Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Abetz, the Minister representing the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources. Is the minister aware that in April this year the Minister for Foreign Affairs specifically dismissed the idea of setting aspirational targets for emissions reductions, saying that this would be ‘code for a political stunt’? Didn’t he also go on to say that ‘an aspirational target is not a real target at all’? Does this mean that the Prime Minister’s APEC aspirational target on emissions reduction is, using the words of Mr Downer, a political stunt? Why won’t the Howard government commit to real and binding targets to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions?

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

I think all Australians would be very pleased with the outcome of the APEC forum that we were very honoured and pleased to host in this country over the past week. One of the great strengths that has been able to be displayed as a result of the APEC forum has been the high regard in which Australia is held, right around the world. One of the great achievements of APEC has been to get countries such as the United States and Russia together—and China, might I add—to talk about the important challenge that we face as a world in relation to climate change.

To be able to get developing countries such as Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia and China as well as the US and Russia agreeing on the need for a long-term aspirational global emissions reduction goal is a truly great, ground-breaking consensus. The important thing in relation to these aspirational goals is that we do not of our own volition set up an aspirational goal which is not in the context of the international situation. That is in fact something that the Prime Minister’s task force addressed in relation to the approach that we should take to the issue of climate change.

The Howard government has been very responsible and sensible in its approach to climate change. As the vast majority of workers in this country know, if Australia were to go it alone, all that would happen would be the wholesale export of wealth and jobs to other countries in our region, to the detriment of our own wealth and to the detriment of the working men and women of Australia. That is why, in the context of APEC, the government sought to get together as many of the differing approaches as you can get: the United States—well and truly developed; China—going gang busters; and other countries as well, such as Russia, that have come from a difficult background. So we believe that APEC has served a very useful purpose in getting the world communities together so that we can face this challenge together, because trying to do it alone will not achieve any purpose and, more importantly, it would be to Australia’s great detriment.

Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. I note the minister did not actually respond to the key charge Mr Downer made. Hasn’t the government had 11 long years to respond to climate change? Why is it, after those long 11 years in office, the best the Prime Minister and the government can do is something that his own foreign minister described as a political stunt? Doesn’t this confirm again that the government is full of climate change sceptics—like the minister himself—who are incapable of taking up the serious challenge of climate change?

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

If the key charge is that which the Leader of the Opposition has put, I say it is a struggling opposition. We, as a government, have been dealing with the issue of climate change since we first got into government. I have reminded those opposite time and time again that we established the Australian Greenhouse Office in 1998, within two years of coming into office. What is more, it was the first of its kind within the world. So do not say that we have come to this issue lately. We have been addressing this issue in a good, sensible approach which has the recognition of, indeed, the IPCC itself. The IPCC itself has commended the Howard government’s approach. In relation to symbolic matters, I simply say the Labor Party would still sign on to Kyoto, knowing full well it would make no difference to the real challenges that we face. (Time expired)