what he is going to do about encouraging the use of solar panels and solar electricity in Australia, but he is off to Nairobi to talk at yet another global forum on yet another global quest.

This is a minister who, rather than stay at home and take seriously the challenge of climate change in Australia, spends most of his time out of the country. Wherever there is a conference, wherever there is an international meeting, there is the minister. The minister attends the forums where the protocol that he refuses to sign is discussed. It is quite amazing. His approach is breathtaking. As I say, back home here in Australia, the rest of us are coming to grips with the need to tackle climate change, no more so than in the minister’s home state of Western Australia. The south-west of Western Australia is internationally recognised as the climate change hotspot, probably the best example of the climate change hotspot in the world, if not in Australia. But, instead, where does the minister go to examine the effects of climate change, to discuss the policies that need to be implemented to deal with this enormous challenge? He goes international. He does not even go three hours south of Perth. On his watch, not only has he not come to grips with the challenges of climate change but not one extra drop of water has gone into the Murray, as far as I can work out. There has not been a response from the minister to the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts report on the challenges of salinity—another enormous environmental challenge in Australia. There has not been one response to any of the significant issues.

As far as I can work out, whilst those on this side of the chamber recognise climate change is a serious threat, not just to our environment but also to our economy, to Senator Ian Campbell, former Vice-President Al Gore is correct: it certainly is a very inconvenient truth. Australia, as I say, is drying out quickly and, as we all know, water restrictions are in place in most places. Where is the minister for the environment on that? All these issues are a direct result of climate change. Where is he? He is in denial. He wanders the globe, talking about how he may or may not take it seriously. He will not sign up to the protocol that does take it seriously. He will not stay in Australia and address the real challenge. He did concede today that he may actually get around to tabling a document at some stage about what the Australian government may or may not be doing in its quest to address this issue. It probably will not be before he goes to Nairobi to discuss it yet again, but we will have to wait and see. That will only be after he is put under pressure.

When he is not undertaking that global quest to attend any conference on any environmental issue that he may come up with, back home in Western Australia he is on the local quest to find a seat in the House of Representatives. That brings me to the third achievement, which we did not actually learn in question time today. The other achievement that this minister really should mark down is extending Wilson Tuckey’s career. Mr Tuckey learnt that Senator Campbell was interested in moving to the lower house when Mr Prosser announced his retirement. All of a sudden, when Senator Campbell announced he might like to be the member for Forrest, 20 locals thought that that would be a bad idea and they all nominated for preselection. Then Senator Campbell thought he would have a look at the seat of O’Connor. All of a sudden, Mr Tuckey, who has been making the journey over here for quite some time, became extremely interested in extending his tenure. It would seem that he does not see Senator Campbell as an adequate replacement and certainly does not support his quest to become Treasurer of this nation. All this—the quest to find a conference anywhere, any time; find a lower house seat anywhere, any time—when he is failing to address the real challenges.

This minister has really done only two things. Senator Crossin has talked about the plastic band, and who can forget the other announcement: his great environment announcement early on in his career, ‘Let’s expand the number of coloured shopping bags.’ We have the green bag and his great environmental quest was to have the blue bag. (Time expired)

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to note that the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Campbell, has shifted the government’s position on Australia’s capacity to meet its Kyoto target. For the last nine years the government has said that it will meet 108 per cent of 1990 levels in the first commitment period, and that has been the excuse that the government has used day in and day out to avoid pressure to introduce emissions trading, to introduce a carbon tax, to introduce a national energy efficiency system of regulations and so on. Now we find—we heard him this week—that a shift has started and he has started backing off, saying that it is unlikely, that we will struggle and that we hope.

It went backwards very fast, and the reason is this: Australia has to report to the Framework Convention on Climate Change in Nairobi in the second week of November on its greenhouse gas emissions and how it is tracking towards its target. Senator Campbell knows as well as I do that he is going to have to report the bad news to the world that the Australian government is not on track to meet its target, in spite of the fact that it got a megawindfall in terms of a one-off credit from land clearing. If you look at what has actually happened, we are finding that our electricity and heat emissions increased 43 per cent and our transport emissions increased 23 per cent from 1990 to 2004. That is what Australia is doing on greenhouse gas emissions.

As people out in the country are seeing the nation dry out, as the drought intensifies and as fires intensify and probably develop into megafires this summer, it is no good for Senator Campbell and the Prime Minister to put on their Akubra hats, visit these areas and pretend that drought relief and fire relief are going to be enough. People in Australia know that higher temperatures caused by global warming are leading to higher evaporation rates, less rainfall, more extreme drought, more extreme storms and fires, and terrible conditions—and, what is more, it is not going to get any better. In fact, it is likely to get much worse if the temperature goes higher by two degrees. We already have a temperature increase of 0.7 degrees. Imagine that doubling.

So the minister is actually culpable. People are going to look back at the Howard years as a decade of lost opportunity, as we only have 10 to 15 years to turn this around globally to avoid dangerous and utterly irreversible climate change, because the feedback loops in global ecosystems are such that you cannot, after a certain point, get the situation back. It is no use waking up in 10 years time; then it will be too late.

In May this year the government did not identify climate change as a risk to the budget. It is unbelievable when you look at what is happening out in rural Australia that that was not identified as a risk to the budget. In fact, Treasury said at the time that there may be a need for some more drought relief but that their analysis concludes this is unlikely to occur and that agricultural production forecasts are similar to previous years. How could Treasury say that? The CSIRO, the IPCC and practically every scientist in the country have been telling the government that this is happening and that these will be the impacts, but apparently Treasury do not have to listen.

I feel extremely angry about that on behalf of the Australian people, because on this very day there are fires burning all over the place out in the bush, including in Southern Tasmania, where they are experiencing 30 degrees and high winds in October. What is it going to be like around this country by the time we get to February? As Senator Webber said and no doubt Senator Campbell knows, south-west Western Australia is drying out faster than any other place in the world. This is not new information since May. This has been known by the world’s scientists, and this government has deliberately ignored that. It is studied ignorance, and it is deliberate. That is why it is culpably irresponsible—and the world will know that in Nairobi.

Senator Campbell has an obligation to tell Australians today what he already knows. He has got the report card that he is going to give in Nairobi. He knows what is going to have to say in Nairobi. Minister, you tell the Australian people before you leave the country what it is you are going to tell the rest of the world about the failure of government policy on climate change. This is the greatest issue facing the world, and we deserve to know how we are going.

Question agreed to.