Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Abetz, the Minister representing the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources. Does the minister recall his comments of 25 September 2006:

There is no doubt that weeds pose ... a challenge much clearer, more present and possibly more serious than the unclear challenge which climate change may or may not pose to our biodiversity in 100 years time.

Didn’t the government’s own State of the environment report show that Australia’s greenhouse emissions will rise by 22 per cent by 2020? Has not the CSIRO warned that such an increase could lead to a four degree rise in temperatures, destroying the Great Barrier Reef and halving water flows in the Murray-Darling Basin? While acknowledging that weeds are a major challenge, given the CSIRO findings, does the minister stand by his assertion that weeds are a clearer threat to our children than global warming, melting icecaps, rising sea levels and changing weather patterns?

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted that Senator Lundy has taken some notice of what, if I might say, was an excellent speech concerning weeds. As so often happens with the Australian Labor Party, there is a small degree of truth in the assertion but then they develop it beyond that which was actually said. So many of us on this side have been burnt by accepting the assertions of those opposite. I know of no scientist—no person—who believes that weeds are not a direct and present threat to the biodiversity of this country, besides costing our farming community literally billions of dollars each and every year. There is no dispute about that. It is a present threat and it is a very real threat. I think those opposite would acknowledge that.

At the time that I gave that speech there was—and, indeed, there still remains within the community at large—some scepticism about climate change. And what better example did we have than yesterday’s TV news when Mr Rudd and Mr Garrett tried to pull a stunt with a farmer and that farmer in fact indicated his scepticism. Ask that farmer whether he has any question about the real and direct threat of weeds to his property and he would say, ‘A no-brainer—of course they are.’ So the point that I was making quite rightly in that speech was that, whilst there were and there still are today some climate change sceptics within the community, there are no sceptics in the community about the real and present threat of weeds to our biodiversity—a very simple proposition. Those who are blinded by the extreme green mantra, of course, cannot see the sort of sensible, balanced approach that we have taken in relation to this matter. There is nothing inconsistent with what I said in that speech—I think it was in September last year—and that which is the government’s position today.

Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. Given the abundance of scientific data on the dangerous impact of climate change, culminating in the IPCC report last week, how could the minister possibly assert that the threat of climate change is in any way unclear or that it may or may not impact on our biodiversity in 100 years time? Given the Prime Minister has done a complete U-turn on climate change, does the minister now reject his own earlier views? Here is his opportunity.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In a desperate attempt to give her original question some credibility, the honourable senator now seeks to verbal me even further in her supplementary question. The reality is that there is no inconsistency. I invite the honourable senator to put aside her cheap political shots, put aside her partisanship, read the speech in full and then ask a simple question: is there a single person in Australia who questions that weeds are a clear and present threat to our biodiversity? The answer is: nobody does believe that weeds are not such a threat. As a result, at a weeds conference it was important to point that out and to get some traction on that very important issue within the community, and that— (Time expired)