Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a)

notes:

(i)

the continued scepticism of the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) over the link between human activity and climate change,

(ii)

that the Howard Government has dragged the chain on climate change for more than 10 years, and

(iii)

the environmental and economic cost of past inaction and any future delays in tackling this challenge; and

(b)

calls on the Government to recognise the link between human activity and climate change and join in the efforts of the international community by ratifying the Kyoto Protocol.

I rise to speak on this motion put forward in my name on behalf of the Labor Party in relation to this Prime Minister’s continued scepticism over the link between human activity and climate change and the fact that this government has dragged the chain on climate change for over a decade. I also want to talk about the economic and environmental cost of this government’s inaction and of any future delays in tackling the challenge. We are calling on the government to finally recognise the link between human activity and climate change and to join the efforts of other members of the international community in ratifying the Kyoto protocol.

We have seen this week in parliament the government trying to show its credentials, it says, on climate change. In fact, the government has had the opportunity, if it wanted to, to show the Australian people whether or not it has finally understood the implications of climate change. What have we seen? We have seen ministers running different lines. We have seen ministers changing positions. In question time in the Senate we saw Senator Minchin again running the hard line that Australia should not go it alone in terms of emissions trading and, frankly, contradicting the softening of his Prime Minister’s position and directly contradicting the position of Minister Macfarlane, who seems, for political or whatever reasons, to have had a conversion in relation to the issue of emissions trading.

We have had much fanfare around the Prime Ministerial Task Group on Emissions Trading. This was their big strategy to try and show that the Howard government actually knew something about what was happening in terms of climate change and was actually working on a plan. We have seen a lot of media about the government doing this work on emissions, and yesterday we had the release of the task group’s much heralded paper. And I have it here. This is it—it is nine pages long. There are nine pages from the much heralded task group on emissions trading, delivered eight years after the Prime Minister rejected four reports on the same issue.

On Tuesday in this place, we had the release of the government’s response to the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee’s report on rural water resource usage which showed yet again that the much trumpeted $10 billion water package was hastily put together, poorly costed and that as at December of last year the government was still saying ‘business as usual’—and it wants us to believe that it has really thought through the water policy and costed it properly?

As people know, we recently had the release of the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, and we have seen the Prime Minister commenting on it. In his comments the Prime Minister demonstrated his complete lack of understanding of the issues. He described the possible outcomes and scenarios outlined in the report as being ‘uncomfortable for some’. That is his analysis of the enormous threat and challenge that climate change presents to Australia and to the globe.

The nine-page emissions trading discussion paper was released yesterday. It does make for some interesting reading because it represents a shift in position by the government. I suggest that the shift in position is not about conviction, not about an understanding of the scale of the threat and not about a willingness to address the long-term challenge to Australia’s economic prosperity and our environmental security; it is about a desire to demonstrate to the Australian public that the government are actually taking the issue seriously. It is all about political positioning; it is not about conviction or an understanding of the issues.

The report makes some interesting points. It states that the early adoption of emissions trading ahead of most of the rest of the world could promote investment and the development of a future comparative advantage for Australia. Frankly, the Prime Minister is unlikely to act unless he is pushed, and he does not want to act because, it appears, he is really not convinced climate change is real. He is still hiding behind his argument that if we act on climate change we will destroy the economy. We know it is a false choice, and his own report says as much.

When will the government come clean that its concerns about carbon trading and climate change are not a knee-jerk reaction but are really because it does not want any reaction at all? It does not understand the seriousness of this issue. It does not understand the implications for our future. What it does understand is political positioning—and, as I have previously said, the Prime Minister is a very clever politician. Climate change is simply too important an issue to be left in the hands of a government which does not understand the significance of the threat. In the last eight years, the government has ignored three reports on carbon emissions trading. Frankly, the Prime Minister did not need this subsequent report to tell him that urgent action on climate change was needed now.

Eight years after the Prime Minister rejected past reports, it is in black and white in his own prime ministerial task group report, which states:

Given the scale of the challenge faced there is no room for complacency.

Yet we know that back in March, June, October and December of 1999 similar reports were all ignored by this government. Frankly, the government failed Australians on climate change then and it is failing them now. We also know that the water package previously announced was cobbled together late. It is really an example of the government’s Johnny-come-lately—pardon the pun—approach to many significant environmental issues facing Australia.

I want to talk briefly about the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. This report was produced by 600 authors from 40 countries, including 42 scientists from Australia and 620 expert reviewers, and 113 governments were involved. This report sets out in great detail some of the potential scenarios to be faced by Australia and the globe. This is the report about which the Prime Minister was asked on Lateline:

… what do you think living in Australia would be like by the end of this century for your own grandchildren … if … the average mean temperatures, around the world do rise by somewhere between four and possibly even more than six degrees celsius?

What did the Prime Minister say? He answered:

… it would be less comfortable … than it is now…

That is hardly a statement you should hear from a Prime Minister who should understand the scale, complexity and potential threat that climate change poses to this nation. The fact is that this potential increase in temperature carries a burden for future generations. It carries a burden in terms of highly stressed ecosystems, with many of our natural icons under siege. It also carries significant social and economic threats. The health, security and social implications of this sort of change are substantial. The Prime Minister went on to challenge the accuracy of the IPCC report in his interview. He stated:

… I think it’s very, very hard for us, in 2007, to try, with that kind of mathematical accuracy ... to sort of extrapolate what things might be.

This really is the nub of the problem—the Prime Minister’s own misconceptions about climate change and his refusal to take responsibility for a decade of inaction by his government. As I said previously, this is a report from hundreds of respected scientists from 40 countries around the globe. These scientists have given us their best advice, and politicians should not try and diminish or minimise the nature of the challenge that we face by simply pointing their finger at the science. This is an issue about managing risks and this is where the policy approach of the Howard government differs.

Of course, as we all know, this report comes on top of the Stern report released last year, which set out in great detail some of the economic issues associated with climate change—hard economic data on the effects of climate change on the global economy. Every day more and more evidence comes to light. I previously commented on the fact that the Great Barrier Reef Research Foundation have warned that climate change is the No. 1 threat to the reef and could have devastating effects if it is not brought under control.

These are not scenarios that are simply ‘uncomfortable for some’; the report from the intergovernmental panel and the Stern report—even the Great Barrier Reef foundation’s report and comments—do not paint a picture of a future which is simply uncomfortable for some. Climate change is a significant economic and environmental issue for this nation, and we have to deal with it. What is required is a long-term approach and a risk management approach.

I want to briefly refer to the Business Council of Australia president, Michael Chaney. As you know, the Business Council has had a range of views in relation to climate change and a range of views amongst its membership, but Mr Chaney made this point: ‘Regardless of one’s views on the science of climate change, the case is now such that business must ensure against the risk of it with an effective policy response.’ This is a very similar position to that which was adopted by the Business Roundtable on Climate Change last year, which went through some of the economic implications and laid out some policy options for the government to consider. Their basic thesis was this: we do have the opportunity to act now, and the approach that business and government should take is one of risk management. We may not know where this will end up but we have to manage the risk now. We have to take a long-term approach and try and deal with the issue. We have to also put in place market based mechanisms to drive more sustainable outcomes.

We have business calling for this. Those on the other side say that they are the party for business. Well, they are not listening to business on this. They are not taking a risk management approach, they are not taking a prudent approach, they are not taking an approach that recognises the economic threat that climate change poses long term. What this government is focused on is its political positioning. We have seen that this week where we suddenly have this pale green conversion by some members of the Howard government, including the Prime Minister, who are trying to demonstrate to the Australian people: ‘Look, we actually care about these issues, despite the fact we have done virtually nothing for the last 11 years. We do care about these issues and are trying to shift position.’ But they have not got their lines quite right. We see Senator Minchin in this chamber running a different line to the position of the Prime Minister, and Mr Macfarlane in the other place also running a different line.

Mr Macfarlane, actually, is quite an interesting case in point. This is the minister who previously described the film by Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, as being ‘good entertainment’. He described emissions trading as ‘folly’. He now says he has an open mind to it. One wonders what has changed. What has changed in terms of the Prime Minister’s language on this? The Prime Minister was previously incredibly hardline: ‘We’re not going to go down an emissions trading path unless the rest of the world do it first.’ That really is a do-nothing strategy. It is a line that justifies inaction. What has happened to the Prime Minister in relation to this issue? The Prime Minister is now softening his position because he actually understands—as I say, he is a clever politician—that the community is starting to shift beneath him. The community is starting to understand much more than its political leaders the potential threat of climate change for future generations, and it wants politicians to do something about it.

Apart from business leaders, we have had church leaders and community leaders speaking out on this. Bishop George Browning of Canberra has been quoted as saying in relation to climate change:

“This is first and last a moral issue … Refusing to do everything within our power to stop the world from heating is a moral responsibility.”

The reality is that the states, community leaders, consumers and business are all crying out for national leadership on this issue, but we have not had national leadership from this government.

This is an opportunity for the government today. Maybe Senator Eggleston, who I understand will follow me, will actually outline what the government is going to do. What is going to happen with this report? Is this just yet another piece of paper, another report that you put out there, pretending that you are going to do something about the most significant challenge facing this generation and this generation of political leaders and this parliament? Are you actually going to do something about this or is this yet another piece of political positioning to try to make people think that you are actually prepared to tackle the hard issues?

We saw earlier this week in parliament the Prime Minister again suggesting there was some doubt as to the link between human activity and climate change. Then the Prime Minister came in and corrected the record. As I said previously in this place, perhaps he had to do that because he was saying what he really thinks. That is possible. Perhaps he did not just mistake the question. Some might say he simply has mistaken the science and has mistaken the science for some time.

It is always an easy thing for a politician to say that a problem does not exist as the basis for justifying why you do not do anything about it. It is a very easy approach to deny that the problem exists. The Howard government have become very good at that. We saw that in question time today in relation to child care, with Senator Scullion denying that any problem exists—therefore, you do not have to fix it. That is the way the government have operated in relation to climate change for the last 10½ years. They have denied that the problem existed and they have continued to deny it. Only now, in the face of overwhelming international evidence and overwhelming community sentiment on this issue, do we see the government finally trying to pretend to do something about it. They will get up now and talk about all the money they are spending on this and that.

The reality is you have spent over a decade now denying that this problem exists, putting your heads in the sand, pointing your fingers at those who have said this is a problem, refusing to ratify the Kyoto protocol and having ministers out there saying, ‘We can’t go down an emissions trading scheme path—we can’t do this, we can’t do that—it’s bad for Australia,’ refusing to recognise there is a problem. The Australian people have woken up to that. They know there is a problem. Unfortunately, the government do not seem to understand there is a policy problem and a climate change problem. The only thing they understand is that they have a political problem.

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

This is about the fourth debate on climate change that the ALP has instigated. They seem to persist in not listening to what we have to say about our position. Senator Wong has just repeated the ALP’s view that the government have done nothing about climate change and have refused to recognise climate change, completely ignoring the fact that one of the first actions of the Howard government when we came into office was to establish the Greenhouse Office, the first for any government in the world. So, in other words, right from the beginning of the tenure of the Howard government, the issues of greenhouse gas problems, climate change and the need to promote renewable energy have been recognised. Senator Wong and her colleagues can get up and claim the contrary, but the facts are there. The facts cannot be denied. The truth of the matter is quite the reverse of what Senator Wong is seeking to promote—that is, during the 13 years that the Labor government was in office, under Messrs Hawke and Keating, very little was done about the environment, and no recognition whatsoever was given to the issue of climate change. It is a fact that back in 1997 the Howard government were very perceptive in seeing that climate change was an issue and established, as I said, the world’s first greenhouse office.

It is a little bit boring to have to put forward the same facts time after time, but nevertheless that is what I plan to do. Senator Wong has said that the Prime Minister was a sceptic about climate change being caused by human activity. I think we were all a little bit sceptical about that. For example, I downloaded a page from the internet yesterday on the issue of climate change. There has been a very real and legitimate debate about the causes of climate change. It is a very simplistic thing to say, ‘Of course, this is due to human activity,’ but there is a lot of archaeological evidence that climate change is a cyclical thing and that it has gone on for many thousands of years. Only a couple of weekends ago, I heard a report on Radio National about some marine archaeologists who had examined coral deposits off the coast of Java. They found evidence that there had been cyclical climate changes for the 6,000 years that the coral had taken to accumulate.

Among the causes of climate change which I found on the web are natural causes, such as continental drift, the activity of volcanoes and, most importantly, the tilt of the earth’s axis. As the earth has rotated around the sun, at times there have been minor variations in the axis of the earth in relation to the sun which have caused changes in the temperature of the earth, because the earth’s orbit is somewhat elliptical, which means that the distance between the earth and the sun varies over the course of a year. If you extrapolate the axis changes of the earth’s orbit over a longer period of time, then you will get periods when the earth’s climate is colder—and those are ice ages—and periods when the earth’s climate is hotter. It is not at all impossible to hold the view that the present warming-up of the earth’s climate is due to axis changes in our orbit around the sun.

There is no doubt at all that, since the industrial revolution back in the 1700s, there has been a lot more greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, and there is no doubt that carbon dioxide is the most important of those gases. Methane is another important greenhouse gas. Over the history of the earth, both of those gases have been emitted in much larger quantities than they used to be, and there is no doubt that it is also a reasonable thesis that greenhouse gas is a cause of climate change.

Senator Wong referred to the United Nations group which reported last week and claimed that climate change was due to human activity. That might be the correct conclusion, but I think it should be recognised that this has been a legitimate debate over many years. It may be that the acceleration of climate change is due to human activity, and we certainly need to do something about it if it is the case that climate change is due to greenhouse gases. But it is quite wrong to say, as Senator Wong has said, that the Prime Minister has been a laggard in recognising that greenhouse gas might be an issue. Far from it: as I have said, since the very earliest days of taking office, the Prime Minister and his government have instituted programs to deal with the issue of greenhouse gases, climate change and emissions. The Prime Minister has stated quite clearly that he believes there is a connection between climate change and emissions. Senator Wong, we can draw no other conclusion than the fact that the Prime Minister is a climate realist. He realises that climate change is occurring. As I have said several times, right from the earliest days of his government, he has taken action to deal with climate change.

Let us look at what the coalition government has actually done on the issue of climate change. The coalition government has taken a leadership role at the international and national levels in response to the threat of climate change and, in fact, has invested something like $2 billion in programs to deal with climate change. This includes hundreds of millions of dollars on solar and wind energy—in other words, renewable energy—developing new technology to make cleaner and more efficient fossil fuels and ways to capture and store greenhouse gases to stop them entering the atmosphere. Examples of that approach include the Howard government’s $500 million low emissions technology demonstration fund, which aims to leverage around $1 billion from industry to develop technologies to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Then there is the $100 million Renewable Energy Development Initiative, which provides competitive grants to support the strategic development of renewable energy technologies. And—surprise, surprise, Senator Wong!—as a result of the programs of the Howard government, Australia is one of the few countries in the world that is on track to reach its internationally agreed targets for greenhouse gas emissions.

There are a lot of countries in the world that criticise Australia for not ratifying the Kyoto treaty and principally they are European countries such as Germany and France. The fact of the matter is that, of all the European Union countries, only about three meet their greenhouse targets without the use of nuclear energy. So Australian is up there with the three that are meeting greenhouse targets without resorting to nuclear energy. Australia’s record is proving 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 by 2010, while our economy is expected to double. That is the equivalent, Senator Wong might note, of taking every one of Australia’s 14 million cars, trucks and buses off the road and stopping all rail, air and shipping activity while still providing for major economic growth. That is quite an achievement. 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 is doubling in size.

Australia, in fact, contributes only 1.46 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, which when compared to China’s greenhouse gas emissions, for example, is an extremely small percentage globally. If Australia were to close down all its power stations tonight, the savings in greenhouse gas emissions would be replaced by the growth in China’s energy sector emissions in less than 12 months. However, the coalition government continues to take seriously the issue of climate change and its role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the global greenhouse gas signature.

It is true that Australia has not ratified the Kyoto protocol. We have not ratified it because, in fact, it is a flawed treaty which would contribute very little to the reduction of greenhouse gases around the world. As I said yesterday, Kyoto is a symbol of concern about the effect greenhouse gas is having on our climate. By signing onto the protocol Australia has recognised and acknowledged that greenhouse gases are an issue, just as we did when we set up the first greenhouse gas office of any government in the world. But we have not ratified the protocol because it is a meaningless treaty. It is not a treaty that is going to produce any reduction in greenhouse gases and it would, unfortunately, have a very adverse impact on the Australian economy because we would have to stop using our abundant resources of cheap coal to provide energy, which would mean higher energy costs and would cost jobs in coalmines that would close down and jobs in Australian industry because it would be paying more for power.

However, we are concerned that there be some sort of meaningful and workable international accord to deal with greenhouse gases. What the Australian government have done is sought to set up a global agreement which will include some of the big emitters around the world. Australia is in fact a joint signatory in the first global agreement between the United States, China, India, Japan and the Republic of Korea. This is called the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. The purpose of this agreement, which includes, as I said, some of the very largest emitters in the world, who are not signatories to Kyoto—China, India, Korea and the United States—is for these countries to work together to use technological solutions to bring about the kind of dramatic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that the world, it seems, is going to need if we are to slow down the pace of climate change.

The countries in this Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate are nations which cover almost 50 per cent of the world’s population, 50 per cent of the world’s GDP and 50 per cent of the world’s energy use and global greenhouse gas emissions. We believe that cooperative, practical action by these major regional economies has the potential to have a significant impact on global greenhouse gas emissions, reduce the longer term effects of climate change and decelerate—slow down—climate change, which is a very important objective.

So it is really quite fallacious for Senator Wong to get up in the Senate and claim that the Howard government has not been concerned about climate change and is not doing anything about it. Let us look at what the coalition government has actually done on the issue of climate change.

The Howard government have worked very hard to address this problem and, in fact, were conscious of it and decided to do something about it long before many other countries around the world, as symbolised by the fact that we set up the world’s first greenhouse office. Apart from the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, Australia is also a party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is the Kyoto treaty. Even though we have not ratified the treaty, we are still meeting our greenhouse targets that would be set under that treaty.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing, Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, that’s not true.

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

Senator McLucas is shaking her head; it seems a very strange thing that she is so sceptical of a magnificent achievement by the Australian government, something which I think ought to be lauded. It is a fantastic thing that regardless of the fact that we have not ratified the Kyoto treaty we are still meeting our greenhouse targets as though we had.

That brings me to the broad issue of the contrast between the ALP when they were in government, when nothing was done about climate change and nothing was done about greenhouse gas emissions, and the very proactive policies which the Howard government has followed, providing leadership to the rest of the world on this issue. I think that is, as I said, a very outstanding achievement on the part of the Howard government.

We do recognise that the world will need to make major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions if we are to avoid the more serious consequences of climate change. We believe that, to do that, we will need to use the broadest possible range of technologies, including renewable energies such as solar, wind, geothermal power, clean coal technologies and, yes, nuclear energy. We have other options, but nuclear energy is something that Australia will have to consider in the future as part of this overall reassessment of our energy needs and how we will provide energy to industry and to the population of Australia.

The Australian government has invested heavily in the development and commercialisation of technologies for renewable energy and I think that is a remarkable and positive achievement of the Australian government that should not go unnoticed. As I said earlier, we have the $500 million low-emissions technology demonstration fund, which will leverage a further $1 billion or more in investment from the private sector. More than one-third of the government’s climate change funding is supporting renewable energy development, including a $75 million Solar Cities program and a $123 million program to extend and expand the Renewable Remote Power Generation Program, which is to provide renewable energy in remote areas through things such as solar energy, wind energy and other possibilities such as tidal power and wave technology.

In conclusion, the Australian government, the Howard government, has an outstanding record in dealing with environmental issues. The Howard government has an outstanding record in developing policies to address climate change. It is an enviable record; it is a record of which I would have thought all members of this federal parliament, regardless of their party affiliation, should be justifiably proud. I think credit should be given where credit is due.

Climate change and greenhouse gas emissions have only become a big issue over the last 15 or so years. The criticism of the Howard government seems to be, ‘You have not fixed it up, and we want it fixed yesterday.’ As I have said several times, the Howard government was one of the first governments in the world to be aware of these issues and has put in place a lot of very sophisticated programs to address the problems of greenhouse gas emissions. I think the Howard government deserves to be thoroughly congratulated on the fantastic contribution it has made to this reduction of greenhouse gases.

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

Senator Wong’s motion dares to suggest that the Howard government has dragged the chain on climate change for more than 10 years! I think it is in fact longer than that that we have understood the dangers of climate change and greenhouse emissions. As much as I welcome Labor driving this debate now—that is a really good thing—it is coalition and Labor governments that have been dragging the chain for, I would say, 20 years. That is how long we have known about this looming threat to our environment and to our economy. Scientists and environmentalists have been talking about climate change for decades, perhaps for even more than 20 years. Yet neither of the major parties while in government acted in practical and serious ways to address it. Instead of that what we have seen has been largely a ‘business as usual’ arrangement.

As far back as 1988 the Democrats worked in the Senate calling for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and a halt to climate change. In that year we introduced a private senator’s bill called the Ozone Depleting Substances Regulations Bill which aimed to ban the production and use of ozone-destroying CFCs. While the bill was said to have had merit by the major parties, it was defeated by both of them. Senator John Coulter made an interesting observation at the time about the economic policies of the ALP and coalition parties and the effect that these policies would have on accelerating climate change. He said:

... both the Government and the Opposition have adopted economic policies which are oriented towards growth and that growth measures the dollar value of throughput; therefore the increase in ozone depletion brought about by the increasing consumption and release of chlorofluorocarbons is measured as an improvement in the economy; and therefore the signals which are being given by the economic indicators are inimical to a solution to this problem.

Frustrated by government inaction in 1988, the Democrats initiated a Senate inquiry into climate change. The report tabled in 1991 was called Rescue the future: reducing the impact of the greenhouse effect. That report received cross-party support and noted that human activity had resulted in increases in greenhouse emissions causing additional warming of the earth’s surface. It noted that Australia was a very high emitter per capita. It also noted that ‘actions to increase the efficiency of energy use will result in resources and cost savings to the benefit of industry and the community’ and that ‘governments must develop coordinated strategies to meet emissions targets’ and that long-term planning should focus on ‘alternative and renewable energy sources’. Fifteen years later those sentiments remain true. The committee made over 50 recommendations and very few of those were ever enacted.

Eight years later, again frustrated by inaction, I initiated and chaired another Senate inquiry into climate change. The report was titled The heat is on: Australia’s greenhouse future and it was tabled in May 2001, six years ago. This report was highly critical of the lack of action to date and made 106 recommendations in areas of transport, emissions trading, carbon and the land, energy use and supply, climate change and Kyoto—all of which are still relevant today. One of the committee’s key recommendations was the early introduction of a domestic emissions trading system with the aim to build capacity and experience, encourage uptake of fuel switching and energy efficiency, and position Australia to lead the international debate in the development of a global trading system. Six years ago this was recommended, and now the Prime Minister is thinking of getting on board.

The Democrats also recommended in the report that the Commonwealth government, in advance of a domestic emissions trading system, phase in a small carbon levy from 2003 to provide a signal to Australian industry. Where industry could demonstrate that this levy adversely affected their international competitiveness, some or all of those payments could be rebated or returned as a contribution to fund investment in emissions abatement actions within that industry. Unfortunately, it is probably too late for something like this. Recent economic and scientific evidence suggest we have to act now and we have to go with very deep cuts.

The Prime Minister did demonstrate something comprehensively the day before yesterday, on Tuesday, when he answered the question in the House of Representatives. He came back with a retraction some five hours later—no doubt after advisers had told him what a blooper he had made and how there was no way that the government could continue to say that there was no connection between greenhouse and climate change. But that retraction was almost as bad as the original phrase. He said that he acknowledged the connection between greenhouse and climate change but said he thought that he had been asked about the connection between greenhouse and drought and that he thought the jury was out on that connection.

Well, no. What is central to the findings of 2,500 scientists worldwide is that lower rainfall in most of Australia is going to be a climate change outcome of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere that are now much too high and are causing the problems we are experiencing. The fourth assessment report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last week makes it quite clear that global warming is occurring and will result in higher temperatures. That panel is a conservative organisation comprising 2,500 eminent scientists from across the world, and these scientists are in complete agreement about global warming. Scientific modelling from the IPCC, our own CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology all point to rising temperatures, increased evaporation and, importantly, decreased rainfall across Australia. It is true that the IPCC has technically not stated that there is a link between climate change impacts and the drought that we are having; however, the fourth assessment report outlines that for areas south of the 30-degree latitude—that is the majority of Australia—there will be less rainfall. The IPCC also says that the southern oscillation, referred to as El Nino, will mean drier and wetter areas will experience more frequent drier periods.

The Prime Minister is using the equivocation and the preference of the IPCC to use the terminology of ‘high degree of confidence’ rather than ‘certainty’, but the difference is like saying that 99 per cent probability of something occurring is somehow doubtful and that you must only act on 100 per cent certainty. A responsible risk management approach—and we hear much from the government about risk management—is that you weigh the probability of the occurrence against the magnitude of the impact to inform appropriate actions. When it comes to climate change, the scientific community is saying it is 99 per cent certain that there will be a massive environmental impact. How sure does the Prime Minister have to be before he will introduce the reasonable change policies that the rest of the world is already introducing, before his government will manage the risk to Australia through climate change?

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

Senator Ian Macdonald interjecting—

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

I am sure you will get your chance, Senator Macdonald. As a farmer in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria or South Australia, what is the risk framework approach to climate change? Farmers are already experiencing sufficient evidence of climate change and the impact of climate change. The resilience of regional and rural Australia is being tested as farmers are increasingly impacted through lower rainfall and more frequent drier periods—in other words, drought. As the climate change effect progresses we will see large abandonment of farms across the nation as they become unworkable due to lower rainfall, and we have known this for a long time. Brisbane and Adelaide are on stage 5 water restrictions; Melbourne is on stage 4 with a threat that it will be more serious soon. Do we need to ask suburban mums and dads who are consciously collecting shower water in buckets to put on their gardens what their risk management approach is? No.

The Prime Minister shows contempt for the scientific community and the international panel on climate change by casting doubt as an excuse for his government’s inaction. It is wrong of the Prime Minister to give Australians a sense of false hope that the water crisis will soon be over and that the drought is within reasonable and historical bounds. We need deep structural change in our economy to be able to adapt to the impacts and to mitigate the effects of climate change—and drought is one of those. A new way of thinking about water management is required, as is a new way of infrastructure planning. The introduction is required of responsible climate change policies that will assist industry to adapt to a carbon constrained future.

Similarly, the repeated statement of this government that it will not act on climate change because it will disadvantage the Australian economy is irresponsible in the extreme. Since 2004, the states and territory governments, through the National Emissions Trading Taskforce, have been undertaking economic modelling of the costs of a national emissions trading scheme. Their fact sheet states:

The preliminary modelling indicates that the introduction of an emissions trading scheme may increase the Victorian real electricity price by between 4 and 6 per cent on average above business as usual (BAU) over the 2010-20 period, depending on the scenario. This will increase the average real Victorian household electricity bill by between $20 and $40 per year on average above BAU over this period.

That is as little as 40c per household per week. Yet today we had the Treasurer say that increasing prices for electricity and emissions trading would cost enormous amounts of money and that households would be paying through the nose. It is not going to break the bank and it is not at the level of dire economic impact on households that the government is suggesting.

The introduction of carbon pricing will result in more electricity from gas and renewable energy, make alternative transport fuels more competitive and encourage people to change their behaviour and reduce energy and fuel consumption. Australia’s emissions may only be 1.6 per cent of the global greenhouse gas emissions but that makes us the 10th highest in the world and, alarmingly, the second highest in terms of per capita emissions. So this is not just a practical issue; it is a moral issue in our view. Climate change and its impacts are real, as are the costs, which will far exceed money spent adapting our markets and industry to a carbon constrained economy.

After 10 years of personally raising the issue of climate change in this place it is heartening that there is now a real debate engaging all the political parties. The Prime Minister has been forced to take his head out of the sand and confront the science on this issue. I understand how difficult this is for him. It is not easy. In fact, I have no doubt that it is quite painful when you hold an ideology that is so much at odds with the concept that the way humans are using the planet’s resources is unsustainable. When you have to finally acknowledge that your belief system is based on a false set of assumptions and that other political parties, particularly the Democrats, had it right in the first place, I am sure it cannot be easy. I can understand why, having scoffed at the Democrats for so long, it would be hard to come around to agreeing that something must be done very soon and that the problem would not be so serious had action been taken when it was first raised in this place.

How did we get to be the 10th largest emitter in the world with our tiny population? We are just behind Britain, that tiny country which has about 60 million people, in terms of overall emissions.

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

They have a lot of nuclear power.

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

What was that about power, Senator Macdonald?

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

They have nuclear power; we don’t.

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

Nuclear power, as we all know, is roughly 17 per cent of the world’s generated power. To say that the difference is due to the 17 per cent—I cannot quote you the actual figures for the UK; it might even be 20 per cent—would be quite false. It would need to be three times that to make a difference. That is where our emissions sit—just behind Britain.

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

Where do they get their power from, then?

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

Believe me, it ain’t all about nuclear power. The Prime Minister says ad nauseum that we should not make changes until every other country comes on board. The problem with that argument is that other countries are already on board; they are taking action. Going back to the UK, they introduced some time ago a small carbon levy just for big industry. They fed that money back into big industry, used it for energy efficiency, and that has transformed their largest energy greenhouse emitters. We have seen huge energy efficiency as a result. In fact, energy efficiency is a huge area where there is great scope for us to make gains on greenhouse emissions, but Australia has relied entirely on voluntary arrangements.

We will be dealing with a bill, presumably in our next sitting week, which will look at the scheme which was introduced by this government—a voluntary arrangement where big business would be forced to put an audit on their energy efficiency and their energy consumption. But even if that audit found efficiency measures that would be effective and would have a short payback time, there would be no obligation on the part of those companies to deliver.

It is just one of the areas where Australia can and must act and where there is great scope for us to reduce our emissions. If you are going to be a world player, as yesterday’s task force paper, that very flimsy document with more questions than answers, seemed to be suggesting, then you have to do far more than Australia has been prepared to do. You have to acknowledge the achievements of other countries. The fact that China has a commitment to reduce by 20 per cent the carbon intensity of its electricity sector is something that this government does not talk about. China is always seen as the one that we have to bring on board and yet it is on board already. It has ratified Kyoto; it is already taking the sorts of steps that Australia is still reluctant to take. It is time to stop pointing the finger at other countries; it is time to look at our own opportunities. It is time to look after this country and to protect it, not just say: ‘We have to adapt to climate change. Too bad, it’s too late. We didn’t listen to the Democrats 20 years ago, now we have to adapt because there’s no other choice.’

It is not good enough either to say that we have to protect coalminers. I heard the Prime Minister say that the other day. Since when has the Prime Minister been worried about a handful of jobs in a particular industry? This is unbelievable. How many hundreds of thousands of people have been lost from the textile industry and various other industries that once thrived in this country? For the government to say that it is suddenly worried about coalminers is just extraordinary.

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

Senator Ian Macdonald interjecting—

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

What it is worried about, Senator Macdonald, is $26 billion worth of coal exports which go from this country each year and which deliver to the government quite a substantial amount of money. It imagines that, if we change our rules here, somehow there will be a threat to those coal exports. Again, that is wrong because it is going to be about the rules of other countries. I think 60 per cent—I might be wrong; it might be higher than that, Senator Macdonald, but at least 60 per cent—of our coal is exported. But if it is being exported to Japan and China who are changing their rules as they start to comply with emissions constraining measures then our coal is done for anyway. There will not be the market there.

It will not be domestic policies which determine that. It will be what happens to the rest of the world, and that is what we should be interested in because, as I said, great progress is being made elsewhere but we are falling behind because we have a Prime Minister who still has his head in the sand on these issues. He is still a sceptic, still saying drought has nothing to do with greenhouse emissions. It does, it will, it is going to get very serious and I wish the Prime Minister would recognise that. (Time expired)

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

I rise today to support the motion moved by Senator Wong. Essentially it has three elements: it notes the continued scepticism of the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, over the link between human activity and climate change; it notes the Howard government has dragged the chain for more than 10 years on climate change; and it notes the environmental and economic cost of past inaction and any future delays in tackling this challenge. It calls on the government to recognise the link between human activity and climate change and join in the efforts of the international community by ratifying the Kyoto protocol. All those things I think are worth noting and it is worth calling on the government to ratify the Kyoto protocol.

There is absolutely no doubt that the Prime Minister remains a sceptic on climate change. I do not know what he means when he says he is a climate realist other than in the sense that the polls are telling him that the Australian people are very concerned about climate change. They have made the link between extreme drought, extreme storms, floods and fires and climate change and they want action. Most Australians are ashamed of the fact that Australia and the United States are the only two industrialised countries not to have ratified the Kyoto protocol. It is inexcusable and it has left Australia way behind in adjusting to a low-carbon economy.

One of the things that I want to draw attention to particularly today is the Prime Minister’s response this week. This is why I say he is an ongoing sceptic; he does not take a clear interest in the science. He was asked this week by Tony Jones: ‘If the temperatures, the average mean temperatures around the world, do rise by somewhere between four and possibly even more than six degrees Celsius, what is going to be the impact on the grandchildren?’ The Prime Minister said, ‘Well, it would be less comfortable for some than it is now.’ Every scientist in the world will tell you a four-to six-degree average rise in temperature in the next 100 years is catastrophic. It would result in six out of 10 species becoming extinct, the death of all coral reefs, consequent loss of fisheries, starvation in many areas of the world, incredible drought, loss of water, death and disease; you name it. A four- to six-degree change in temperature by 2100 would make a radical change to human geography on earth. It would see the icecaps melt, it would see huge sea level rises and storm surges, and millions would be displaced. I call that a little bit more than ‘less comfortable for some’. Extinction is more than a bit ‘less comfortable for some’.

Then we had the new Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Malcolm Turnbull, saying that much of eastern Australia is adequately elevated to deal with a one-metre sea level rise. That might be from where he stands on the cliffs above Sydney, but he clearly does not understand the science. A one-metre sea level rise around the Australian coast means massive longshore erosion. It means the loss of the beaches from one end of the country to the other; it means seawater incursion on an unprecedented scale into Kakadu and the wetlands. Imagine the estuaries as a result of a one-metre sea level rise and put on top of that storm surge and extreme weather events and you have lost vast amounts of Australia’s coast and vast amounts of the infrastructure that goes with it.

What you have from both the Prime Minister and the minister for the environment is that they have no idea at all about what temperature rise means and what sea level rise means. They come out and make these statements and, tragically, the people to whom they make them often do not understand how stupid the answers are or they would take them up on it. But no doubt the scientific community around Australia is absolutely horrified at the level of ignorance we are dealing with. It is on that basis that we hear the Prime Minister and the minister for the environment saying: ‘Oh, look, it’s okay to be sceptical; it’s reasonable to be sceptical. We don’t want to make knee-jerk reactions. We’ve got plenty of time.’

But we do not have plenty of time. Sir Nicholas Stern said quite clearly when he brought out his report that we have less than 10 years—less than one decade—to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally to contain the global temperature rise to two degrees or less. Five hundred and fifty parts per million represents a 1.5- to 2.9-degree temperature rise. That is catastrophic! We have to keep the temperature below a two-degree rise, and to do that we need deep cuts by 2050 and deep cuts on the way by 2020. If you do not do that, you are condemning future generations to massive costs. You are condemning the earth to massive ecosystem change, dislocation for millions of people and insecurity.

Talk about security issues! Imagine the kinds of sea level rises if the West Antarctic iceshelf or the Greenland iceshelf melt. You will then see Bangladesh go under and millions of people looking for somewhere to go. It will be the same for the Pacific islands. Yet we had the former minister for immigration, Amanda Vanstone, saying that she did not believe in environmental refugees. In fact, she thought the notion of an environmental refugee was an insult to refugees. Environmental refugees are a reality; they are happening now. Already some of the world’s islands have disappeared.

In Nairobi last year the spokesperson for the government of Tuvalu said, ‘If we lose 43 nations, we lose their culture, their language and the integrity of their whole life and history.’ He was saying that if we allow temperatures to rise more than two degrees we are going to lose 43 small island countries from around the world. He went on to say, ‘If the rest of the world knew that 43 countries were going to disappear but they could not identify which ones then we would see some real action on climate change.’ It is as if the rest of the world has decided that 43 island nations can go under and we do not care. What is more, Tuvalu has asked, ‘Who will take our people?’ and Australia has said no.

Australia refuses to ratify the Kyoto protocol, refuses to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and at the same time refuses to acknowledge environmental refugees. It is New Zealand that has put up its hand and said it will take people from the Pacific. Is it any wonder that anyone looking at climate change as a security issue will recognise that we are building enormous resentment in the Asia-Pacific region about Australia’s arrogance in relation to this matter?

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

What absolute rubbish!

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

It is not absolute rubbish. One of our very nearest neighbours, Kiribati, sent a parliamentary delegation here last year and said that of 100 inhabited islands they have identified at least 40 that would have to be evacuated in the next 15 years—30,000 people—and that they will have to absorb them on the remaining 60 islands. They were hoping to get refugee status through Guam to the United States because they knew that Australia would not help them. That was a parliamentary delegation in this place last year, and the Australian government is not prepared to take on any kind of global moral or ethical responsibility for the fact that sea level rise is impacting on poorer people around the world who do not have the capacity to build seawalls and develop engineering solutions. The UK can say, ‘Let’s build a Thames barrier,’ which they have done. They are building massive seawalls. They are identifying some communities for managed retreat. But the poor in the developing world do not have those options.

Let me go to the next point in relation to the Kyoto protocol. We hear a lot from the government about the fact that they think the Kyoto protocol is useless. Nobody has argued that the Kyoto protocol alone is the answer; they have argued that it is the first step of global cooperation in getting outcomes, and that is already occurring. Under the Kyoto protocol there are three flexible financial mechanisms: one is emissions trading, the second is the clean development mechanism and the third is joint implementation.

Australia is sitting here with the Prime Minister saying, ‘Let me have a task force that might come up with an Australian designed global system.’ As if anybody in the rest of the world is in the least bit interested in Australia designing anything! They regard us as a pariah. We are not involved in the talks. Emissions trading is already occurring under the protocol in the pan-European trading system. For the benefit of the Senate, the World Bank and the International Emissions Trading Association estimated that the trading market last year was worth $US21 billion. Australia is missing out on being involved in the emissions trading that is already going on around the world.

In fact, in Australia there is already an active market around trading in offshore markets; investment banks are involved. The frustration is that the people who are putting uncertainty in the Australian business community are the government, because they are not telling companies when and how a price on carbon is going to be introduced. The business community know that it is coming and that the government will do what they have done in the last three months. Having been nowhere on climate change—being sceptics—they are suddenly saying, ‘We’ll have to acknowledge it because it’s an election year.’ Ultimately they will get kicked dragging and screaming to a price on carbon and, in the meantime, companies are saying, ‘For goodness sake, tell us what the price is going to be and how you are going to do this so we can make investment decisions.’

BlueScope Steel is a classic example in New South Wales. It is disgusting that Premier Iemma has exempted them from a carbon price in New South Wales. He has done it because they want to make a substantial investment and are saying they are not prepared to make that investment until they know what the price of carbon is going to be. So, to try and secure the investment, Premier Iemma has exempted them from a price on carbon, effectively exempting them from the lack of certainty. That is what has gone on in New South Wales. How many other companies around Australia are saying, ‘We’re not sure how to invest or which way to go because we’re not sure when the price on carbon is going to come in, whether it’s going to come in by way of an emissions trading system or whether it’s going to come in by way of a carbon levy.’ Let us not take the nonsense from the government about jobs. The people costing jobs and investment are the people who are fiddling around and refusing to acknowledge the global reality and who are in fact driving companies out of the country.

Last year, we had the government rushing along to stand beside Solar Heat and Power saying: ‘Aren’t we great? We’re giving this company a small amount of money.’ Then the company stood up and said: ‘We’re going to the US. We can’t stand it here anymore.’ The US understands that solar thermal can provide baseload power. They understand that, and that is why they have gone there. Prime Minister Howard, because he cannot get past the coal industry, says over and over again that renewables cannot provide baseload. He knows as well as I do that renewables can provide baseload. Solar thermal can provide baseload. Solar Heat and Power left the country with their workers. So too have Vestas, the wind farm operators and manufacturers of wind farm turbines. They left the country and the jobs went with them. Roaring Forties have gone to China, where it can make huge investments because the Chinese have set a 15 per cent renewable energy target.

There is a lot of finger pointing at China, but China has a 15 per cent renewable energy target. China has mandatory vehicle fuel efficiency standards. China has set a 20 per cent target for a reduction in energy intensity in their economy over the next five or 10 years. China is working very hard to gain competitive advantage in low-carbon technology because it knows that whoever comes up with the solutions and mass produces those solutions is going to keep ahead of the technology game. Meanwhile, we cannot sell cars made in Australia because they are great big gas guzzlers because the government has never forced them to be fuel efficient. The only people buying the big Fords and Holdens are governments for their car fleets to keep the companies propped up and to give them huge amounts of subsidies instead of forcing them to become fuel efficient. If they did, they would be competitive on the world stage.

It is because the government is so completely useless and irresponsible on the whole issue of climate change that it gives the Labor Party some opportunity to say that it has the policies in place. But let me say this: with the Labor Party, you had Senator Chris Evans out there in the paper today making ridiculous statements and saying that cutting coal exports would deliver no net greenhouse reductions. Coal exports are burnt in China and cause greenhouse gases, and the Labor Party cannot get away from coal. It has to make a decision about coal. You cannot have your shadow minister for the environment ducking questions on coal and saying they are hypothetical at the same time as the shadow minister for energy, Senator Chris Evans, is talking up coal and saying that the government should do more on coal. At the same time Senator Kerry O’Brien, the shadow minister for resources, is supporting an expansion in all kinds of resource based industries. If the government got a bit smarter about climate change it would expose the lack of policy rigour in the Labor Party. But at least the Labor Party is prepared to ratify Kyoto and at least the Labor Party has been prepared to say that it would accept reductions of 60 per cent by 2050. But when you get to the detail, there is none on how it is going to achieve that. We will be pursuing that in the debate, because the Greens say that we need to have at least an 80 per cent reduction by 2050 to get anywhere near keeping global warming to less than two degrees.

In terms of the economic costs, Clinton, who I heard in Montreal at the first meeting of the parties, got up and said, ‘Whatever it costs to mitigate against greenhouse now, whatever it costs to adapt to climate change now, is a fraction of what it is going to cost if we don’t do it, because the costs are going to be enormous.’ The report of the Australian business roundtable, the Stern report and every single other report agrees with that. We have already seen the cost this summer of the drought and the cost of the fires. Look at the cost to the Murray-Darling. Look at the cost to the ecosystems. We have seen floods just recently and we are going to see more extreme weather events. They all cost vast amounts of money, and that money can be directly attributable to a failure to act on and mitigate climate change.

Let us not have the government saying that it is going to cost industry too much. What about the costs to the Australian community? We are already suffering these costs daily. In Europe in 2003, thousands died in the high temperatures. The climate change analysis tells us that we are going to have more very high temperature days in Australia. That is going to take its toll on the health system. We are going to have to make sure that our nursing homes, aged-care facilities and so on are air conditioned, and we need to provide the energy to do that through renewables.

There is a huge amount of planning to do to get us off our dependence on oil. The good news is that if we think about it strategically and plan it then we can build ourselves competitive advantage and a better quality of life. Investment in public transport in the cities would mean that it would be easier to get around, that it would be healthier and that there would be better air quality—good news all round. We should move to fuel efficient vehicles and to energy efficiency in our homes, offices, parliaments and in our way of life. It is not as if the solutions are not there.

My final point, which is on nuclear power, is that the Prime Minister’s only response to greenhouse gas emissions is that we will go nuclear—that will do it. What he fails to say is that Nicholas Stern says that we have 10 years to turn it around, and in that 10 years not one gram of greenhouse gas or carbon will be taken out of the atmosphere under the nuclear scenario that the Prime Minister outlines. So how is he going to get the cuts in that 10 years before any of his reactors come on stream? How is he going to react when the rest of the world says that they are not going to allow Australia to have any more free rides on the back of the efforts that are being made by the European Union in particular? It is only a matter of time before the European Union starts to take action against Australia on the basis that products going into Europe from Australia are subsidised by the fact that we do not put a price on carbon. That is already being discussed in the international community.

Australia needs to wake up to itself as a global citizen because, the way that things are going now, future generations are going to look back and regard the behaviour of this government—the lost 10 years—as a crime against the planet and a crime against humanity. That is what you are going to be charged with in the future, because future generations are going to look back in 2050 and be horrified that at a time when you had the opportunity to do something, when the science was there and told you what was going to happen, you deliberately did not act. That is criminally reprehensible. Future generations—your grandchildren and great-grandchildren—are going to look back and ask: ‘Why didn’t you act when you had the opportunity?’ It will be no use saying, ‘We didn’t know,’ because the science has been there for 20 years and the science is there now.

There is a 90 per cent probability that human activity is causing climate change. Business accepts it. The community accepts it. The Howard government does not accept it because of its relationship with the coal industry. Australia has to get off its dependence on coal as an export industry. We have to build competitive advantage in manufacturing. We have to recognise that the sun is our greatest resource, not the coal that is under the ground.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing, Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to support Senator Wong’s resolution on climate change. First of all I want to go to the comments made by Senator Eggleston earlier in the debate. Senator Eggleston spent some time trying to defend the position of the government, saying, yes, the government now realises that there is a link between human activity and climate change—I will go to the evident change of opinion from the government later. But he then spent a lot of time saying that maybe it really is not human activity that is resulting in the climate change we are experiencing at the moment. He said that climate change is cyclical and that there is evidence of coral reefs in inland communities. He said that he had heard on the radio that continental drift can be a factor in climate change. He said that he also heard on that radio program that the tilt of the axis of the earth might be what is causing climate change.

If that is not being a sceptic, then I do not know what it is. He said it is not impossible to hold the view that climate change is a result of the tilt of the axis of the earth. I am sorry; there are over 2,500 internationally recognised scientists who have come together over many years to bring us the report that we received last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which says that human activity is the connection to climate change. I plead with Senator Eggleston: if you are going to be a leader in our community, you have to be truthful and you have to be straight. Referring to a radio program that says that the tilt of the axis of the earth is the reason that we are in this predicament is far from helpful.

As I said, we have seen a huge shift in the government’s position over the last month or so. The government has been dragged to the point where the Prime Minister—even though he had to go back into the chamber to clarify it—finally acknowledged that there is a link between human activity and global warming. That is a huge shift that this government has taken, and you have to ask why. Why has it taken till 2007 for this government to recognise the reality of climate change and to then develop some reasonable policy to respond to it?

I suggest it is not because the Prime Minister watched Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth over the Christmas holidays. I am not sure that he has watched it. I do not think it is because the Prime Minister has read the many, many briefings that he would have received over the last 10 years about the impact of climate change, Australia’s role in the production of greenhouse gases and also Australia’s responsibility to mitigate it. I suggest he would have received thousands of briefings: briefings from the department of science, the CSIRO, the department of the environment, the department of health. I dare say he has had some information from his tourism department, and he has certainly had plenty of information from the business community telling him that this government needed to act. It is only this month that there has been any recognition by the government that it has a responsibility to work in front of the Australian community and not behind it.

It is not because of the facts, it is not because of the science that the government has changed its position. I suggest the reason that the government has changed its position on climate change is because the Prime Minister has finally understood that Australians are concerned about climate change. All of us are concerned about what we need to do to mitigate the effects of climate change as a community and what we need to do to stop the growth in greenhouse gases. It is all about politics in this case, and that is not unusual for this Prime Minister. It is not about leadership; it is all about votes. It is not about dealing with the hard issues.

Senator Eggleston then went on to compare Australia’s emissions system with China’s. I suggest to Senator Eggleston that that is completely unhelpful. Quoting statistics when we are dealing with the issue of climate change is important in order for us to understand, but in the political arena it is completely unhelpful and very misleading. This is a global problem that we are dealing with. That is why the Kyoto protocol was devised. That is why nations around the world came to the view that the only way to deal with climate change was to deal with it as a global issue. Senator Eggleston went on to say that we needed a meaningful international agreement, that Kyoto was not the answer. He suggested that the Asia-Pacific partnership was an ideal solution to the problem. I do not share that view. The Asia-Pacific partnership comprises 50 per cent of the globe and 50 per cent of the emissions. As I said, this is a global problem; we need a truly international solution. To pin one’s flag to the Asia-Pacific partnership is false faith.

I want to use some of my time this afternoon to talk about the impact of 10 years of inaction, despite having the knowledge, and the effect of that inaction on my community of North Queensland. As you know, the Great Barrier Reef is loved and valued by all Australians. I would suggest that it is also loved and recognised as an amazing environmental icon by most in the world. We have, as Australians, a pride in its uniqueness. We also pride ourselves on the level of protection that we as a country give to the Great Barrier Reef. It is valued as an environmental asset and it is also an extraordinary economic asset, bringing over $5 billion annually to the Australian economy. I say to my community of North Queensland: without it, our economy would collapse.

It is not scaremongering to say that our Great Barrier Reef is at enormous risk, but do not take my word for it. The Chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation is Mr John Schubert. John Schubert is the Chairman of the Commonwealth Bank and a former Chairman of Esso Australia. He is a respected businessperson and has a doctorate in chemical engineering. On 2 January this year he wrote an opinion piece in the Australian, in which he said:

Until my appointment as chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation two years ago, I was something of a sceptic. However, the marine scientists who advise the foundation convinced me that climate change is the most pressing threat to our Great Barrier Reef.

I suggest to the Senate that Mr Howard would have had those same briefings. Mr Schubert had them two years ago. I suggest that Mr Howard has had those briefings for a very long time. Mr Schubert said:

The evidence presented by these scientists, the literature they have shared with me and my visits to the reef have proved to be so compelling as to prompt something of an epiphany.

John Schubert knows that climate change could devastate our Great Barrier Reef. He has had the evidence. But so has the Prime Minister.

In 2002 we had a coral bleaching event in the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority at the time estimated that between 60 and 90 per cent of the reefs were affected to some extent in the area around Keppel Island. We cannot afford to lose 60 to 90 per cent of any of the reefs along the Great Barrier Reef without enormous impact on the biodiversity of the Great Barrier Reef. Along with that we have to understand that the reef, whilst it is an amazing ecological icon, is a very important fishery. To lose the reef will mean that we also lose the fish that live around that reef, so it is not only environmentalists and reef managers who are concerned about the impact of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef; it is also the fishing industry. Mr Schubert described coral reefs as ‘a canary in the mine in the context of climate change’. I think that we should all use that image to think about what we need to do in the future.

The answers are many, but one of the answers, of course, is going to be research, not only into what we have to do to lessen our greenhouse gas emissions but into what we have to do because of what has already occurred and what is happening now—research into what we have to do in order to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Professor Russel Reichelt is the head of the Reef and Rainforest Research Centre. He is one of Australia’s leading marine scientists. Professor Reichelt has suggested that it is important for us to undertake research to ascertain whether or not it is possible for reseeding of the reef to occur if large bleaching events happen. I suggest to the government that that is a very useful strategy and a very useful piece of work that could be undertaken. He says:

We need an integrated risk management study to map out the most vulnerable and the most resilient parts of the reef to help us target management and conservation efforts.

This work needs to happen now. We cannot wait. We need to protect this asset, not only for its environmental values but certainly for its economic values.

Far North Queensland is also the home of the wet tropics. We know with climate change there will be a loss of biodiversity in the wet tropics. We still do not know what is in the wet tropics. It is that diverse. It is a most amazing piece of rainforest in this country and is potentially the home of enormous biopharmaceutical assets to our nation. We do not know what is there, but at the same time we know that we are going to lose part of it.

I have spoken in the chamber before about the impact on the people who live in the Torres Strait. I am very fortunate in that I have been going to the Torres Strait for some 15 years now. When you sit down with leaders in the Torres Strait, they talk about the ocean, because their culture, their life, is inextricably linked to the ocean and it is part of their living. They talk more and more frequently now about the fact that the water is changing, the tides are shifting, the sand under the water is shifting and the erosion is much higher. This time last year we had some fairly horrific events in the Torres Strait. I am not saying that they were directly linked to climate change, but over the last 10 years we have consistently and increasingly heard, from people who know this country, who know this ocean, who understand it so well, that they are concerned about what is happening to the waters of the Torres Strait. Certainly some action should have happened.

I know that those same leaders have been telling members of the government the same story, and I know that only last year $200,000 was allocated to do some sort of study into what is happening with erosion in the outer islands of the Torres Strait. I suggest that $200,000 is nothing compared to what the people of the Torres Strait will need to mitigate rising sea levels. The islands of Saibai and Boigu are mud islands. Most of Boigu is actually under sea level. Any rise in sea level in the Torres Strait will affect the people of the Torres Strait.

We also know of the potential for climate change to affect the habitation of the people of the Pacific. I suggest to the government that our people—the people of the Torres Strait—will be equally affected. They do not want to leave their islands because of their cultural connection to them. Unfortunately, if we do not start acting now, if we do not even try and work out what is happening in the Torres Strait by researching, by talking with people, by doing some real data analysis, we are leaving the people of Boigu and Saibai in particular with the prospect of having to be relocated to the mainland. They do not want to do that but they are thinking about how they might manage it. That is not fair, in my view.

At around this time last year, we had the event of Cyclone Larry. Following Cyclone Larry, a category 5 cyclone which had a devastating impact particularly on the areas south of Cairns—Innisfail, Mission Beach and Babinda—we had Cyclone Monica, which was another category 5 cyclone. We do not usually have two category 5 cyclones in a year. In fact, I cannot remember that happening in my lifetime.

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

We do.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing, Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, we don’t have two category 5s every year.

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

I can tell you that we do.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing, Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can have your say and tell me when we had two category 5 cyclones of the intensity of Cyclone Larry and Cyclone Monica in one year. The impact of those two cyclones on our community was enormous. People in the south even recognised it, because we did not have bananas for a year. But the impact on primary industries other than the banana industry was also felt by the sugarcane industry and the lychee industry. In fact, all of our primary industries were totally devastated. The economic impact was huge. There was an impact on our tourism industry because people were frightened of coming, even though they should have been. The invitation is there: please come to the north.

I want to talk today about the social costs. For the people whose houses were deroofed, the people who lost their employment, the people who had to relocate because they simply could not stay there as there were no jobs to be had, that cost was huge. I acknowledge that the Commonwealth government certainly did put its hand in its pocket to help out, but the reality is that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say that there will be an increased frequency of very intense cyclones. They say that on the one hand there will be fewer cyclones overall but on the other hand the cyclones that we have will be of a more intense nature.

Senator Macdonald and I have lived through cyclones; he comes from the north as well. A category 1 cyclone is actually good for the environment up there, as we get a good dose of rain, especially if it goes over the Great Dividing Range, and especially if it gets into the Murray-Darling catchment system. But if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is right, we are going to see fewer category 1 cyclones and more category 5s. I am not saying that Cyclone Larry and Cyclone Monica can be directly related to climate change, but the fact is that the intergovernmental panel says that we will get increased frequency of extreme weather events like those two cyclones. That is the reality; that is what we are dealing with. We are dealing with the impact of those sorts of weather events on our communities. I am sure that Senator Macdonald has heard, as I have, that our communities are rightfully worried about what we are going to do to mitigate that and what we are going to do to protect our communities from that sort of damage.

North Queenslanders know that climate change is real. North Queenslanders know that we have to do something as a community and as a nation—and, more importantly, as a global community. The Torres Strait islands people, tourism operators, reef managers and the managers of the wet tropics know that we have to do something. It is time for this government to really acknowledge and recognise the link between human activity and climate change and to join the efforts of the international community by ratifying the Kyoto protocol as a first step and then getting on with reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

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

I join this debate to bring some realism to the issues and comments that are before us. The motion refers to ‘the continued scepticism of the Prime Minister over the link between human activity and climate change’. That is simply not correct. The Prime Minister has quite clearly stated that he believes there is a connection between climate change and emissions. He is, quite clearly, a climate change realist.

The motion goes on to suggest that ‘the Howard government has dragged the chain on climate change for more than 10 years’. All of the speakers from the other side, particularly the Democrats and the Greens, conveniently overlook that it was former senator Robert Hill, when he was environment minister, who initiated the first greenhouse office anywhere in the world. That happened not long after this government took office. The previous government had no interest whatsoever in climate change issues, but our government, in one of its first initiatives, set up the Greenhouse Office within the department of the environment. We have been conscious of the issue and we have been working for the environment and against greenhouse gas emissions and climate change ever since that time.

It is easy for the Greens and the Democrats in particular to criticise the government and take a very anti-Australian view on all of these things. They conveniently forget these initiatives that were world class and world first. So rather than having dragged the chain on climate change, our government has been at the forefront of activity to prevent climate change for more than 10 years.

The motion goes on to note ‘the environmental and economic cost of past inaction and any future delays in tackling this challenge’. I guess we all understand the environmental and economic costs of climate change. But to suggest that that is caused by past inaction or will be the result of any future delays is simply not a fact. The motion goes on to call upon the government to recognise the link between human activity and climate change and to join in the efforts of the international community by ratifying the Kyoto protocol. As I have said many a time—and as any serious commentator would understand—signing a bit of paper, no matter whether it is called the Kyoto protocol or anything else, will not make one iota of difference to the rate of climate change or to greenhouse gas emissions. Observing the decisions that were taken in Kyoto as to the greenhouse gas emissions will make a difference.

Australia is one of the very few nations to have met the targets set in Kyoto at that time. I well remember that former senator Robert Hill, who attended that meeting in Kyoto, argued long and hard about what should be done. He also argued long and hard to protect Australia’s interests in allowing Australia to have a target of 108 per cent of 1990 levels, and that was agreed to by the world community. We have almost achieved that. In fact, we were achieving it until recently. Now it has blown out a little, and I will come back to that later. But we are one of the very few nations that has achieved those targets set in Kyoto. Other nations have not. But do you hear Senator Allison, Senator Milne, Senator McLucas or Senator Wong criticising those other nations? Do you hear any praise or congratulations for the great work that our country has done to be one of the few in the world that has actually achieved the targets set at Kyoto?

I wonder where these people are coming from. They get up here and continually bag and criticise Australia when Australia has done more towards meeting Kyoto greenhouse gas emissions targets than almost any other country in the world. And we have done that in a careful and economically sensible way. Did you, Mr Acting Deputy President Forshaw, and your colleagues in the Labor Party hear Senator Milne, and I thought I heard some on the Labor Party side, saying, ‘Hear, hear!’—saying, ‘What’s a few coalminers; what do we care about them?’ Goodness gracious me! Senator Allison should leave the leafy suburbs of Melbourne and get up into North Queensland and just see what a contribution coalminers do make to Australia’s economy. Those coalminers allow Senator Allison to live the lifestyle that she and all other Melburnians live because of the wealth that they bring to this country.

I am appalled at the Labor Party and their mates in the CFMEU for their muted response to actions that are urged by Mr Rudd, and certainly by the Greens and the Democrats, that would destroy the jobs of all those miners in the area where I come from. I have to say quite frankly that we have never been able to politically get the view across to all of those miners in Collinsville, Moranbah and the Bowen Basin and out in Mount Isa about just what an impact it would have on their jobs if the Labor Party proposals were to proceed. Regrettably, they all earn more than we in this parliament earn—not that that is a great benchmark by which to set any standard. But they earn considerably more than we do, and they deserve it.

If the proposals put forward by the Labor Party’s mates, the Greens and the Democrats were to go ahead, those miners would be looking for other jobs. All of their investments and all of their mortgages would be challenged and in real danger, yet you have senators in this chamber like Senator Allison saying, ‘What’s a few coalminers up in the north?’ I would hope that the CFMEU might take a bit more interest in the welfare of their miners. Sure, we have to address greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, and this government is doing it. But we are doing it in a way that protects the jobs of those miners and that protects the lifestyle and the economy of all Australians.

Speakers in this debate have continually criticised Australia—and never mind about the Australian government; we expect that in a political sense—when Australia is one of the best countries in the world when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. Do you hear any recognition of that from Senator Milne, any conception that Australia has almost done it? Nobody else has, but Australia has. One of the speakers—I think it was Senator Milne—had the hide to talk about the UK and the European Union. As I recall, she said that the European Union was about to take action against Australia because of our carbon emissions. What an absolute joke! The European Union and the United Kingdom get a very substantial part of their power from nuclear power, which does not emit carbon in the way that fossil fuels do.

So you can have these holier than thou European Union countries saying, ‘We don’t have great emission increases’—although their increases are greater than Australia’s, I might add—and doing that on the back of a very substantial nuclear power industry. But if you ask Senator Milne, Senator Allison or most of the Labor Party—and I emphasise ‘most of’ because there are a few sensible people in the Labor Party—‘What about nuclear power; wouldn’t that help to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions?’ for some, I would suggest, ideological reason that does not meet with favour. I was interested to hear Senator Milne lauding wind power. As I recall, it was not all that long ago that Senator Bob Brown used to come into this chamber and rail against wind power, rail against the big windmills on the horizon as being visual pollution or some other such rubbish. There has been so much hypocrisy about this particular situation.

I am pleased that Senator McLucas acknowledged that, with regard to the cyclones we have in North Queensland, she did not particularly relate them to climate change. But let me say to Senator McLucas that cyclones, roofs lifting off houses, flooding, inundation and severe damage from cyclones have been a part of the North Queensland landscape ever since I have been on this earth and I am sure for a long time before that. We will continue to get cyclones. To suggest that cyclones are a result of climate change avoids the fact that they have been with us ever since I can remember and, as I said, I am sure for a great deal of time before that.

I do say in passing—and I try to hide my glee in saying this; I do not want to insult all of my colleagues in the south—that we have had magnificent rainfall in the last few weeks. In fact, I have been cut off, in my home town of Ayr, from my office in Townsville. The road has been broken in five places. That is because we have returned to what we used to call normal monsoon seasons. Someone was telling me that it has really been 18 years since we have had these monsoon seasons.

I am delighted to see this sort of weather back in North Queensland. Sure, there is a bit of inconvenience. There will be a lot of damage to the roads. There will be some other economic disadvantages. But the benefit of these monsoons in the north is a return to the old days. I cannot work out whether climate change is part of it. It seems to me that if that is climate change—going back to what we used to get 18 years ago—that is fine by me. I do not pretend to make a scientific observation about that; I simply say that we have had good rains in the north this month and last month, like we used to in times gone by. As a result of that, of course, the North Queensland farmers—the graziers out west and the prawn farmers—are going to have some of the best years they have seen in recent times.

It seems to me that Senator Milne and Senator Allison totally oppose nuclear power and will not even look at it—and most of the Labor Party are in the same position—yet they then laud the European Union and the United Kingdom for their approach to climate change, without acknowledging that most of their power comes from nuclear power plants. I would like to ask Senator Allison or Senator Milne—actually, I think it was Senator Allison—just where the United Kingdom does get its power from. She said to me that only 17 per cent was nuclear. I think it is a bit higher than that. If she is right, where does the rest come from? I have not seen too many wind farms around the United Kingdom. I have not seen a lot of solar energy places. Is it oil or coal? Where does the rest of the power for the United Kingdom come from, if it does not emit greenhouse gases to the extent that causes the problems that have been mentioned?

We have always scoffed at the idea that, by signing a bit of paper called the Kyoto protocol, you can advance the cause of resisting climate change. But what we do say and acknowledge is that the world has to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. That is why Australia has taken a leading role in getting the big emitters—the United States, China, India and other countries that are not currently constrained by any targets—to come on board and do something serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Australia I think deserves credit for this. Did I hear any of that from any of the speakers opposite? It is just this continual nitpicking against Australia.

The figures are around and if I can put my hand on them I will quote them, but, as I recall them, under the Kyoto protocol, greenhouse gas emissions are still expected to increase by 40 per cent on 1990 levels by 2012 compared with an increase of 41 per cent if the Kyoto protocol had not been signed. What a great initiative that has been for the world! Here we have senators opposite telling us that we have to sign the Kyoto protocol as if it is the saviour of all mankind. The actual facts of the matter are that, under the Kyoto protocol, greenhouse gas emissions are still expected to increase by 40 per cent on 1990 levels by 2012 compared with an increase of 41 per cent if the Kyoto protocol had not been signed.

Only about one-third of the global emissions of greenhouse gas are covered by countries that have taken on commitments under the Kyoto protocol. I repeat: Australia has not signed or ratified the Kyoto protocol, but we are one of the few countries that has abided by and met the targets set by Kyoto. This almost fanatical honouring of the Kyoto protocol by the mover of this motion and the Greens and Democrats senators is nothing short of humbug and hypocrisy. These people who promote the Kyoto protocol should get real, see what the real problems are and do what Australia is doing—get the big emitters such as the United States, China and India involved in some sort of arrangement where we can stop the emissions of greenhouse gas.

We are not opposed to a carbon trading regime, providing it is a regime that everyone in the world is involved in—which means that all of those who then become involved in it are treated fairly. That is what we have always said; that is what we believe is the case. That way, we will protect the jobs of coalminers because they will be working on an even playing field—on the same level as every other coalminer everywhere else in the world—and our manufacturing and export industries will be competing on a level playing field. But if you sign a document like Kyoto, when a lot of our major competitors in so many ways are not signing it, all you are doing is selling Australia down the drain. You are having very little impact on the total emissions of greenhouse gases and you are causing disruption to Australia and its workers.

Senator McLucas spoke, appropriately, on the Great Barrier Reef and said that this is one of Australia’s finest assets. There is no doubt about that; that is why the Howard government has contributed so much to its safety—most recently, by the closure of more than one-third of the reef to commercial fishing. That is just one example of the many initiatives taken by the Howard government to protect the Great Barrier Reef. We have set up the Reef and Rainforest Research Centre. We have contributed enormous amounts of money to science; we have contributed enormous amounts of money to various agencies whose duty it is to look after the Great Barrier Reef—and rightly so. Senator McLucas also mentioned the wet tropics areas. Again, the Howard government has recognised these as natural assets of this country and has contributed money to ensuring their safety and ongoing longevity.

This whole motion is another exercise, as I mentioned before, in hypocrisy and humbug. It is a motion that does not deserve support. If people seriously looked at the issues they would not get involved in this sort of senseless and meaningless political pinpricking and finger-pointing. It would be useful if members getting involved in this debate were to recognise what Australia has done, what it continues to do and what it leads the world in doing, and worked with the community to try to address the real problem that is global climate change. If we could do that, we would make some contribution to this whole issue rather than wasting our time on these sorts of silly motions. (Time expired)

Linda Kirk (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to speak to and support the motion moved by Senator Wong in relation to human activity and climate change. Contrary to what Senator Ian Macdonald has just suggested, climate change is a very serious issue and it is an issue that, until recently, the Howard government has virtually ignored. As other speakers have said today, the only reason we have suddenly seen Mr Howard change from being a climate change sceptic to a climate change realist is as a consequence of his coming to the realisation that the overwhelming majority of Australians are very concerned about climate change.

Last Friday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released internationally its fourth assessment report on climate change. This is a report that contains what can only be described as dire news for this generation. And it is even worse for those who are to come after us—for our children and our grandchildren. It is the case that the brightest scientific minds throughout the world have concluded that later generations will be forced to live on a planet—this planet—that will be, by their time, between 1.8 and 6.4 degrees Celsius hotter than it is today.

Looking at this report and the previous three reports that the IPCC has produced, it is really difficult to imagine how this world—the world that is going to confront later generations—is going to be. One thing that we can be sure about is that the world is going to be hotter and drier, and we are going to confront wild storms, huge bushfires and, no doubt, a substantial loss of security that we can only imagine at this stage. The year before last, 2005, was the hottest year on record and the five hottest years have been those in the past seven—quite an astounding statistic. According to the Bureau of Meteorology, this has come about because carbon pollution is changing our climate.

Despite the clear scientific evidence, the overwhelming scientific evidence that is now emerging and the evidence that has existed for some time, the Howard government—and particularly the Prime Minister himself—seems to have been, until recently, in total denial about the impact of climate change. In fact, as some speakers have said, last Monday night on the Lateline program, the presenter, Tony Jones, asked the Prime Minister:

... what do you think living in Australia would be like by the end of this century for your own grandchildren ... if the temperatures, the average mean temperatures, around the world do rise by somewhere between four and possibly ... six degrees celsius?

The Prime Minister’s answer—which was, I have to say, quite staggering—was:

... it would be less comfortable for some than it is now ...

I find that statement by the Prime Minister just unbelievable, especially in the light of, as I said, the overwhelming scientific evidence that climate change is not going to make things just ‘less comfortable for some’ but potentially is going to have a devastating impact on this planet. You also have to wonder how the Prime Minister could make this statement, which really does verge on dishonesty. How could he not be aware of that which it seems almost everyone else is aware of?

Based on the findings of studies done by the CSIRO, even a three-degree increase in temperature would produce 3,185 to 5,185 more heatwave deaths per year in Australia’s major cities, a 40 per cent reduction in livestock carrying capacity in native pasture systems, functional extinction of the Great Barrier Reef—as Senator McLucas spoke of during her comments today—a 15 per cent to 70 per cent increase in the number of very high or extreme fire days in the south-east of Australia, tropical cyclone rainfall increases of 20 per cent to 30 per cent as wind speeds increase by five per cent to 10 per cent, and flows to the Murray-Darling Basin falling by between 16 per cent and 48 per cent. What I have just referred to is merely the impact that climate change will have here in Australia, not to mention the way it will impact throughout the rest of the world.

It really is quite shameful that the Howard government has left this country unprepared for the serious challenge that climate change presents. The Howard government appears to be unprepared for and unaware of the impact of climate change, but the Australian people are not. According to a recent news.com.au survey, Australians are more worried about climate change than about terrorism or any other global issue. An overwhelming majority of respondents to the survey said that they did not trust the government on the environment and, while 68 per cent said Australia should sign the Kyoto protocol, an even greater proportion, 82 per cent, said that Australian policy should go further than what the treaty obliges us to do in relation to tackling climate change—which I thought was a very interesting response.

The reason climate change is considered to be a greater threat than terrorism to international security, not only by the Australian people, as I said, but also by the world’s security experts, is because a hotter, drier and wilder climate will have a devastating effect on the world’s fresh water and food supplies. Of course we are all aware of the impact that will have on communities. Sea level rise and food insecurity could lead to refugee flows estimated to be as high as 200 million people throughout the world. But this is the world, this is the future that we do face and this is what the Prime Minister describes as ‘uncomfortable for some’.

As I mentioned before, the world’s scientific community is united in relation to the impact of climate change. Six hundred scientists, including 42 Australian scientists, representing 113 governments on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found:

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, melting of the snow and ice and rising sea levels.

If I had a choice between taking the word of the Prime Minister, who says that climate change is going to make some people uncomfortable, and listening to the commentary by the scientists I have referred to, it is pretty clear that I would believe the scientists and I am sure that the overwhelming majority of Australians would agree with me.

It is outrageous that this government is not acknowledging the potential impact of climate change. We know that the Prime Minister said recently he is now a climate change realist, whereas before he was a sceptic, but there is no question that the Prime Minister has known about climate change and its potential impact for the 10 long years that he has been Prime Minister of this country. He has learnt about the impact of climate change exactly the same way that all of us have learnt about it: through the previous three IPCC reports—those that preceded the one I have been speaking of—through reports put out by the Australian Greenhouse Office, and even through his own government in a 2005 report entitled Climate risk and vulnerability. This is not to mention all of the reports that have been done over the years by the CSIRO. The Prime Minister has also had Australian business talking to him over the last 10 years via the Business Roundtable and he has heard Australian farmers talk about this, particularly in recent years as they have experienced the one-in-100-year drought.

We in South Australia are particularly aware of the impact of climate change. Earlier in my remarks I mentioned the potential impact of climate change on flows to the Murray-Darling Basin and I mentioned figures that have been cited of reduction in flows of between 16 per cent and 48 per cent. In my state of South Australia we are very aware and very concerned about the water crisis that is gripping our state and, indeed, this nation. The toughest ever water restrictions we have had in our state have been imposed after the driest winter and the lowest inflows into the Murray in our state’s history. The reality is that if we do not have a climate change strategy then we are not going to have a water strategy either. Unless this government takes steps to properly address climate change, we are never going to fix the water crisis that is confronting this nation and my state.

Labor have taken a very different approach from this government to climate change. We have produced a climate change blueprint which puts forward responsible long-term plans to tackle climate change. We have said for some time now that we will ratify the Kyoto protocol. We have undertaken to cut Australia’s greenhouse pollution by 60 per cent by 2050, establish an emissions trading scheme and substantially increase the mandatory renewable energy target. When elected, a Rudd Labor government will take immediate and effective action to tackle climate change and thereby protect our children’s future. That is why our leader, Mr Rudd, has announced that he will be convening a national summit on climate change to be held here in late March or early April this year.

The difference between this government’s approach and the Labor opposition’s approach is pretty clear. We are looking forward and we have realised that there is no longer a debate about climate change; it has moved beyond debate. It is clear that the time for action is now. It is time to do something about it, to take positive steps and to convene a summit in the way that our leader, Mr Rudd, has suggested. All we have seen from this government is its complete lack of comprehension of the scale and impact of climate change and how it will change the lives of future generations.

I urge senators to support the motion presented today by Senator Wong. Climate change is the most pressing issue that we face in this country. Australians know that. It is a shame that the Prime Minister does not seem to understand that climate change is the most pressing environmental issue confronting us and that the time for action is now.

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

I do agree with one thing that Senator Kirk said—and only thing—and that is that there are significant differences between the ALP and the government in relation to these matters. The ALP response to this issue is a blueprint—and they toss in a steak knife as well, with something in April that will resemble a conference. So we get a blueprint and a conference, probably with the ALP state premiers.

But this government quite clearly took this issue by the horns some time ago. I think Senator Sherry was here yesterday when I alerted the chamber to the fact that 10 years ago this government set up the Australian Greenhouse Office, the world’s first agency dedicated to addressing climate change. The head of that office is now chairing various international fora in relation to this issue. Ten years ago this government started this process. The Australian Labor Party has been out of office for 11 years and the best they can do is a blueprint and a meeting with the state premiers in April or May. That is the sum total of 10 years of inactivity in relation to this issue.

Senator Kirk, you are absolutely right that there are very clear differences between the government and the opposition. One is a litany of inactivity and the other is an absolute commitment to addressing the matters that you and I know are so serious. I want to read it out again—and I will do it slowly this time because clearly there were some on the other side who were not listening yesterday. The government recognises that the best scientific advice tells us that, globally, we need to achieve large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decades. This is the government’s position in relation to this matter. This is the Prime Minister’s view in relation to this matter. How much clearer than those words can the government’s commitment to this issue be? My colleagues on this side—Senator Scullion, who recently received a much-deserved promotion, and the Deputy Government Whip, Senator Parry—are nodding furiously because they agree with me. How can anyone express it at any stronger than that statement?

Rather than a blueprint and a meeting of like Labor minds, we need solutions. And, gee, I wonder what the state Labor premiers are going to say about this conference. Do you think they might be slightly supportive? I suspect they probably will be. It will be an election talkfest that does not address the key issues that we are confronting.

I say to Senator Kirk: it is all very well to trot out a rock star to try and convince the Australian people of the bona fides of the ALP, but it takes more substance than the lead singer of a band prancing around like a stick insect during the mating season to deal with this absolutely fundamental issue that we are confronting. Blueprints are not good enough.

In the time left to me—Senator Kirk, I have learnt my lessons well from yesterday—I want to talk about some of those things that we have done that are not blueprints but solutions, that involve real dollars to address real problems. I will go through them slowly because, clearly, there were some on the other side yesterday who were not listening. It was appalling yesterday when Senator Milne, who pretends to be concerned about these matters, through her silence did not support any of these initiatives. There is the $2 billion climate change strategy, which is focused on very practical measures; the $500 million for the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund; the $100 million for the Renewable Energy Development Initiative; the $100 million announced as part of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate—practical, hands-on funding to address this serious issue—and the $75 million for the Solar Cities program. We are also investigating nuclear power’s potential as a low-emission energy source.

The Asia-Pacific partnership is not a blueprint, not some false meeting with Labor premiers; it is actual relationships with those who need our help and whose help we need to address this international issue. It brings together the USA, Australia, Japan, China, Korea and India. They represent 50 per cent of the global economy. It is called the AP6. The partners represent around half of the world’s emissions, energy use and population. China and India are not part of Kyoto.

We get this constant parroting from the ALP opposition about their solutions to this issue—the blueprint, the set-up forum with the state premiers and signing Kyoto. What, pray tell, does Kyoto do in relation to the emissions of China and India, two of the world’s largest emitters? As Senator Parry said, it does absolutely nothing. What does the AP6 partnership do? It brings those two large emitters in and works with them to address appropriate outcomes.

What about renewable energy? I have not read much from the Labor Party about renewable energy. We hear the Greens parroting their old slogans all the time. Where are the Greens? Why aren’t the Greens here today to listen to this debate? Where are they? It is just like Senator Bob Brown. He opposed the Telstra sale and gave his apologies during the Telstra inquiry because he was in Sydney. But where was he? Where was the man who was so concerned about Telstra? He was outside the meeting, on his mobile phone. He did not have the intestinal fortitude to go in. He is all huff and puff. Is he in here today? Is he participating? Has he spoken? I do not know. Why isn’t he here today to listen to this debate? At least the Labor Party, to their credit, are participating in the debate, though they are not adding much.

This government is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in renewable energy. That is not a blueprint. That is not some set-up conference. That is not signing up to an agreement that does nothing about the major emitters in this world whose emissions are growing by the minute, let alone by the hour, the day or the year. The government is investing real, on-the-ground dollars: $123 million for the extension of the Renewable Remote Power Generation Program over four years; $100 million for the Renewable Energy Development Initiative; $75 million for the Solar Cities program; $20 million for the advanced electricity storage initiative; $14 for the advanced wind forecasting capability; $25 million to develop renewable energy as part of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate; and $500 million for the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund. That is not some nebulous blueprint. That is not some farcical set-up conference, enlisting the support of the state premiers. That is not high farce but big bucks on the ground, delivering outcomes.

In October last year, the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, the LETDF, awarded a $75 million grant to Solar Systems Pty Ltd. That grant will support the development of the world’s largest solar energy plant in Victoria. This involves real dollars going into real projects to address a real problem. It is not a blueprint. After 10 years and after having enlisted a rock star, the best Labor can do is a blueprint. Labor should be ashamed of itself. It should be ashamed of what it has not done. It should be ashamed to come in here and utter the platitudes that it does in relation to this issue.

Debate interrupted.