Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change (Kyoto Protocol Ratification) Bill 2006 [No. 2], which I introduced. The second reading speech has, of course, already been attached to the tabled documents. What I wish to canvass today is the need for the chamber to give this matter urgent attention. As you may have gathered, Mr Deputy President, I was not aware that the second reading debate was going to be brought on at this hour. We are pursuing this today to give effect to the deep concern that members of the Labor Party have on the issue of climate change.

In recent times, the government has sought to change its tack on the issue of climate change. The government initially understood the importance of climate change. I do not think it is generally understood in this country that in the period post-1996 there was a view within the government that climate change was an extremely important matter which was affecting the welfare of the people of the planet. In fact, the government sought to produce a discussion paper on such matters and to pursue specific policy initiatives on climate change, to the point where the question of signing the Kyoto protocol was contemplated. But that position changed very quickly.

The change of government in the United States meant that the Australian government changed its position. The government of Australia, as is all too often the case, has essentially taken a derivative attitude on these matters to keep in step with the position taken by the more extreme elements of the Republican Party of the United States. We saw that attitude expressed in the last few years, to the point where the government refused to sign the Kyoto protocol. It moved from a position of being essentially sympathetic to a position of complete opposition. We have had some of the world’s leading climate change sceptics populating the Treasury benches of this country.

As we have noted, there has been a further change in the government’s attitude in recent times. It has increasingly been acknowledged in the country at large that the Australian people understand the significance of this issue. As a consequence of that realisation, the government of Australia has sought to change tack and to present to the public the view that they really are keeping pace with public concern on these matters despite the overwhelming body of evidence that they are dragging the chain.

Climate change is real and it is happening right now and the government has had to face up to that fundamental proposition. The Kyoto protocol is real and it is happening right now, but you will not hear that from the Howard government. Despite the various manoeuvres that it has undertaken, it remains in denial on climate change and the importance of the Kyoto protocol. It is out of touch with reality and with the concerns of the Australian people. As I say, climate change is real and it is happening. Our dams are dropping while our sea levels are rising.

The Australian Greenhouse Office have reported on the risks and vulnerabilities that they suggest climate change is likely to bring. I think the statistics are quite disturbing. The Australian Greenhouse Office are predicting an increase in annual national temperatures of between 0.4 and two degrees by 2030 and between one and six degrees by 2070. We are likely to see more heat waves and fewer frosts. We are likely to see more frequent El Nino southern oscillation events, resulting in more pronounced cycles of prolonged drought and heavy rains. We are likely to see a further 20 per cent reduction in rainfall in the south-west of Australia and up to a 20 per cent reduction in the run-off from the Murray-Darling Basin by 2030. We are likely to see more severe wind speeds in cyclones associated with storm surges amplified by rising sea levels and we are likely to see an increase in severe weather events, including storms and high bushfire propensity days.

Further proof of the damage of climate change can be found in the 2006 annual review of the Insurance Council of Australia. It said that:

During the last 12 months, most states experienced either severe rain and/or windstorms with associated flooding, and extensive property damage.

Apart from Cyclone Larry ... hail and heavy rain caused over $100 million in household and commercial damage in Queensland, while a wind storm across South Perth in May, 2005 caused insured losses of $53 million, a record for the state.

Australians know that the Howard government has failed the nation on climate change. A survey on the recent Stern report showed that 92 per cent of Australians thought that the Howard government was not doing enough on climate change. Mr Howard dismissed this as an online opinion poll. Of course, he had to come back into the parliament at one minute to five to apologise for misleading the House. The Stern report is a strong warning of a clear and present danger not just to our environment but to our economy. The Stern report highlights not what it will cost to act but what the costs involved will be if economies in our region and the world fail to act. The report says that early action will be much cheaper than if no action is taken. The report highlights that it might be as much as 20 times cheaper to act early in the prevention of the drastic effects of climate change.

The Stern report demonstrates the sharp contrast between the attitude taken by the government of the United Kingdom and the actions of the government of Australia. I know that the Australian government is desperate to become associated in any way with the actions of the United Kingdom in terms of propaganda, but it is not so anxious to be involved in specific measures. The Stern report highlights that we cannot afford to wait any longer. The only way to tackle climate change in Australia is to change the government. That is the strong implication of that report.

On 27 September, Mr Howard said that he was not interested in what might happen in 50 years time. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing Australia and the global community but we have a government that essentially refuses to take action. Mr Howard has been in denial on this issue for 10 years. Whatever immediate tactical manoeuvres he undertakes in terms of his present political difficulties it has to be understood that the Howard government is twice as keen on self-promotion and propaganda as it is on addressing the issue of climate change. Since 1996 the Howard government has spent over $1.5 billion on government advertising but it has only spent $670 million on climate change programs. Under Mr Howard, self-promotion comes first and then there is clear daylight before anything else, with actions on important matters such as climate change running a very distant last.

We are now seeing the government seeking to promote its latest fantasy, which again is driven by its understanding of its focus group research. It is now seeking to promote its nuclear fantasy. This is an approach where the government once again seeks to talk about issues without actually undertaking any action. Once again the government will present itself as being concerned about a particular matter without having to actually do anything.

The government has produced a report for public consumption in which a proposition is advanced whereby we should build some 25 nuclear reactors on the east coast of Australia over the next 25 years. And this, somehow or another, is going to be the magic silver bullet that is going to fix our environment problems. Of course, the fundamental question the government fails to address in this new publicity drive—this new propaganda offensive—is the issue of where these reactors are going to go. And it fails to deal with the question of where the waste from these nuclear reactors will go. It fails to deal adequately with the issue of the economics of these nuclear power stations and it fails to provide a comprehensive economic case for change, particularly in an economy where there is such a profound supply of basic energy resources that for hundreds of years we are likely to have energy supplies which cannot be dismissed and which are available at a price that makes any suggestion of nuclear power totally uneconomic.

The Howard government is trying to push the myth that nuclear power is the silver bullet solution to climate change, but, as I said, nothing can be further from the truth. Australia’s greenhouse pollution will increase by 29 per cent by 2050 under Mr Howard’s plan to build 25 nuclear reactors. The Switkowski report confirms that Mr Howard’s nuclear power plan will not cut greenhouse gas emissions. It is not a plan to avoid dangerous climate change. Mr Switkowski’s report shows that, with the 25 nuclear reactors that are proposed across the east coast of Australia and the government’s existing programs—such as the new Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund—Australia’s greenhouse emissions will soar from 558 megatonnes in 2000 to 718 megatonnes in 2015. These are figures that we have taken from page 81 of Mr Switkowski’s report. Mr Howard’s nuclear plan would take Australia further down the path towards dangerous climate change. It is exactly the opposite of the propaganda that he is seeking to peddle to suggest that this government is concerned about a particular matter, when all the actions that it is undertaking suggest the contrary.

Under these circumstances, if global greenhouse pollution rose by a further 29 per cent by 2050 the world would probably experience a four per cent rise in global temperatures. Under that scenario, the evidence suggests that a four per cent rise in global temperatures, with the concurrent rise in sea levels, would see the Great Barrier Reef destroyed. We would see cuts to water flows to the cities of Australia and we would see the flow in the Murray-Darling Basin decrease by some 48 per cent. Under that scenario there would be quite substantial increases in bushfire dangers and we would see a substantial move down the Australian mainland of dengue fever transmission zones through to Brisbane and possibly as far south as Sydney. So it would fundamentally change the nature of Australian society and it would fundamentally change the circumstances in which Australians would have to try to cope with quite adverse conditions.

The Stern review states that global emissions must be cut by 60 per cent by 2050—not increased by 19 per cent; cut by 60 per cent—if we are to avoid dangerous climate change. But Mr Howard’s nuclear plan takes Australia in the opposite direction. Sir Nicholas Stern’s review made it very clear that delaying action costs the economy and our society in massive ways and that taking action now would reduce the costs on a longer term basis. Climate change is a serious threat and we must not posture about expensive and toxic nuclear energy which—even at the planning stages—would not see one kilowatt of power produced for perhaps 15 to 20 years under this proposal. As the Minister for Finance and Administration has pointed out to us on numerous occasions, it would not be financially viable in this country for probably 100 years. We are seeing a great myth being created so that Mr Howard can claim to marginal seat voters that he is genuinely interested in these matters when, as I say, the evidence is quite clearly to the contrary.

Labor takes the view that it is time for the Commonwealth government to take action. That is why Labor will pursue the long-term targets of a 60 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050. That is why Labor will join the global community and ratify the Kyoto protocol. That is why Labor will give a price signal by having a national emissions-trading scheme which will be linked to other schemes. That will encourage investment in the clean coal technology and renewables that this country so desperately needs. That is why Labor will significantly increase our renewable energy targets. That is why Labor supports the development of alternative sources of energy but not nuclear reactors.

Labor will introduce a climate change trigger in Commonwealth environmental legislation. Labor will make every school in the Commonwealth a solar school. Labor will support green cars being built in Australia and undertake action to encourage the car companies to take that up. Labor will ensure that transport and sustainable cities are integral to our plan to avoid dangerous climate change.

The Stern review makes it perfectly clear that, unless economic mechanisms are put in place which encourage investment in clean coal technology and renewables, we will not be able to get the transformation to the carbon constrained economy that we need. Australia needs a whole-of-government approach to avoid dangerous climate change. That is why Labor has a systematic plan that offers Australia a way to avoid dangerous climate change. We say that we must take action not just to protect the environment but to protect jobs and the economy. It is also about protecting Australian society. The only future that Mr Howard seems interested in is his own. The only science he is applying to these matters is political science, with a view to securing enough marginal seats to allow this government to continue the policies it has been pursuing. That is why I recommend to the Senate that this important private senator’s bill be carried.

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

There is no doubt that climate change is occurring and the evidence of it is around us all the time. For example, in the south-west of Western Australia there has been a dramatic decrease in rainfall over the last 30 years. Something like 25 per cent less rain is falling in the south-west of Western Australia. I understand there is some evidence of melting of icecaps and glaciers in Greenland. We know there are climate changes in Europe. In the UK, for example, for the first time in many centuries water rationing has been required in the summer months, which is very unusual. Less rain has been falling in Europe. Recent news that there was an iceberg floating off the coast of New Zealand perhaps suggests that the Antarctic icecaps are also changing and melting. So climate change, it seems, is with us. I must say that there is a lot of controversy and there are differing opinions about the causes of this climate change. The world, after all, is cycling out of an ice age. We may in fact be no more than the victims of that kind of progression, or it may be that greenhouse gas emissions from the industrialised world have something to do with what is happening.

While climate change may be occurring, the Kyoto protocol is not the answer to the problem of climate change which the world now faces. The Kyoto protocol has become a symbol of concern about climate change, but beyond that, as a symbol of concern, the Kyoto treaty is a flawed treaty which would produce very little change in the level of greenhouse emissions around the world. For that reason the Australian government, while being concerned about climate change, has not signed the Kyoto protocol and has no intention of doing so.

The Kyoto treaty has very severe limitations in the sense that a mammoth 75 per cent of global emissions are not covered by the treaty. The reason for this is that most of the great emitting nations—China, India, the United States and some South American countries—are not signatories to the Kyoto protocol. While ever those great emitters are not signatories to the protocol, it is not going to make any significant difference to world greenhouse gas levels or—if they are the cause of climate change—to climate change.

Most importantly, many of the developing nations in the world have not signed onto Kyoto and, if the Kyoto protocol is to have any chance of making significant reductions in emissions, means must be found to include the developing nations of the world within its terms. It is not only inequitable but surely pointless that the developing nations can go on merrily increasing emissions while the developed nations are being asked to reduce theirs. The net outcome will be almost no change at all in greenhouse gas levels in the world.

The consensus of scientific opinion is that significant reductions in global greenhouse emissions will be needed this century. It is a good thing to do whether or not we are sure that it is causing climate change. The Australian government believes that it is important to focus our resources on finding constructive solutions to greenhouse gas emissions. The Australian government is working with other countries to develop a global response to limit climate change—a response that is environmentally effective and economically efficient, which involves all major emitters and which will reduce greenhouse gases to levels that scientists tell us are needed and achievable.

In fact, the Australian government is leading the way in this international effort, including through the major role we are playing in the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. This partnership brings together some key countries, including Australia, China, India, Korea, Japan and the United States, to explore ways to develop, deploy and transfer cleaner and more efficient technologies, which the world will need to make the required cuts in global greenhouse emissions. The importance of the partnership is clear when you consider that between them these six partners account for almost half of the world’s population, GDP, energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.

Distinctive features of the partnership include the way it seeks to address climate change, air pollution, energy security and sustainable development in an integrated manner and the way it fully engages business in developing and implementing solutions. Importantly, the partnership builds on and does not replace the United Nations framework convention on climate change, which is most usually known as the Kyoto protocol. As a clear demonstration of Australia’s commitment to the success of this partnership the Prime Minister, John Howard, has announced an additional investment of $100 million over five years to support practical international cooperation projects. At least 25 per cent of the Australian government’s commitment is dedicated to renewable energy technologies.

Australia continues to also play a key role in international climate change negotiations. In recognition of Australia’s expertise and constructive approach to addressing climate change, the head of the Australian Greenhouse Office has been chosen to co-chair new international talks on post-Kyoto approaches for long-term cooperative action on climate change. These talks, which commenced at the United Nations climate change convention meeting in Bonn in May 2006, will address issues such as realising the full potential of technology in addressing climate change, adaptation to unavoidable impacts of climate change and the link between sustainable development and climate change. These themes are central to the work of the G8 dialogue on climate change, clean energy and sustainable development—which Australia is also playing an active and constructive role in, may I say. It is interesting also that the fact that we have a head of a Greenhouse Office in Australia is a world first. Australia was the first country in the world to establish a Greenhouse Office, just as we were the first country in the world to establish an oceans policy. We have a number of firsts.

The Howard government has a really outstanding record when it comes to dealing with the environment and climate change. Just on this issue of climate change, it is very interesting to have a look at the coalition’s record. Our record is second to none, may I say. It is a very outstanding record which we in the government are very proud of. The coalition government has taken a leadership role at an international and national level in response to the threat of climate change and is investing some $2 billion in climate change programs. These include hundreds of millions on solar and wind energy, on developing new technology to make cleaner and more efficient fossil fuels and on ways to capture and store greenhouse gases to stop them going into the atmosphere.

I will give a couple of examples. There is the $500 million Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, which aims to leverage $1 billion from industry to develop technologies to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There is the $100 million renewable energy development initiative, which will provide competitive grants to support the strategic development of renewable energy technologies. Australia is one of the few countries that are on track to reach their international greenhouse gas emission targets. It is important to understand that, while we are reaching our greenhouse gas emission targets, we are doing this not having signed the flawed Kyoto protocol.

Australia’s record is proving that there is a way forward that allows emission cuts and economic growth. As a result of our climate change strategies we are forecast to save 85 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year by 2010 while the economy of Australia itself is expected to almost double in size. This is equivalent to taking every one of Australia’s 14 million cars, trucks and buses off the road, and furthermore stopping all rail and shipping activity, while still providing for major economic growth. As a percentage of our total economy, this saving represents a fall of 43 per cent in greenhouse gas emissions between 1990 and 2010 while the Australian economy doubles in size.

Australia contributes only 1.46 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, which, when compared with China’s greenhouse gas emissions, is an extremely small percentage. If Australia were to close down all of its power stations today, the savings in greenhouse gas emissions would be replaced by the growth of China’s energy sector in less than 12 months. So there is really very little point in Australia signing on to the Kyoto treaty when in fact we are meeting our Kyoto targets and when we have such a strong record of striving to put in place programs which will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, ABARE, has estimated that ratification of the Kyoto protocol could increase electricity costs by about one-third in Australia, with consequent severe implications for energy intensive industries such as our bauxite, alumina and aluminium producers as well as industries that use electricity all over this country. One of Australia’s greatest resources in fact is that we have boundless supplies of cheap coal. Were we to sign on to the Kyoto treaty, we would no longer be able to use that coal to produce electricity. That is part of the reason why, if we were to sign Kyoto, our electricity costs would go up by around one-third. If electricity and energy costs went up, that would adversely affect industries. Not only in the coalmines of Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria would there be jobs lost if the coal producers were no longer able to go ahead with mining, which would be the case were we to sign the Kyoto treaty; but closures would occur in many other industries around Australia if the cost of energy was increased as a result of us signing on to the Kyoto treaty.

It is interesting to look at liquefied natural gas, which is another matter where there is a significant flaw in the Kyoto protocol. Within the protocol there is no mechanism to recognise that, although certain actions might result in a domestic increase in greenhouse gas emissions, the net result will actually be a decrease in global emissions. Australia, for example, exports liquefied natural gas to Japan and China, resulting in significantly lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions in those countries where the Chinese and Japanese use LNG instead of coal to generate electricity. This is because the life cycle emissions of natural gas are about 50 to 60 per cent of those of conventional fossil fuels.

Our recent $25 billion liquefied natural gas contract with China illustrates this point well. The contract will add around one million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually to Australia’s emissions but, by replacing coal fired power stations in China, it will reduce China’s emissions by around seven million tonnes annually. This means that China will gain greenhouse credits from using LNG while we will in fact not be the recipient of those credits.

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

We’re not in the protocol, that’s why!

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

The protocol adds nothing at all to reducing greenhouse gases around Australia, Senator Milne, and I think you know that. I am quite sure that the Greens are well aware that the Kyoto treaty is a flawed treaty, a meaningless treaty—it is a symbol of concern about climate change. That is the only thing that it is. The Australian government has done more to address the issue of climate change than any other government in the world. We have a very proud record of having done that. We have no intention of signing the Kyoto treaty because, as I said earlier in my speech, the great emitters of the world—the developing nations, China, India and the United States—are not signatories to the Kyoto treaty. Until we have a treaty that does cover all the great emitters of the world, the Australian government will not be a party to such an agreement.

But, as I said earlier also, the Australian government is working on an international treaty agreement, the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, which will bring together key developing and developed countries in the region, including Australia, the United States, India, Japan and Korea, to address the challenge of climate change, energy security and air pollution in a way that strives to encourage economic development and reduce poverty through the development and deployment of new, clean technologies.

So Australia has a very fine record in managing our environmental programs. As I said earlier, we have some world firsts. We were the first country in the world to set up a Greenhouse Office and we were the first country in the world to have an oceans program. We have a long list of achievements in the environmental area, including the establishment of the Natural Heritage Trust, which was set up when this government first came to office and funded initially with $1 billion from the sale of Telstra. There is now NHT2, and in total something like $3 billion has gone into the Natural Heritage Trust. We have the Australian government Envirofund and we set up the Green Corps, which has meant that all over Australia some 13,000 young people have participated in 1,300 projects around this country since 1996. We have a program to tackle salinity and water quality, two of the greatest environmental problems this country faces. So, in general terms, this government has a very fine and outstanding record on environmental policy. We do not need to sign the Kyoto protocol to do what we are doing. We are meeting our greenhouse targets and we are very proud of our record. I believe the Senate should simply reject the proposal put up by Senator Carr, because it is impractical, unrealistic and will achieve nothing.

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

I rise to support the Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change (Kyoto Protocol Ratification) Bill 2006 [No. 2]. Of course, Australia should ratify the Kyoto protocol as a first step and what this bill does is to allow that first step to be taken. I am sorry that the bill is an exact copy of the bill that was introduced and passed here three years ago and that it has not been strengthened and advanced further. That is work that the Greens are doing. I introduced a bill this morning that will do that through a range of measures, including setting targets. Nevertheless, this is a first step, and ratifying the Kyoto protocol is an ambition that most Australians share with the Greens, with the Labor Party, with the Democrats and with the rest of the world, so this is a step we should take.

But I have to say to the Senate that it is time Australians were told the truth about what is going on globally as far as Australia is concerned and as far as climate change is concerned. We need to hear a few home truths, and the first one is that the rest of the world is appalled by the fact that Australia and the United States have not ratified the Kyoto protocol and they are working very hard to improve the protocol. Nobody argues that it is perfect. What they do argue is that it is a first step towards an international framework for reducing greenhouse gases, and there is an expectation that the rest of the world will get behind it.

As to this nonsense we hear time and time again from the Treasurer, the Prime Minister, the minister and now Senator Eggleston that the Kyoto protocol is a symbol: what an extraordinary symbol, because last year the carbon market was worth $US11 billion. That is a symbol that perhaps Treasurer Costello might understand. The Kyoto protocol has three financial mechanisms in order to deliver the reductions. The first is joint implementation—that is, projects between two developed countries. The second is the clean development mechanism, whereby a developed country invests in a developing country to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the developed country is given credit for the reductions. That is why I think that Senator Eggleston’s example of gas is ridiculous. He argued that China was going to get credit for the result of Australia’s gas, but, no, we are not in the protocol and therefore the credit arrangement does not operate. The third mechanism is emissions trading. The Prime Minister came out recently and said, ‘We’re going to have a mirror strategy, a looking-into-it strategy.’ The only reason he did that was that the Business Council of Australia was about to come out and say that it supported emissions trading, leaving the Prime Minister completely and utterly isolated. He had to come up with something to say at dinner, so he said, ‘We will have a joint task force and we will look into it.’ The rest of the world has already looked into it and is doing it.

The pan-European trading system is up and running. There is a trading system between nine north-eastern states in the US, and there is the Chicago Climate Exchange. There is also work in California, and New South Wales has a version as well. The rest of the world is now talking about how to link up existing emissions-trading systems that will be operating from now—and they are operating now—in the first commitment period, 2008-12, and looking at ways in which they can become a global emissions-trading system in the post-2012 period. Australia will not even have thought about setting up a system, and when it does it will set up some absolutely silly system that does not go with a national cap and will not be compatible with what the rest of the world is doing. So, rather than run around with this nonsense about the Kyoto protocol being a symbol, there is a huge amount of work going on to perfect the clean development mechanism, joint implementation and emissions trading, and Australia is nowhere to be seen.

Let us look at AP6. Senator Eggleston tells us that it is a treaty, but it is not. As Senator John McCain of the Republicans in the US said, it is a nice little public relations exercise. And that is the extent of it. If this AP6 were something to write home about, all the countries involved in it would have met when their representatives were in Nairobi. Did they have a meeting? No. What did they have? They had drinks. That is a fabulous treaty, if ever I saw one: ‘Let’s get our mates together for drinks.’ Worse still, all the countries in AP6, with the exception of the US and Australia, have ratified the Kyoto protocol, and all their serious negotiators were in the meeting of the parties to the Kyoto protocol. Other people on their delegation were having drinks and chatting with Australia and whatever, but those countries—China, Japan and South Korea—are all involved in the Kyoto protocol, because their economies are now gearing up to benefit from the investment mechanisms. It is giving competitive advantage to the renewable energy sector. Their businesses are getting on with working out how to make money in a low-carbon economy, but Australia is not even engaged. That is where this government is not only letting the world down in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions but also actually hollowing out the Australian economy, because all the thinkers and progressive businesses are going overseas as rapidly as possible to get involved in those mechanisms and we are left high and dry with no expertise in a lot of these areas. A classic case is our solar billionaire, Dr Shi, who has made his billions in China in renewable energy.

The Chinese have got a renewable energy target of 15 per cent. Perhaps the Minister for the Environment and Heritage or the Prime Minister or Senator Eggleston, when they keep talking about China, might acknowledge what China has done. Senator Ian Campbell almost created a diplomatic incident in Nairobi by accusing China of being likely to become the world’s greatest polluter. The Chinese got up, very offended, because China has a far lower greenhouse gas emission rate per capita than Australia does. What is more, China is taking significant steps. It has got its renewable energy target at 15 per cent. It has mandatory vehicle fuel efficiency standards such that Australian vehicles will not be able to be imported into China because they do not meet China’s standards. That is the extent to which we are getting behind the eight ball here.

We are told that the dialogue is Australia’s fabulous lead. That is a nonsense as well. Australians should realise that the only reason this dialogue is going on is that, in Montreal, at the first meeting of the parties, Canada was the host country and was terrified that there would not be a commitment to a post-2012 period because of the behaviour of the United States and Australia, so the Canadians came up with this notion of a twin-track process whereby the real meeting of the parties to the protocol would go on and at the side there would be a dialogue, a talkfest, in which Australia and the US could be involved and feel important and it would keep them occupied until such time as there was a change of administration in both those countries or a change of attitude that would bring them into an effective, enforceable compliance regime at the global level.

It was like a main meeting and a creche. Australia and the US were off in the creche with their coloured pencils. They were allowed to come in at the end of the meeting, and what did they have to do with their dialogue? Their obligation in Nairobi was to give an oral report. It was just like bringing in your drawing and saying to the adults, ‘Here we are. We’ve done our drawing.’ And the adults say, ‘That’s nice. Now you can go.’ That is precisely what happened. What do they have to do next year after having given an oral report this year? They have to make a written report, and that will just be noted and accepted. Let us not pretend to this parliament or to the people of Australia that Australia’s contribution in this dialogue is anything other than keeping us occupied while the rest of the world patiently waits for Australia to wake up to itself and get involved in the post-2012 period.

We should be ratifying the Kyoto protocol now. We should be getting the experience of working towards a low-carbon economy, a carbon constrained world, so that that can happen. As I alluded to earlier, the rest of the world is getting very sick of Australia freeloading on it. How do you think European businesses feel about having to meet emission reduction targets and compete on a level playing field with Australian imports? They do not like it. There will be moves in the World Trade Organisation to put tariffs against exports from Australia into Europe, on the basis that Australian businesses get a subsidy from their government because they do not have to rein in their greenhouse gas emissions.

The minister suggested earlier that they have done something wonderful on energy efficiency simply because the 200 largest energy users in the country have to report on that. They do not have to actually do anything about it. They do not have to implement the findings of their energy audits. They just have to report what they could do if they chose to do it. When I moved an amendment to require them to implement the findings of their mandatory energy efficiency audits, the government voted against it. So why would the Europeans not argue that there is a subsidy going on here and that the rest of the world is not going to tolerate it?

Every year that we stay out of these global negotiations is another year that we are behind, that our businesses are being put at risk, that our economy is being hollowed out. The whole opportunity that is presented in a carbon constrained world—of moving to renewable energy and increasing energy efficiency by reducing demand and increasing the supply of renewables—is out the window in Australia. Why? Because of the coal industry, because of the aluminium industry, because of the oil and gas industry; that is why.

As to carbon capture and storage, which we hear so much about, perhaps the minister could explain the Hunter Valley. My understanding is that the geological structure of the Hunter Valley is such that it is unsuitable for carbon capture and storage. So where is he going to put the carbon emissions from coal-fired power stations in New South Wales? This technology is unproven. Renewable energy technology is proven, available and could be implemented tomorrow.

I want to finish on the China point by saying that the Chinese were deeply offended by Australia’s insulting behaviour in Nairobi. The Chinese have actually done a lot. They have nominated 10 of their states to be in pilot programs to try and develop a way of running a state economy on a low-carbon basis. There is a huge amount of work going on in China. They said of the dialogue that Australia chairs:

This dialogue … is neither a negotiation process nor an attempt to set up emission reduction limitation targets for the developing countries.

So, thank you very much, Australia. It is none of the things that the minister claims it is.

Let me tell you about the new Kyoto. The Australian minister and Prime Minister, for the benefit of the Australian community, said in the Australian press: ‘We are taking a new Kyoto to Nairobi. We are going to impress the world with our new Kyoto.’ The minister arrived there and what happened? His speech was scheduled for ten past seven on Wednesday night. The conference dinner started at seven o’clock in another part of Nairobi, 40 minutes away. The Australian minister spoke to an empty plenary hall. Of course, I was there and there were a few other Australian NGOs there because we were anxious to hear about the new Kyoto, but the rest of the world had gone to dinner—because why would you listen to Australia when they are not involved in this process?

What did the new Kyoto turn out to be? The new Kyoto turned out to be two sentences in the minister’s speech, simply saying that we want a global regime that includes all countries. Wake up, because that is what the rest of world wants and that is precisely what they are talking about in the article 9 review of the Kyoto protocol, which is a review of the effectiveness of the protocol. Article 3.9 is a review of the appropriateness of the targets that countries have set themselves. Those things are already happening. When the rest of the world was reviewing the effectiveness of the Kyoto protocol, the Australian minister was on the plane on his way home. The Australian minister had left Nairobi before the serious negotiations occurred on article 9. There were a few people from the delegation left, but the minister was long gone.

Let us be realistic here. We are becoming more and more peripheral to the global debate, but in so doing we are also offending our partners in this region and other countries in this region. I would like to read a statement from the head of the delegation from the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu. He was speaking on behalf of the 43 small island developing states. Many of those countries will disappear because of sea-level rise, saltwater incursion and extreme weather events. Already, several of these countries are making evacuation plans, not least of which is the Kiribati islands, where they have already identified 40 islands for evacuation, from which 30,000 people have to be moved. That is happening in the Pacific at the moment—at the same time as Australia utterly refuses to recognise the idea of environmental refugees. We refuse to reduce our greenhouse gases. We are the ones making it worse for the world’s poor. They are the ones most affected the soonest, and the people who are creating the problem are refusing to then take them as environmental refugees.

This is an issue of justice. This is an issue of values. The minister, in this place, or the Prime Minister, in the other place, had better not stand up in the chamber and talk about family values, because family values include things like respect, decency, kindness, charity and generosity. They do not include selfishness, meanness of spirit or exclusiveness. The rest of our Pacific island neighbours are looking at Australia and asking: ‘This is a matter of justice. Who caused the problem and who is helping to do something about it?’ On both counts, Australia fails. I will read this statement because it is really important. I hope there are some government ministers who are listening, because this was the report that was given to the plenary after our minister had left Nairobi:

In a speech to the COP in November 2000, Chair of the IPCC Robert Watson advised all Parties that small island developing states face “the possible loss of whole cultures” due to climate change.

And recent research on the impacts of climate change on SIDS—

small island developing states—

makes this clear.

For example, a study published in Global Change Biology in 2005 shows that a 2 degrees Celsius rise in temperature will make coral bleaching an annual or biannual event in most regions of the world, with most reefs never recovering.

This is significant as the Hadley Centre’s models show that there is a 78% chance of temperatures increasing by 2 degrees Celsius if concentrations are stabilised at 450ppm carbon dioxide equivalent.

So the science tells us that at 450ppm there is a 78% chance that the world’s coral reefs will bleach annually or biannually.

Therefore, at 450ppm, it is highly likely that the world’s four low-lying atoll countries—and most SIDS—will cease to exist.

Sea level rise, which will not stop even if we limit warming to 2ºC, will only compound this threat.

So a 2ºC increase will clearly be dangerous climate change.

And will clearly violate many of the Articles of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

Are you listening, Australia? The statement continued:

Think hard about this—when in the history of the world have we been asked to choose about the future of whole countries?

What will history say of us if we make decisions that let whole countries disappear?

This is an unprecedented issue for the UN system.

We wonder how these negotiations on future commitments might proceed if all Parties were told that 43 of their number would cease to exist in the future—but not which 43. We suggest that all Parties would be striving for big reductions in greenhouse gases.

So we ask all Parties to take this message back to your capitals: failure to achieve significant reductions in emissions will mean the loss of islands, countries, cultures, and a fundamental breach of the human rights of the world’s island peoples.

And given existing concentrations of GHGs—

greenhouse gases—

in the atmosphere, significantly more assistance for adaptation is required.

The delegates then went on to ask that a special theme on adaptive actions to address the special circumstances and needs of small island developing states be included on the agenda next time. It will horrify Australians to know that the reason it was not on the agenda in Nairobi, even though they moved for it to be on the agenda, is that Australia and the United States blocked it. They blocked that issue of how the small island states are going to adapt to climate change. It was blocked from being on the agenda by our country and by the United States. Doesn’t that make us all feel proud! That is why I stand here outraged by people on the government side standing up and saying that Australia is responding to climate change in something of an appropriate way. We are not.

What is more, it is apparent to me that most of the members on the opposition benches simply do not believe that this is actually happening, that it is serious, that there is a likelihood that the west Antarctic iceshelf will break up, that there is a likelihood that the Greenland icesheet could slip off or that we could have mega sea-level rise. We are already having extreme drought and extreme fires. This summer, Australia will dry up and burn, and there has been 10 years of inaction by this government. One thing we can do—and one thing which is rushing onto the agenda globally—is stop emissions from deforestation, from logging forests. There is now a recognition that we have to do that. So I now foreshadow an amendment. When we get to the committee stage of this bill, I will be moving to stop deforestation in Australia by stopping old-growth logging. That is the first thing we can do to protect the large carbon sinks of the Tasmanian forests, the Victorian forests and the forests of southern New South Wales.

Deforestation contributes more than transport emissions do globally to greenhouse gases. There is now a major move to stop this. The World Bank has its BioCarbon Fund. There is a move to include a void of deforestation under the Clean Development Mechanism. Once again, the pressure is on Australia, and the joke of it all is that Australia offered to host a workshop next year on a void of deforestation for developing countries. Good; I am glad. At that workshop Australia can perhaps tell developing countries why it is saying, ‘Do as we say and not do as we do,’ because we will most certainly be offering those developing countries the opportunity to— (Time expired)

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Naturally, I rise to support the Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change (Kyoto Protocol Ratification) Bill 2006 [No. 2] in this particularly frustrating discussion. I say it is frustrating not because the issue is unimportant. The frustrating element of this debate is that everyone in this chamber agrees on the importance of the issue. It is almost like that is given—that we say that that is fine. We have already heard from the preliminary speakers in this debate a list of statements about what must be done to adapt to what we all know is a disaster for the world. There is no doubt about that either. The frustrating element of this debate is that here we are, as Senator Milne mentioned, three years after we had almost an identical debate on the same issue. So much of the debate, the dialogue and the rhetoric will reiterate the same issues, particularly when you add this debate to that which we will be having later in the day on the environment and heritage legislation.

We have the opportunity to actually take action and make a change but instead, this afternoon, we will talk round and round on the private member’s bill and at the end of the allocated time there will be no action, the debate will cease and we will all sit down. That is just not good enough. This is not a complex piece of legislation. It is not a piece of legislation that makes any claim that, by itself, it will change the world. What it does is to identify one clear step that we, the Australian community, can take to make a change, to be part of the international issue—because global warming, the attacks on our environment and the challenges that face all of us are not only a national issue. We can list all of the things that are happening in Australia but the issues that are affecting our world are ones that we must all share in identifying, in accepting and also in planning effective action on. That is why we are part of an international community. That is why the United Nations called nations together to see what we can do as a global collective to work to achieve a difference, and Australia has a role in that. But, as Senator Milne has so articulately outlined, our role has been dismissed and marginalised, and that makes me very angry because we can do better.

We have the ability in this country to take on these challenges strongly and we already have done so. Why this government seems unable to accept acknowledging and ratifying the Kyoto protocol as but one step towards our action in the global warming debate is beyond my understanding. I have listened at length to speeches made by various members of the government and a range of ministers. It has not just been the current environment minister who has been peddling this particular rhetoric; it has been all the ministers since the Kyoto protocol was proposed, when there was such a surge of enthusiasm across the world as to how we could effectively identify the threat and work together. There was no expectation that there was going to be some magic cure. No-one claimed that. What we did, as a world community, was to look at the threat of global change and how we could work together. One step was that we as nations together could look at what we were doing with our emissions and how we could share the load.

Consistently the government have put forward how well they have done and how well the Australian community has done in addressing the issues. Why, when claiming all this success, they cannot address the threshold action of becoming part of the global solution I do not understand. No-one is debating the threat. In fact, Senator Eggleston listed in his contribution all the things that we know are happening in our world. Australia, more so than most other countries in this world, has seen the damage caused by climate change to our way of life and our wonderful environment and we know that this damage is occurring now. It is not something that will only happen in the future; it certainly has been happening over a large number of years and we cannot wait quietly and expect that someone somewhere is going to do something about it.

The CSIRO, that flagship organisation, have been expending enormous resources on looking at practical solutions here in our country, and we will be celebrating the achievements of the CSIRO in this place this evening at a celebration of their anniversary. I think it is important that we acknowledge that contribution in this place. They have stated, in one of their wonderful publications, that temperatures in our country could rise by two per cent by 2030. That is an extraordinary figure. We can say two per cent so quietly but what it actually means, and this is outlined in the CSIRO documentation, is rising sea levels and a decrease in water supplies for our cities, and we are all working through that at the moment.

Coming from Queensland, I am most aware of the impact of water shortages in our cities. There is also damage to our reefs. As a Queenslander, again, I can say that although we are blessed by having the beauty of the Great Barrier Reef in my state, it does not belong to Queensland or Australia; it belongs to our world. The concept that our reef could be dying slowly as a result of climate change is one that must cause great fear and concern to all of us.

An issue that I have learnt more about recently is that of potential refugees from our neighbouring islands in the Pacific. Senator Milne referred to some of the island nations. I know that you, Mr Acting Deputy President Watson, have been to many of those and have talked with the people in those areas. In our secure environment here—and I use the word ‘secure’ with some irony—we may be able to somehow make some distance and pretend that, if we do things immediately with a reduction in water use in our cities and also implement the immediate actions that people suggest, we can put off any impact to our country.

That is not a luxury that is shared by some of our island neighbours. We see photographic evidence from those countries of how their usable landmass has been reduced as their islands sink, as the water levels have risen. That is the kind of immediate threat that is impacting on those people who live so close to us. There are discussions now about what Australia can do in looking at refugee status for those people. Whilst we have not progressed those discussions as much as we ought to, I know the government has been involved in discussions. That immediate threat is just one of the pieces of evidence that are in front of us.

We cannot run away from this issue. We are looking now at issues around 2010, but as you look into the future and see the generational difference through 2020 to 2040, and see the impact on the world, that is a challenge to all of us. Again, no-one is pretending that the piece of legislation about which we are having the debate this afternoon will solve that. What we are saying is that we will engage in the debate by having a clear consideration of the issues and it could well be one step forward. It is a symbol.

The Kyoto protocol is a symbol that is of enormous value to Australian citizens and to people across the globe. Being part of an international agreement means that there is some acceptance by our government—whichever flavour it is—that we have a role to play. That is the step in this legislation which the government continue to reject. Whilst they list, quite rightly, the initiatives that have come forward and have been funded in the last few years—and there has been a flurry of activity around the issue of climate change in the last three to four years—before that time, people on the government benches were arguing that this issue was being beaten up and that people in this place and in the wider community who were talking about environmental threat had some ideological bent that was not focused on effective economic development or progressive economic sustainability.

I think that we have made a real difference. I genuinely believe that now, in this place and in the wider community—with the exception of some people, like a particular person who insists on emailing me on an almost daily basis to tell me that it is some kind of scientific conspiracy and in fact there is no such thing as global warming—there has been a threshold change and that people accept that we face a genuine disastrous threat of global warming. Given that we have come this far, surely we should be able to take the extra move forward and cooperatively take on our role in the whole UN process. Kyoto is not an Australian treaty. The Kyoto protocol is a United Nations treaty. It has been put out to the nations of the world and we have been given the opportunity to take part in it.

One of my pet issues, as you know, Mr Acting Deputy President Watson, is that people throw phrases around without actually having read the basic documentation. I really do ask people who are involved in this debate to have a look at the website and see what is involved in the Kyoto protocol. Maybe, if they take that small step, they will see that it is not such a monumental commitment to make. When they read the protocol, they will see that it is about people working towards achieving a goal. There are a range of report-back mechanisms so that nations can actually report back and indicate what they have achieved and what they are doing to reach their goals; and, if they have not been able to achieve what they hoped, they can state the reasons why and what they are prepared to do about it.

Given that we have already heard government speakers list all the things that the government has been able to do to address our own responsibilities—and I am sure we will hear more—and given that the Minister for the Environment and Heritage comes in here consistently and claims that we have reduced our carbon emissions, why can we not accept the significant importance of being part of this international treaty? What we consistently get back from government members and ministers is: ‘If the other kids won’t sign, we won’t sign either.’

In her contribution, Senator Milne used an analogy of colouring pencils, and I have to admit that that attracted me a great deal. I have an image in my mind now of a whole range of people sitting around a very big desk with their various colouring pencils and a few people just picking up their pencils and leaving. I would hope that we have reached a maturity in our government that is beyond that image, but I worry that, on this particular issue—and some others, but we are focusing on this one this afternoon—that is almost the level that we have reached.

There is an understanding of the threat and there is great scientific study, research and practical achievement happening in our country, and we are engaging, in some ways, in coalitions internationally to look at the issues. We applaud success. Recently it seems we have been almost drowning in the range of media releases about government funding initiatives to do with solar energy, various attempts to look at alternative sources of energy and looking at ways to ensure an effective future for sustainable energy in our country. All that has been accepted but, when it comes down to this threshold difference, there seems to be a line right down the middle of this chamber, where members on one side see that engagement in the Kyoto protocol is a positive step with which we can all cooperate and members on the other side seem to think that it is somehow a sign of weakness to be engaged in this treaty. I do not accept that. I believe that we are stronger, more aware and more mature than that.

There was some hope recently, with the release of the Stern report, when there was an international outbreak of people considering the devastating economic impact of the world not accepting that there are environmental threats and that there is no option but to change. There seemed to be a movement away from theory around environmental issues and towards a more acceptable range of argument which talked about economic figures and the impact on the gross national product. There was an engagement—a flurry of activity—on that issue. That was extremely positive, because it brought into the debate the kind of statistical analysis and research that we need to ensure that people see that there is no option on these issues. There must be coordinated change across every country on the globe. We all have a role to play. What Australia can achieve impacts not only on our citizens but also on all the other people on the globe, and vice versa.

It is not a sign of weakness to be part of an international treaty; it is a sign of positive leadership. So often in other areas, Australia has taken on a positive leadership role and has been seen as part of the progressive processes. It is devastating as an Australian citizen to see, in many parts of the world, Australia being labelled as regressive and negative on these issues. We should not deserve that. Our scientists, our academic community and our citizens generally have much more knowledge and awareness of environmental issues and do not need that label. Increasingly, they are saying that they want to see their government being much more active in this international response—and we can do that.

So what we will do in this place for the next hour or so, on this bill which will lead nowhere, is go round and round on this issue and then end up with the great divide down the centre of this chamber, with some people saying that we should be part of it and some people saying that we are doing really well without being party to it and that: ‘Until the other kids sign up, why should we?’ That is why I describe the whole process as extremely frustrating. There is an opportunity to be positive and to move forward if we ensure that we have policies that will protect our resources and ensure that we have strong sustainable energy sources in this country. As a Queenslander, I say that that must include coal. I know that there are differing views on that, but we do need to look at research aspects around having strong, clean coal processes in our country. We must work effectively together. We can do that. This bill provides the opportunity—a simple step forward so that we take what I think is our responsible position in the world, rather than packing up our energy and running away.

Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Kyoto protocol entered into force last year in 165 countries. As the Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change (Kyoto Protocol Ratification) Bill 2006 [No. 2] tells us, Australia was not one of those countries. Australia stood back, despite having been an active participant in the early years of Kyoto and despite winning some very, some would say, embarrassing concessions—certainly very generous concessions—on the strength of arguments back when we were in the tent, when Senator Hill went to Kyoto negotiations and made sure that Australia’s interests were being looked after. Since that time, we have seen the hard heads in cabinet, those in the coalition, become nonbelievers in global action and we have seen a much more selfish approach to the way Australia views global warming and greenhouse emissions.

Why should we ratify Kyoto? For one thing, the government says that we will meet the generous targets of 109 per cent of 1990 levels by 2012. The Minister for the Environment and Heritage confidently and consistently gets up and says, ‘Australia will have no difficulty meeting those targets; we will do it.’ So I would ask the question: why not ratify? When you think about it, we do not have a good reason not to ratify. If we are going to meet the targets, how can you then say, ‘This is not in our economic interests’? If we are heading down that path in any case, why not ratify?

Another reason that we should ratify Kyoto is that we are currently missing out on engagement in the international carbon trading market. We had the embarrassing spectacle of Australian officials and the minister himself going over to Nairobi last month, talking about engaging in dialogue, talking about long-term cooperative action, talking about the fact that Australia will not open any negotiations leading to new commitments, being the spoilers, trying to get in on the act and putting motions forward to say that Australia should have the ability to be part of the discussion. But the fact of the matter is that if you are not in you are not in and you are locked out of a whole range of benefits. The greatest benefit of all is being part of the decision-making process, but we are not. We can go off to Nairobi and pretend that we are part of the process, but we are outsiders.

It has been said many times in this place that what is needed for the passive reductions in greenhouse emissions that are going to be needed by 2050 if we are going to avoid even more serious climate change—60 per cent on current levels around the world—is great leadership. The prime ministers and governments of every country will have to put aside the petty bickering and put aside the sectional interests—like the coal industry—for future generations. I know that sounds a bit Pollyanna-ish, but that is how dire the situation is. If we do not take action now, we are going to leave a very much damaged environment for our children and grandchildren.

It is just not good enough for governments to be—as we and the United States have been—so dismissive of the process, so disdainful, so willing to write it off and so willing to say, as I think Senator Ian Campbell has said on a number of occasions: ‘Kyoto is not cool anymore; Kyoto was only ever the first step. Kyoto has had it. Kyoto is finished as a plausible way forward.’ Kyoto in Nairobi was a serious discussion about what happens after 2012, but we were not part of it. We had to sit on the sidelines and watch the discussion without being able to make a meaningful contribution.

But, of course, the elephant in the room is the United States. One of the reasons I think that Australia has been so willing to be part of the coalition of the unwilling—if I can put it that way—is that we are such great friends of the United States, and we could not bear to leave the United States out all on their own, so we joined them. Even though we are going to meet the targets, we joined the United States outside the process. Why? The United States emits 25 per cent—that is, a quarter—of global emissions. I do not know how many times we have heard the Prime Minister and Minister Campbell talk about China and the ‘huge, looming emission problem’ that China represents and the statement: ‘We can reduce our emissions.’ The statistics get trotted out all the time: ‘It’s one day’s worth of China’s emissions,’ and so forth. But no-one ever mentions the United States—the richest country on earth—which produces a quarter of global emissions, with far less than a quarter of the population of China.

We so often hear that we should not be worried about Australia’s emissions, that they only represent one per cent of the total. It does not sound like a lot; however, Australia is the 10th largest emitter, close behind the United Kingdom, which of course has many more people than we do and far less by way of resources. Australia is No. 10 on the list of the biggest emitters in the world, and that is a reason why Australia must be part of the process. We cannot pretend that, at one per cent, we are down the bottom of the list. We are right up the top at No 10. That means we have a global responsibility to take part in global collaborative efforts to massively reduce emissions.

I can understand why the government does not want to go down this path. As I said, it is very keen to be part of the coalition of the unwilling with the United States. It values the Prime Minister’s friendship with George Bush far higher than the future of this country, quite frankly. If you look at who is going to be most impacted on by climate change, it is our farmers, the backbone of the country. They are already experiencing a drought which is ongoing and one of the worst known. We are also experiencing low rainfall across the country, which now scientists are saying has all the signs of being a direct response to the huge percentage of the atmosphere being made up of CO.

Another reason is the $26 million worth of coal that Australia exports every year. I can understand why the government would not want to see that coal market diminished. I can understand why we would want our coal exporters to continue to make lots of money and how the government benefits from that. I can see that our coffers are filled with coal export royalties and dollars and how that might seem to government to be important to our economy.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, it is.

Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not. If you throw away the value of agriculture in this country—as we seem to be doing as a result of that—then coal is not going to be much use to us. Quite frankly, coal is not going to be much use to China and those other countries that will go way ahead of Australia in finding alternative ways of generating electricity for their needs.

But I think most of all it is because the government have an antipathy towards anything which is long term and sustainable. It is the old ‘dig it up, ship it out’ mentality, which does not look at the future of this country in any serious way. They cannot bear to countenance the idea of moving from coal to renewable energy. Instead of going from coal to renewable, we have to go to clean coal, which is expensive, not yet here, experimental and some say even dangerous. Then it is: ‘Okay, that’s proving difficult. Let’s go to nuclear.’ Again, it is expensive, dangerous and leaves terrible waste that will be radioactive for thousands of years. We cannot actually bear to look at geothermal—and when I say ‘we’ I mean the government. The government cannot bear to turn their mind to the most obvious solutions to climate change, and they are wind, solar, geothermal, biomass—alternative forms of energy production.

The government are somehow stuck in this mould saying: ‘We’re not going to go there. We’re not going to cross the line. We’ve got to stick with what we know: the fossil fuel industry.’ Of course, in doing that, in funding clean coal, in putting millions of dollars into those so-called clean coal initiatives, we can claim to be doing something. In talking about nuclear power, we can claim to be going down that path and putting off the inevitable problem of siting reactors. The attitude is: ‘Put it off for another day. We don’t need to worry about it. As long as we’re talking about it, people will think we’re doing something.’ That does not work.

The Stern report came out a couple of weeks ago. I thought the Prime Minister’s response was typical of this antipathetic attitude. He said that we should not be mesmerised by Stern. Why should we not be mesmerised by Stern? I think the whole country was moved by Stern—mind you, having said that, Stern did not in fact say anything terribly different. It was certainly up to date, but it did not say anything that was terribly different from the report of the inquiry that was conducted by the Senate six years ago. I chaired that inquiry. Government members were on that inquiry. We heard from the scientists. We heard from the climatologists. We heard from the people who said: ‘This is real. The threat to the globe from climate change is real.’ I think there were 106 recommendations from that committee report, and they still have not been implemented—none of them. I am not even sure that the government has responded to that very significant piece of work, that very substantial document, that very thorough, comprehensive working-over of the issues for Australia.

Sir Nicholas Stern said, in his typically polite way, that he would not dream of telling Australia or any country what to do. But then he said:

... I do think it would be good if all countries were involved in the Kyoto Protocol.

Al Gore’s film that we all saw, An Inconvenient Truth, was described by various ministers as entertainment. I found it anything but entertaining; in fact, it was frightening. It put in very simple terms the problem that has been described by scientists for some decades now but in a way that could be understood. It was clear; it was supported by very real examples and graphic images of melting icecaps and a range of clear demonstrations that climate change is with us. Al Gore described the United States and Australia as ‘the Bonnie and Clyde’ of the global climate crisis for failing to ratify the Kyoto protocol.

The government has even wound back earlier efforts made in the nineties. The Australian Greenhouse Office was lauded as a world first. We were the first country in the world to set up a whole department independent of other departments so that it answered only to the Prime Minister and the minister for the environment. It was to set the path for Australia. Since that time, the AGO has become a shadow of its former self. It has now been subsumed into other departments. Its CEO left in disgust and has since said that its work was nobbled by other departments and that it was not allowed to do what it was set up for.

The carbon accounting CRC was defunded. Again, it was lauded as a great step forward. ‘This is the way we will help the world in counting carbon, whether it is geosequestration, whether it is carbon tied up in forests. This will be a way forward to actually count the carbon that is out there.’ That CRC has been defunded. I do not know whether it is doing any work at all now, but my guess is that it is not.

I have a couple of other comments to make on Australia’s position. The chief economist of the British government backed Carbon Trust, Michael Grubb, said that the Howard government’s stance on climate change was:

... so clearly not a position which can lead to any credible solutions.

He said that coming to Australia:

... feels like going back in time because so little generally seems to have been done on the ground here.

Former CSIRO chief of atmospheric research, Graeme Pearman, said there were ‘great expectations a decade ago’ that Australia would lead the world in responding to climate change. Instead, he says it has taken a drought to persuade most politicians from the major parties and the public to take it seriously. Former President of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, has urged Australia and the United States to sign the Kyoto protocol, while cautioning the Australian government not to go down the path of nuclear power. So it seems that Australia has been isolated along with America in all of this, and it is not a good outcome for this country.

Mr Hockey said the other day that a billion dollars would be provided for drought assistance this year and that that was over and above the $1.2 billion that had already been committed, and no doubt there will be more money needed as this drought drags on through what is likely to be a hot summer with little rain.

The Climate Institute looked into the question of farmers, farming and the Kyoto protocol, and concluded that Australian farmers were missing out. They said that the Kyoto protocol and a national emissions trading system, if it was in place today, could:

...provide Australian farmers with an income of $1.8 billion over the period 2008-2012, due to the emissions saved by limited land clearing.

What we know is that our generous targets also included generous considerations for land clearing. The latest data shows that we got a credit of 73 per cent from 1990 levels on land clearing. So our farmers have in fact delivered the results that the government so commonly and loudly professes as being its great success story on climate change. Farmers have been responsible for virtually the entire share of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions reductions. But their efforts, worth around $2 billion, have not been recognised or financially rewarded by the government, except in drought handouts. The Climate Institute states:

By reducing land clearing, farmers have already reduced greenhouse gas emissions by about 75 million tonnes since 1990. By 2010, the savings are projected to be about 83 million tonnes. This level of emissions reductions is equivalent to eliminating the total annual emissions of New Zealand or Ireland. Over the same period, emissions from energy and transport have and continue to sky rocket—

stationary energy by 43 per cent on 1990 levels—

... total energy sector to emissions are projected to be 45% above 1990 levels by 2010.

According to the Climate Institute:

In short, the farmers have been carrying the greenhouse reduction efforts in an inequitable relationship to other greenhouse gas polluting sectors in Australia.

So the federal government cannot claim any credit for those emissions savings. Regarding the area over which it has jurisdiction, the government has chosen not to exercise any influence and that has meant massive increases in emissions in the areas of transport, stationary energy and the like.

I want to finish by saying that this is nothing new for the Democrats. We have been on this issue for a long time. In fact, when we looked back at our records, we found that we kicked off the greenhouse debate in the Senate back in 1988 with a private senators’ bill on ozone protection. So my colleagues back then were already talking about greenhouse. We also initiated and chaired two Senate reports on climate change: one that I mentioned earlier and another in 1991 called Rescue the future: Reducing the impact of the greenhouse effect. The one in 1999 was called The heat is on: Australia’s greenhouse future, which was tabled in 2001 with, as I said, recommendations—106 of which have yet to be put in place.

We also pushed for the environment committee to respond to the government’s energy white paper, which was supposed to set a strategy for Australia’s future energy development. It is interesting that within a couple of years of that strategy being put forward the government suddenly did an about turn and decided we were heading down the nuclear power path—so much for a strategy for the future.

In 2005, we considered the white paper in a report entitled Lurching forward, looking back and found that the plan outline did not go far enough and lacked a viable time frame for success. The report found that the energy white paper did not contain effective planning for Australia’s future energy supply, greenhouse emissions reductions or alternative renewable energy development. It argued that energy related emissions were increasing at an alarming rate and yet there were no clear policies in the EWP that would rein in emissions. There are no clear policies within AP6 either. And there are no clear policies for Kyoto. (Time expired)

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to take part in this debate this afternoon. I am a bit disappointed in the Labor Party though. They seem to have been concentrating on the workplace relations bill and ‘all’ the demonstrations today. I put all in inverted commas because I think only a very small percentage of Australian workers bothered to turn out today. In fact, as I understand it, the demonstrations were an absolute and abject failure today.

Rod Kemp (Victoria, Liberal Party, Minister for the Arts and Sport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The MCG was almost empty.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes. You would fill the stadium with people going along to see the singer. Perhaps even the fans of Jimmy Barnes were turned aside because of the workplace relations thing. I am a bit disappointed in the Labor Party. It was such a big issue today, so I thought their one afternoon of opposition business today would surely have been on workplace relations. Fortuitously—and fortunately for the rest of us in the Senate—they have picked the more serious topic of climate change, because nobody, most of all the workers in Australia, takes too seriously the ongoing dishonest campaign by the Labor Party and the few union bosses, who will suffer as a result of the Work Choices legislation.

I am disappointed in the arguments today from the Labor Party, because, as I understood it, the workplace relations bill was going to make the sky fall in. I felt absolutely certain that someone would have blamed climate change on the workplace relations bill, because all those dire warnings have been given for so very long. It is good to debate a serious subject which concerns, I think, everyone in the world. I really struggle to understand the approach of the Labor Party particularly. I struggle to understand the approach of the Democrats and I have never bothered to try and understand the approach of the Greens, because I know they are just in this for the few votes they can win from the Labor Party each election by taking a different approach or a left-wing approach. But it does surprise me that the Labor Party have adopted this approach.

Someone has to tell me; I cannot quite follow this. I think Senator Allison made the point that the United States emits 25 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions. I acknowledge that, Senator Allison. You said that for some reason the government does not seem to acknowledge it. We do. I have to say to Senator Allison: that is just the point about signing or not signing Kyoto. I will come back to that. But if the United States emits 25 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases, what does China emit? I do not have those figures; I am sure they will be around the chamber. What does India emit? What does Europe emit—that great bastion of propriety when it comes to greenhouse emissions? Of course, they are pretty big emitters—not as big as they would be if they did not have all that nuclear power. It is because of the nuclear power in Britain and France in particular that Europe is not such a big emitter as they might otherwise be.

Australia emits less than one per cent of the world’s greenhouse emissions. So, if we signed up to Kyoto today, I would understand from the arguments of Senator Allison, the Greens and even the Labor Party that suddenly our farmers will not be in drought, just by Australia actually signing a bit of paper. Signing a bit of paper will not make one iota of difference to Australia’s farmers or changing climate in Australia. What will make a difference—and it will not make a difference for a few years, but it certainly requires urgent attention—is getting the big emitters involved. The big emitters in this particular instance are the United States, China and India. So having Australia sign or not sign a document that very few of the big emitters are involved in is just nonsensical. I have to get someone to try and explain to me the logic of their arguments. What Australia needs to do and what this government wants to do is engage with those big emitters—the USA, China, India and others—to try and bring them into some sort of meaningful arrangement that will stop greenhouse gas emissions and the change in climate.

We have had all the accusations, such as: because Australia has not signed a bit of paper, suddenly all the South Pacific countries will go underwater—it will be Australia’s fault because we have not signed a bit of paper. Where is the common sense and logic in all that? These island nations are in trouble because of the greenhouse gas emissions from the big emitters. What do you do about that? You do not have a country that emits less than one per cent sign a bit of paper; you try to get into the tent and into some meaningful arrangement with the people who are the big emitters, and that is Australia’s goal.

All that Australia would do if it signed this bit of paper is destroy, in a competitive way, its very lucrative coal industry. Again, the Labor Party speaks with a pretty forked tongue, I might say, when it comes to this particular argument, because, when they are around the cafe latte set in Sydney and Melbourne, where most of our Labor senators come from, with respect to them—

Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Banking and Financial Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Devonport, actually.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The cafe latte set in Devonport—all right, Senator Sherry. Senator Sherry, when or if you ever talk to the coalminers in the Bowen Basin, you will not adopt quite the same approach to greenhouse gas emissions, because the miners where I come from, and in an area where I travel regularly, understand that the Labor Party policy on this and in so many other areas would cost them their jobs. Most of them earn far more than anyone in this chamber earns at the present time—and good luck to them. I appreciate and applaud people who get out and do the hard work—at times the dirty work—but share in the rewards, and they certainly do in the Bowen coalfields, Dysart, Moranbah, Emerald, Moura and all those places.

If the Labor policy were introduced without any trade-offs, then the people who the unions are supposed to be representing and supporting would find themselves in very dire straits. I find the Labor Party’s approach to all of this quite illogical and difficult to understand. Perhaps I should not say ‘the Labor Party’; I should say ‘the Labor Party in its federal connotation’, because the Labor Party in Queensland, with Peter Perfect—Premier Pete—understands—

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator, you must refer to the Premier of Queensland in appropriate language. I ask you to withdraw that and refer to the Premier properly.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Certainly: the Hon. Peter Beattie MP, Premier of Queensland—great guy. Some describe his winning approach to elections as the Luna Park smile: ‘Trust me; this is a problem.’ In fact, you should talk to Premier Beattie about how to fix climate change, because he would fix that in the same way he has allegedly fixed everything else: he would give everyone the Luna Park smile and say, ‘Yes, this is terrible. We’ve got to do something about that. Trust me and I’ll fix it.’ He did that with the health system. Regrettably, my fellow Queenslanders fell for the line.

Gee, if they had a go today they would not fall for it, as they carry their buckets of water around between five and six in the morning to water their most precious prized plants. They would not be so forgiving these days. But again the Hon. Peter Beattie MP smiled at them, gave them that very famous smile: ‘Gee, this water’s a problem. The fact that I’ve been here for eight years and should’ve done something about these dams in those eight years, don’t you worry about that. I understand now it’s a great problem. The smile on my face and the sincerity of my promises will tell you that we’re going to fix the water problem in Queensland.’

Perhaps the Labor lot over on the other side of the chamber should have got Premier Pete—I am sorry; the Hon. Peter Beattie—to come onboard and smile and tell everyone he is going to fix climate change. He seems to think that he can do all those things, even though it has nothing to do with him. But on a more serious note, he understands that by signing Kyoto all you do is put a lot of Queenslanders out of work, and he is not very keen on doing that. He is, after all, a politician. He, as a Queenslander, would like to see his state do as well as it could. I suspect there are a few other Labor premiers in the same position. They are not quite so gung-ho on this Kyoto agreement, because they realise as well that by simply signing a bit of paper you are not going to cure climate change. All you are going to do is put Queensland and Australian industries at a disadvantage. So it is not the Labor Party, it is the federal Labor Party that sees in this approach some votes from the cafe latte set around the capital cities.

As opposed to that, what the coalition government wants to do is to seriously address climate change and try to bring onboard the big emitters so that we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the United States, China and India, and in that way do something serious about climate change. The ridiculousness of the idea that Australia, with less than one per cent of emissions, signing a bit of paper is going to cure the drought, cure the water shortage and fix the Australian farm industry is just so nonsensical I cannot believe allegedly clever people that live opposite in the chamber could be promulgating that argument.

But then you get onto the Greens and, I regret to say, even the Democrats with some of their solutions for fixing climate change. Senator Allison spoke, and I think Senator Milne spoke—I only half heard her. One of their solutions to fix greenhouse gas emissions was to stop logging of old-growth forests. How illogical! How contrary to the facts can you be with that argument from Senator Milne? She should know that growing forests—and I do not mean old-growth forests that grow a very small amount each year—are really greenhouse gas sinks. What Senator Milne would have us do is stop all logging of old-growth forests in Australia. It would mean that our annual trade deficit of $2 billion in forest and wood products would escalate much higher, which would have a bad impact on Australia’s balance of payments and our general economy. But it would also mean that Australia would still have the need for those forest and wood products. So if we ban it from Australia, where do we get it from? We get it from places like the Solomons, New Guinea, Malaysia and, I understand, parts of China, where there is large-scale slaughter and clearing of native forests—rainforests that are growing and sucking in a lot of carbon emissions. But Senator Milne would have us stop it in Australia where it is so very well controlled.

In Australia, if you clear some forest land—if you harvest some forests—it is immediately replanted with new trees. The trees grow, and during their growing cycle they actually consume a lot of greenhouse gases and help with that. But the Greens’ approach is to stop that in Australia where it is very carefully controlled and sustainably managed, and let all the forest and wood product collections for Australia come from forests around the world which are not at all well managed and which do have an impact with their clearing arrangements.

How does that help the climate change issue in the world? I ask Senator Milne: when you stop Australia’s sustainable and very carefully managed harvesting of old-growth forests in Australia and push that onto the uncontrolled clearing of land in places like the Solomons and Malaysia, how does that conceivably help climate change in the world? Doesn’t Senator Milne understand that we are in a global situation here? It is not so much what happens just in Australia. That seems to be all Senator Milne is interested in: ‘Stop sustainable managed forestry in Australia but let it go unchecked elsewhere in the world.’ She does not seem to realise that the impact in Australia is only infinitesimal compared to the impact that these uncontrolled clearings have in other parts of the world.

That is the sort of stupidity we continue to get from the Greens. This week I think the Greens are all in favour of wind power, but I can remember the times when the suggestion of putting up wind farms anywhere in Australia was totally opposed by the Greens. Wind farms created visual pollution or noise pollution or perhaps they even caused some damage to wildlife—perhaps even orange-bellied parrots—and the Greens were then totally opposed to them. Now they have had some sort of a conversion.

They also cannot seem to understand, as many of their counterparts in the rest of the world can, that if greenhouse gas emissions and climate change is the real issue for the world at the present time—and many of us think that perhaps it is the greatest confrontation that the globe faces—then they would have to concede that nuclear power should at least be looked at. Certainly in Australia we have to have the debate on nuclear power and we have to get the facts and figures together. I agree with respected commentators, I think, who say that perhaps today nuclear power is not economically feasible for Australia, but that does not mean to say, as the Labor Party and the Greens do, that we should not even think about it.

Again I have to correct myself, Mr Acting Deputy President Marshall: it is not the whole of the Labor Party that thinks like this. I know that there is a huge division of opinion in the Labor Party. Martin Ferguson, one of the more sensible policy frontbenchers for the other side, agrees with the government that there needs to be debate on the nuclear option. For Australia we need to look at all of these avenues, and of course the Australian government is doing that. The Australian government has put so much money into development of low-emissions technology, renewable energy development, solar cities program, advanced electricity storage technologies, wind energy generation, the greenhouse gas challenge—the list goes on of the initiatives that the Australian government has taken to address our energy needs in a greenhouse gas sensitive way and we have a very good record on that. But it does need Australia to look at all options, including nuclear.

I also think that we have to look again at hydropower. I accept that I am a bit simple when it comes to these sorts of things. I, like most other Australians, cannot quite understand the arguments of the Greens that hydropower is not really much good for you. They will not allow any more hydroplants to come on stream and yet there you have a source of energy that really is harmless. It provides very good power and does it, I would have thought, in a very environmentally sensitive way. I think the argument must be that some parts of our vast country would go underwater for the dams that would be needed for hydropower. But we have got a big country and surely we can give up an infinitesimal part of that land mass for water storage to allow for hydropower that would really help with this climate change problem.

So I find this bill the Australian Labor Party introduced before the parliament today a bit difficult to understand. I think that it is a bit disingenuous. It is an attempt to garner a few votes in the capital cities by those who are attracted by these sorts of superficial arguments. I would certainly hope that the Senate has the good sense to reject the bill and endorse the government’s approach to this difficult problem. (Time expired)

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to provide a contribution to the debate on the Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change (Kyoto Protocol Ratification) Bill 2006 [No. 2]. Coming from the Northern Territory, I am only too well aware of the debate we have had in the House of Representatives, and of the Senate committee report tabled today on the Commonwealth waste management strategy that has highlighted much of the angst for people in the Northern Territory when it comes to what we do with the offshoot and the waste product emanating from nuclear power.

Before I get to that, let me provide some introductory remarks about where we are in this country in respect of dealing with climate change and the impact of that. We have had over 10 very long years of the Howard government and we now know that they have spent their time totally ignoring scientists and the warning bells when it comes to climate change. They have ignored economists who have repeatedly warned this government and the Australian community about what economic impacts it will have for this country if we do not take action not tomorrow, not now, but even yesterday—and it is too late for yesterday, of course. Climate change is a very serious threat, and I wonder to what extent it has to become such a threat that this government will finally decide to take action and do something about it.

This year we had the Stern report provided to this government in early November. That highlights the potential impact of climate change on our economy—another signpost, another warning for this government that it needs to take action now before it will cost much more money to deal with in future years. Back in June 2005 this government also received a report: Climate change: risk and vulnerability. That report back then outlined the consequences for Australia if we do not do anything to take appropriate action in tackling climate change. We know that during this time there has been a 30 per cent drop in rainfall and, while we are certainly not experiencing that so much in the Northern Territory and in the Top End, other parts of this country are seriously affected. It saddens me to see photos and pictures on the television of communities struggling with serious drought and the lack of water. Finally, at some stage, the penny must drop that this is related in some way to this 30 per cent drop in rainfall—that it is due to our inability to take action on climate change.

We know there are more extreme weather events happening in northern Australia. Even this year in April, when I was out in north-east Arnhem Land—in fact, I got stuck in the floods in Katherine—people were saying to us: ‘How can this be? We had a massive flood in Katherine in 1998 that people said was a one-in-a-hundred-year tragedy. But here we are again in 2006, only eight years later, with the Katherine River at its maximum height.’ The day I was there I would say that another half a metre of water in the Katherine River would have seen it flood the main part of the Katherine community, and that would have emulated the massive floods we had back in 1998. So there are people in parts of this country who are experiencing this sort of thing now—from droughts in the eastern areas to floods in the north: we have had severe flooding twice in eight years.

This year we also experienced, the day before Anzac Day, Cyclone Monica. That threatened to pass over Darwin. Unfortunately, the eye of that cyclone went over Maningrida and there was serious damage there. But, I tell you, if the eye of that cyclone had gone through Darwin, I am not entirely sure how that city would have withstood a cyclone of that capacity. I have to say to you, at three o’clock on that Monday afternoon, Darwin was as black as it gets at midnight anywhere else in this world and it was pretty scary and eerie. Again, what we are noticing more and more is the threat of not only more cyclones but also increased severity of cyclones in the Top End—and of course the disappearance of iconic areas of our country, like the Great Barrier Reef, and massive changes at Kakadu National Park.

So the signs are there. This government that is in power should be recognising that and taking some action. But what we have seen is that the government will not sign up to the Kyoto protocol. I listened to Senator Lyn Allison’s contribution to this debate and I think she is right on the money when she says that the government’s inaction on climate change, in not signing the Kyoto protocol, is about nothing other than the politics of supporting the United States. It is about trying to back up their mate, President Bush. It is about John Howard making sure that his best friend is not out there on an island by himself, and that is not the way to manage climate change in this country.

We have not signed up for the protocol’s first commitment period, which is to operate between 2008 and 2012. That period has the commitment of the whole world, I might add, including China and India. Fancy that—China and India but not us. It is hard to believe, really. Those countries are putting in place practical measures for clean energy development, implementing systems and looking at opportunities to expand industries in areas that would address all of these climate change issues.

The Prime Minister was talking about some kind of new Kyoto protocol. I think he referred to it as ‘new Kyoto’ some weeks ago. Well, it is not in fact a new protocol that is going to be out and about; it is actually the second commitment period of the current and original Kyoto protocol. Perhaps that shows just how off course the Prime Minister is if he cannot even get the words right. The second commitment period of the Kyoto protocol is post 2012, from 2013 onwards. Of course, we heard Senator Milne’s contribution on the activities in Nairobi, where we could not even vote. As I said, there are countries like China and India sitting at the table because they have signed on the dotted line. At least they are going to try to do what they can in this period. We can go to the talkfest but we do not have any power or influence because our signature is not on the bottom of the page.

Quite frankly, it is a joke, when over 10 years ago Australia used to move around the world stage as a leader in a range of areas, not just in the United Nations and signing protocols but also in a whole range of other activities. It is surely an international embarrassment to us now. Just this week we had a New Zealand delegation come to this parliament—their local government and environment committee—and the chair of that committee was saying to me over a luncheon: ‘I can’t believe your country hasn’t signed the Kyoto protocol. You’re one of only two countries in the world that hasn’t and it’s still not happening.’ Yet this week, while they have been in the country, all they have heard on the television and in newspaper articles, she was saying, are comments about the drought, about the climate and about how we need to take action.

But this government has not stepped up to the plate. So other countries are talking about us, but not in a positive way—in very critical and damning way, and in a very embarrassing way, I have to say. As a member of the federal parliament, to sit with a New Zealand delegation and try to defend—well, I was not going to defend this government’s lack of action, but it was embarrassing. So countries around the world are watching and they are taking notice, and what they notice is that we are on a go-slow here. In fact, my House of Representatives colleague Anthony Albanese said that we have the handbrake on for climate change. So we have not even decided to put it into first gear.

Figures released by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change show that Australian greenhouse gas emissions rose between 1990 and 2004 by 25.1 per cent. Energy emissions increased by 34.7 per cent over the same period, 1990 to 2004. Australian emissions, according to the Australian Greenhouse Office report that was released last year in November, are projected to rise by 22 per cent by 2020. So our emissions are on the increase; they are not on the decline. You have to ask yourself why that is. It is because the Howard government are doing nothing to try to turn these figures around. They are simply not with the program and they do not want to be with the program. They are too busy supporting their best mate across the Pacific Ocean.

Despite the warnings for years and years, we have a government in charge of this country that is only just coming to recognise climate change. Today’s latest warning in the media, I notice, is on Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf. We have all seen the pictures of the icebergs floating up past the New Zealand coast. The Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica—which is about the size of France, I have to say—could break off without warning. Surely those sorts of things do not happen without a reason. We could see a rapid rise in sea levels if that occurs, bringing climate change home to every coastline around the world.

What is the government’s quick fix for climate change, having ducked and weaved about Kyoto and now Kyoto 2, as Mr Howard might want to call it—but, in fact, it is the second commitment? Their answer now is to actually divert everyone’s attention to a possible nuclear power industry in the country—a nuclear power plant for everybody’s local community. Not only will you be able to go down to your local swimming pool, gym and high school but also you might be able to skip off and do your five-kilometre walk in the morning around your local power plant if this government has its way—and every one financed by a whopping government subsidy. As we have seen, we are no longer going to be able to have a nuclear power industry in this country—it will be massively expensive—and it will not be able to operate unless it is highly subsidised. Where is that going to come from? That is going to come out of my and your taxpayer funds, no doubt.

On the government’s current strategy, nuclear power will also need the government to be able to bully the Northern Territory—once again. And even Aboriginal traditional owners, under the latest radioactive waste dump bill, are to take the industry’s waste. If we are going to move down the path of having a nuclear power industry then, as I think I said in this place earlier this week, tell us where the reactors are going to go. Tell the people in the Northern Territory where the waste is going to go. Australia has had 50 years to sort out storage of radioactive waste, yet even the government’s latest plan for the intermediate waste we have been generating for years is still not a permanent solution.

When I talk about the dump that is going to be put in the Northern Territory, it gives me a great opportunity to refer to the outburst on Monday evening from my Senate colleague from the Northern Territory. He is getting a bit touchy, isn’t he, about the use of the word ‘dump’! But people in the Territory, and certainly I, will continue to use that word. We do not see this as a facility; we do see it as a dump. When the country railroads legislation in the Northern Territory, when a government refuses to consult with the communities that are affected, and when a government seeks to overturn and disregard the outcomes and legislation passed by a democratically elected government in the Northern Territory and picks three sites that are actually disused defence sites in order to house nuclear waste from this country, we have every right to call that a dump—absolutely, we do! You are simply taking your waste from Lucas Heights and plopping it down somewhere in the Northern Territory without due process or due consultation. So, if my colleague Senator Scullion wants to get a little bit upset and emotional about the word ‘dump’, he had better get used to it because we will continue to use that word. We are not convinced that this will be a ‘facility’. This is anything other than a facility. This will be a nuclear waste dump.

That brings me to a report that I have been reading which was commissioned by the parliament in the United Kingdom. They are, in fact, so much on the program in the UK that they actually have a Committee on Radioactive Waste Management. That would probably be a little bit too transparent, open and honest for this government. The UK parliament actually commissioned this independent committee. It is headed up by Professor Gordon Mackerron. Recommendation 10 of this committee’s report says this:

Community involvement in any proposals for the siting of long-term radioactive waste facilities should be based on the principle of volunteerism—

that is a novel idea!—

that is, an expressed willingness to participate.

He goes on to say, in recommendation 12:

Community involvement should be achieved through the development of a partnership approach—

now we are getting fairly unique, are we not!—

based on an open—

oh my goodness!—

and equal relationship between potential host communities and those responsible for implementation.

What a novel idea that would be! And it is not only that. As I read further in this report, I want to also make reference to something else my colleague happened to say on Monday night. He tried in explicit detail to explain to us exactly what was high-level waste and what was not high-level waste. In fact, he seems so eminently attuned to these definitions that one would have thought that perhaps he had some kind of postgraduate degree in nuclear physics. But, in fact, if you read all of the literature that is around from countries that have been dealing with this stuff for 50 years or more, you will find that, in fact, there is no internationally agreed definition of nuclear waste.

Lo and behold—what do I find on page 14 of this report from the UK committee? At dot point 5 on page 14 of the report—and I might say that this report is entitled Managing our radioactive waste safelyit says:

There is no internationally agreed method of classifying radioactive wastes.

Let me just read that again. I must have got it wrong if Senator Scullion is the expert in this all of a sudden. It says:

There is no internationally agreed method of classifying radioactive wastes. Historically, in the UK they have been categorised in terms of their nature and activity and this has generally been used to determine the approach to waste management.

It goes on to say:

The classification has taken account of quantity of radioactivity the wastes contain and their heat generating capacity and has resulted in four basic categories ...

We have asked ANSTO and DEST officials time and time again what the waste is that is going to be dumped in the Territory. But, of course, we keep getting told that it is only low-level and intermediate-level waste; that it is not high-level waste. How do we know that? If there is no internationally agreed definition on what waste can be classified as, how do we know that we are not getting high-level waste?

Minister Marion Scrymgour from the Northern Territory went off to France in June or July of this year, and what did she find? The French told her that we are not going to get back anything other than high-level waste, that there is no waste that has been generated in France and Scotland going back to Australia on ships other than high-level waste. The French are absolutely convinced that we will be getting back high-level waste. We had better have a damn good place to dump it because it is going to be there for at least 200,000 years.

I also want to say that, when I raised this report in estimates, DEST officials informed me that it does not apply to Australia because the UK has mainly high-level waste. I see. They are saying: ‘If we were going to get back high-level waste, we would consult with the community where we are going to dump it. But, because this is not high-level waste, we do not have to consult anyone.’ That is logical. But the UK, Scotland and France are telling us that it is high-level waste we are going to get back. In the last few preceding weeks when I had a chance to read this report from cover to cover, what did I find? Most of the waste that the UK wants stored for a period of many long years is intermediate-level waste. How about that? The dump in the Territory is going to have low- and intermediate-level waste. If it was good enough for the UK to consult communities and have a specific committee on radioactive waste management, why can we not do that in this country?

What I am coming to in talking about the bill is this: if this government is going to do nothing about climate change and is going to take us down the path of nuclear energy, it should tell us where the waste is going to go. If the waste is going to be dumped in the Territory, the government should scrap the current plan, start again and start consulting the community. If the government wants to use international best practice, it should start with waste management 101, consult and have volunteer communities that are well-informed and would welcome the waste rather than dumping it on a community that does not want it. (Time expired)

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As Senator Milne has said, we will support the Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change (Kyoto Protocol Ratification) Bill 2006 [No. 2], but it is in fact the same bill that Senator Lundy and I put to the chamber two or three years ago. It passed then because there was not a government majority in the Senate. The bill simply called for ratification of the Kyoto protocol. This bill will no doubt be blocked, if it gets to a vote on this occasion, by the combined numbers of the government in majority in the Senate. This just shows that, instead of advancing to tackle climate change, because of the Howard government’s failure on this matter—failure of thinking, failure of strategy, failure of planning and failure in having a long-term view—this parliament is going backwards so that a proposal like this will now not get through the Senate, even though it did a couple of years ago.

That having been said, I am very pleased that today Senator Milne brought a comprehensive climate change strategy bill—the Climate Change Action Bill 2006into the chamber, because a strategy is required that really does grapple with Australia’s appalling performance under the Howard government as one of the world’s biggest per capita polluters and the intention of the Howard government to stay right in line with the coal industry and, as Senator Crossin just indicated, the nuclear industry, to the detriment of the best options, by far, for this nation to be taking. The first option is energy efficiency, which the unlearned brains of the senators opposite seem unable to grapple with, which could provide up to 30 per cent of the electricity required by this nation in the future. Energy efficiency simply means everything from turning lights off when you leave a room to properly cladding hot water pipes, making sure that heavy industry is not wasting power and that heat from heavy industry is converted into energy use and is not simply wasted into the atmosphere.

The second option is of course renewable energy—solar energy. I have just taken delivery of a new round of ‘solar, not nuclear’ stickers which sum up the options. The Greens say solar energy, the government says nuclear energy and there is an enormous gap between the two. I resisted the temptation in deference to President Bush to run the sticker saying, ‘solular, not nucular’. I have kept it to the proper pronunciation so that it would not confuse people further. I know President Bush is very easily confused on these matters.

The problem with the bill is that it does not tackle the need to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from this country with targets and dates. I heard Senator Milne flag an amendment for the committee stage, if we ever get to it—and that is unlikely in the week or so of parliamentary sittings we have left—to tackle the most expeditious way of reversing the huge amount of greenhouse gases being produced unnecessarily in this country, and that is to end old-growth logging.

In his report a couple of weeks ago, Sir Nicholas Stern, the former Chief Economist of the World Bank, created a new wave of alarm about the catastrophic social, environmental and economic problems that climate change is bringing ever closer to the whole planet. He made it clear that the first thing we should be doing is ending the destruction of forests around the planet. In doing so, we could cause a reduction in greenhouse gases greater than if we stopped all the transport systems in the world. It can be done in a wealthy country like this one simply by the government motivating itself to do so. We have enough wood available in our wonderful nation from the 1.5 million hectares of plantations to supply all the wood needs of this country—paper, building materials and so on. We simply do not have to keep destroying native forests, which causes a massive loss of biosphere and is to the extraordinary detriment of the atmosphere.

For me it is criminal behaviour. It is a crime against nature for Labor and Liberal governments in this country to be continuing to authorise the destruction of native forests. Not only is it an assault on the water catchments, leading to the new plantations taking up prodigious amounts of water and therefore depriving downstream users of that water, but it releases enormous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Let me explain that a little because the science is not known to members of government, including the two, only, who are opposite in the chamber at the moment. An old-growth forest continues to absorb—

Rod Kemp (Victoria, Liberal Party, Minister for the Arts and Sport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a point of order. Senators are entitled to range far and wide but the rather cheap shot that was made that there were only two senators in the chamber was from a man who refuses to come, often, into the chamber for question time. This is a man who refuses to come to Senate committees. To reflect on the attendance of other senators in the chamber is quite outrageous.

Ross Lightfoot (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

With respect, Minister, that is not a point of order. It may be outrageous, Minister, but it is not a point of order.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, a very correct ruling—it is not a point of order and the minister should wait his turn to get up and try to defend his indefensible position.

Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Banking and Financial Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is his last week as a minister.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is that it, Senator? It is his last week as a minister, I am informed.

The Acting Deputy President:

Senator Brown, you could resume on what you were speaking on.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Because you have made such good ruling, Mr Acting Deputy President, I will take notice of what you say and get back to where I was before the unfortunate senator broke standing orders. I was talking about the detriment that occurs when old-growth forests are destroyed as they are being destroyed in southern New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, for example, at the moment. The same applies to native woodlands right across the country, I might add. Just this week we got the news that, under the authority of the Howard government and its regional forest agreement, which the Prime Minister personally signed, and the Lennon Labor government in Tasmania, giant trees in the World Heritage value Upper Florentine forests are being dynamited.

This is not Afghanistan under the Taliban, but it echoes the destruction of Bamiyan during that period. The difference between the great Buddha statues of Afghanistan, which are now lost to human heritage for all time, and the giant trees of the Upper Florentine forests, is that the latter are living entities full of wildlife. Under the authority of the Prime Minister, these great trees—amongst the greatest living things ever on the face of the planet—are being dynamited.

What happens in the wake of that is that Gunns Ltd will come in and take the majority of the forest that is taken out. In fact, it is very likely that a vast amount of the forest will remain there on the forest floor, including the dynamited trees. They will take other trees out as woodchips, which go to Japan, get recycled as paper and end up on the rubbish dumps of the northern hemisphere and emitted as greenhouse gases. Those that remain are, except for some clumps, destined to be burnt. When they are burnt, hundreds, thousands, millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases are emitted into the atmosphere, over a period.

So we go from a vast forest which is absorbing greenhouse gases and transmitting them into the ecosystem—and half or more of the greenhouse gases are actually underground in micro-organisms and the root systems—to a devastated environment in which there has been a massive greenhouse gas assault on the already polluted environment. That is under the authority of our Prime Minister, John Winston Howard, and the Labor premiers of Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales. Very recently we have seen the reiteration of the determination of Premier Bracks in Victoria to keep logging the water catchments of that state. In a statement he said he would not protect future old-growth forests but that they would go to logging. This is reprehensible.

We have just heard Senator Crossin and others before her speak about the fear now that the massive Ross ice sheet in Antarctica is dangerously capable of being let loose and melting into the oceans, creating a sea level rise of between five and 17 metres. Is the government really thinking about what that means for this nation, let alone the whole world? Senator Parry, opposite, thinks that that is amusing. I do not. I think it is an appalling prospect and it must be taken seriously. I would have thought a new and younger member of the Senate would be working very hard to wake up the old warhorses of the government about that matter.

I will be supporting the motion to end old-growth logging. I will be supporting the much more comprehensive and strategically effective legislation that Senator Milne introduced to this place earlier in the day. Of course the Greens will be continuing to argue for the much better alternatives like renewable energy, which has effectively been defunded and put 10 years back by the failed policies of the Howard government in the last 10 years.

The Acting Deputy President:

Order! The time allowed for the consideration of general business, including the consideration of government documents has expired.