Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I do not think that anyone in this parliament—in fact, any Australians generally—would deny that our climate is changing. Of course, it has been changing for 95 million years and perhaps even longer. We read about the times when this globe was covered by ice. The ice melted some time back in Australia’s history and then the centre of Australia was a rich tropical rainforest. It is now a desert. We read about when there was an inland sea in Australia, and today it is all land. So quite clearly the climate is changing, but we do not accept the alarmist propaganda being put out by the Labor Party and, of course, by the Greens. We do know that in the last century there was a 20-centimetre rise in global sea levels, and that is significant. We also know that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted that over the coming century there could be an impact of between 18 and 76 centimetres if no action whatsoever is taken. I point out there that the lower level predicted by the IPCC for the next century is 18 centimetres if nothing is done, whereas in the last century it was 20 centimetres. I am not saying that 18 centimetres is right, but it is within the range that the IPCC has given us, and that is if nothing is done. We also know that over the last 20,000 years there has been a 130-metre change in sea levels. Sea levels do change across the board. There was a 20-centimetre rise last century and there is a predicted rise of between 18 and 76 centimetres in the next century if nothing is done.

I am confident that something will be done at some time in the future. Indeed, it was the Howard government that first addressed this issue by setting up the world’s very first Greenhouse Office. This was the very first government office anywhere in the world that started looking at climate change issues. It was the Howard government that went to Kyoto and negotiated Australia’s targets at that time, targets that have been met by this country when they have been met by very few other countries.

We are concerned about alarmist hypocrisy from the Labor Party. You have only to look at what the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Peter Garrett, said when speaking to Tony Jones on Lateline. He agreed that the upper level of rises in the global sea level could be as much as six metres—six metres!—by the end of this century. According to Mr Garrett, in 90 years time sea levels could rise by six metres. You do not need to be a great mathematician to work out that that is 66 millimetres every year for the next 90 years. This is what the Labor Party is going around trying to scare the Australian public into believing—that every single year for the next 90 years there will be a 66-millimetre increase in the sea levels around our coastline. It is absolutely ridiculous poppycock, and Mr Garrett should know it. It is typical of the fearmongering in which the Labor Party and the Greens have indulged in this debate.

It is also very interesting that the Labor Party has sent out a team of backbenchers to continue that scare campaign, that spin campaign, for which Mr Rudd and his government have become so well known. In a doorstop interview this morning, Mr Dreyfus, the member for Isaacs, was saying that Mr Rudd is going to reduce sea level rises. One might have thought that it was Moses reincarnated!