Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to present the 2007-08 Environment and Water Resources portfolio appropriations to the Main Committee of the House of Representatives. The budget delivers historic levels of funding to address the key environmental issues confronting us today—water scarcity, climate change and sustainable land management. In this year, 2007-08, the Australian government’s environment related spending will increase to a record $4.3 billion. In the course of its life, the government has spent more than $20 billion on environmental conservation and protection.

There is no greater threat today to the long-term economic and environmental welfare of this nation than climate change and water scarcity. As the Prime Minister recently announced, Australia will move to develop what will be the world’s best domestic emissions-trading system by 2012. This will be the most comprehensive emissions-trading scheme in the world, covering the sources of 75 per cent of all emissions.

Our total commitment to fighting climate change now stands at $2.8 billion. Climate change is a global problem. Global warming is a global problem and it needs a global response. To be environmentally effective, we have to work collaboratively with the world’s largest emitters. We have to work collectively to make the dramatic cuts to greenhouse gas emissions that science tells us we need by the middle of this century. Just to put a frame of reference around the scale of cuts that we need that is comprehensible: in order to achieve the cuts in emissions that science tells us the world needs by mid-century, we will need to have by the middle of this century almost all of our stationary energy and most of our transport energy coming from zero or near zero emission sources. That is an incredible technological transformation that we have to reckon with and deal with. That is the scale of the technological challenge which we are speaking of. There are people who like to suggest that the response to climate change, the response to global warming, will be easy, will be cheap and will not be much of a problem. It is a massive change. It is a technological change on a par with the industrial revolution itself.

So we are working very hard with the major emitters—in particular China and the United States—to develop the confidence and the collaboration necessary for this effective global response. At the same time, we are focused on early action. There are two areas of early action that are most promising and most achievable. The first is forestry, where we are literally leading the world in a new Global Initiative on Forests and Climate, investing $200 million over five years to stop deforestation in developing countries and promote reforestation and sustainable forestry management. Of course, that $200 million is not sufficient to undertake this massive task alone, but it is designed to motivate and galvanise other countries to partner with us in this enormous effort. If we could simply halve the rate of deforestation, we would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 10 per cent, which is more than 10 times the effect of Kyoto.

Turning from climate change to water: no Australian government has ever committed as much in resources to water as the Howard government has, through the $2 billion Australian Government Water Fund, the National Water Initiative—that groundbreaking intergovernmental agreement—and, most recently, the $10 billion National Plan for Water Security, tackling the problems of overallocation and inefficient use of water in the agricultural areas of Australia, where 70 per cent of our water is used. So these are massive contributions to these key challenges of climate change and water scarcity.

Finally—and I will deal with the rest of this in questions, no doubt—we are again leading the world, not alone but in partnership with other countries, in dealing with the key technological challenges. The most important technology to master is going to be clean coal. Australia, the US and the Netherlands are leading the world. That is the measure of our commitment to a cooler planet.

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