Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak about something the government clearly doesn't want to speak about—that is, the IPCC report. I started reading the report last week, and I have to say it's a stark report. The report starkly and graphically outlines the world we face with the prospect of exceeding a 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature rise by 2040—not too far away. At 1.5 degrees, we lose between 70 and 90 per cent of the world's warm coral reefs, on top of what we've lost to date. There will be more extreme hot days and more extreme droughts. At 1.5 degrees, we will see the consequences of climate related risks to our health, livelihood, food security, water supply, human security and economic growth. This change will disproportionately affect those living in the Third World and along the Pacific.

Our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and his divided Liberals have absolved themselves from any responsibility in tackling climate change. Yet the government's own data, released secretly one Friday night, shows they will fail, despite what they say in this place and other places, to meet their already-inadequate Paris targets, with pollution rising all the way to 2030. I think you'd have to say that our environment minister, Minister Melissa Price, the member for Durack in my state, was wishfully thinking when she said on radio:

I just don't know how you could say by 2050 that you're not going to have technology that's going to enable good, clean technology when it comes to coal.

There's no scientific proof of that; that's wishful thinking, and, actually, from a minister, it is irresponsible talk. Ms Price went on to say:

Coal does form a very important part of the Australian energy mix.

Of course, whenever we talk about climate change, and, indeed, when the IPCC releases a report that covers the world, it's funny how the Liberals here always just boil it back down to coal. That was coming from a minister, of course, who worked in the mining industry. It was also from a minister who sat on her own report from the Department of the Environment and Energy on Australia's national greenhouse gas emissions for seven weeks. But we know the government's got form for sitting on controversial reports. Of course, the report revealed that Australia had the highest levels of carbon pollution since 2011 in the second quarter of this year, but you won't hear that from those opposite.

By contrast, whilst the Liberals have given in to their hard Right and will continue to wage their anti-science, anti-renewables and anti-climate-change agenda, Labor will not shirk our responsibility to future generations. We've committed to 50 per cent renewables by 2030, a 45 per cent cut in emissions by 2030—and that was on 2005 levels—and net zero emissions by 2050. Labor's targets will cut pollution and bring down power prices, and we will transition Australia to a clean economy with good, new, stable jobs, innovation and lower energy costs.

It's really time that Australians had a government that cares about the same issues they care about. We know Australians are overwhelmingly not climate deniers, unlike many of those in the government. We know they support and want to see action on climate change. Sadly, they will not see it from Prime Minister Morrison or whoever leads them to the next election. Only a Shorten Labor government will deliver. We will deliver on the commitments that we've made, because we know it works. Let's bring on the election so that we finally get an energy policy that works in this country.