Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell. Will the minister inform the Senate of the role that Australia will play at the 12th conference of the parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Nairobi next week? Further, can the minister outline to the Senate how the government will play a leading role in building a new Kyoto protocol to effectively tackle climate change?

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

It is an incredibly important question from Senator Payne. What has become quite clear from the Stern review; from the World Energy Outlook, published by the International Energy Agency earlier this week; and, really, from any informed commentary on climate change and energy issues is that the world does need an agreement that involves all of the world’s major emitters that replaces the failed Kyoto protocol. The International Energy Agency this week showed us that China will in fact be the world’s biggest energy user and biggest emitter within just a few years—by about 2010—yet the Kyoto protocol, which is the plan that Labor would sign up to, entirely ignores all of the emissions from China and India. So Australia’s position will be to drive for a new Kyoto protocol—a comprehensive agreement that recognises the different national aspirations and pathways to growth and ensures that we create an international plan that delivers that.

The Australian government recognised this some time ago when we established the Asia-Pacific partnership in cooperation with China, India, the United States, Japan and Korea. We recognised, as the International Energy Agency has done, that you will not solve this problem if you ignore coal, fossil fuels and nuclear power. For years now, Mr Beazley and the Labor Party have been saying that you can solve this problem by signing the Kyoto protocol. Mr Beazley had the audacity, or paucity of thought, to say just at the doors last week that he will fix it when he becomes Prime Minister. He will fix it by signing the Kyoto protocol. There will be no cost to the taxpayer and no cost to his failed trading scheme. He is just going to fix it. He has been whistling, dog whistling style, to the Australian community and the Australian Labor Party, pretending that you can solve this problem by signing the old Kyoto protocol that ignores China and India, when we know China is expanding at the rate of one new power station every 10 days and one city the size of Brisbane every month. He is pretending that you can sign up to an agreement that entirely ignores that. It is absolute rubbish.

The trouble is that the Labor Party is now absolutely and clearly anti fossil fuels. If you do not address fossil fuels, if you do not address cleaning up coal and if you do not address capturing carbon from coal, then of course—and Mr Beazley has been saying this for years—you will do as the Labor Party’s Newcastle City Council did last night and move a motion that caps coal exports from Newcastle, initiates a moratorium on new coalmines and establishes a levy on the coal industry. This is Labor’s plan—close down the coal industry. Of course, Mr Beazley’s own member for Charlton, Kelly Hoare, said in a letter to me this year:

The Hunter is one of the world’s carbon capitals and home to a rapacious mining industry.

She went on to say:

Anvil Hill—

a new coalmine—

is a key part of the Hunter Valley coal export expansion, which needs to be stopped if the world is to avoid climate change.

That was a Labor Party member of parliament. This leads other members of the Left, the Greens and the Labor Party to now say up in Queensland, with the Queensland Conservation Council and with the encouragement of Mr Beazley: ‘This Christmas turn off your lights. Have a Christmas without electricity.’ That means no cold beer but, more importantly, no Christmas lights. Australia needs a positive policy that addresses the real issues and ensures that Australians can maintain their employment and not have the dog whistling of Kim Beazley, saying, ‘We should close down the coal industry and not address the real issues.’