Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

I certainly want to add to the remarks of the member for Denison and assure him that we will indeed give due attention to the matter of a sustainability charter and recognise that there has been a significant lack of action on the part of the government and notorious tardiness in dealing with this very important matter.

I want to thank the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage and its chair, the member for Moore, and the deputy chair, the member for Throsby, for the committee’s bipartisan report on its inquiry into a sustainability charter, Sustainability for survival: creating a climate for change. This report has two principal recommendations. The first is the establishment of a statutory national sustainability commission headed by a sustainability commissioner.

The roles of the commission as set out in the report include: preparation of a sustainability charter, evaluation of progress towards goals and targets, reporting on this to both houses of parliament and conducting inquiries into sustainability matters. The committee suggests the minister should head the office of the national sustainability commission and be an independent statutory officer. The second principal recommendation is to establish an aspirational national sustainability charter with objectives and milestones containing ‘a supplementary technical implementation agreement containing targets’—and we think this is a very important recommendation. The committee suggested the national sustainability charter should at a minimum cover the following sectors: the built environment, water, energy, transport, ecological footprint, economics, waste, social equity and health, and community engagement and education.

Labor will look very closely at the recommendations of the House environment committee. But I am pleased to say that the broad thrust of the committee’s recommendations is consistent with ALP policy, which also proposes the establishment of a national sustainability charter, commission and commissioner. Labor will certainly be outlining this position in more detail in the lead-up to the election.

Labor has a proud record in sustainability policy, best illustrated by the Hawke-Keating Labor government’s national strategy for ecologically sustainable development. The development of this strategy followed on from the 1987 report of the World Commission on Sustainable Development entitled Our common future, which also was known as the Bruntland report, named after its chairman.

Australia’s national strategy for ecologically sustainable development under the Hawke-Keating government was almost certainly the first example of a country preparing a national strategy for its sustainable development, and that was pioneering policy in those times. Australia under the previous Labor government was leading the world in this area—and I really do mean leading the world—using those words and giving those words their proper meaning. Subsequently, various UN conferences on sustainable development required all countries to prepare national sustainable development strategies.

Unfortunately, the Howard government abandoned the Hawke-Keating government’s pioneering effort to develop and implement a national sustainable development strategy—and that was a great, great pity, because that early promise and that early momentum came to nought once the Howard government was elected.

Australia’s unique and priceless natural environment and resources are under enormous pressure from climate change now. And after 11 years of neglect, mismanagement and tardiness by the Howard government on nearly all of Australia’s indicators of environmental health, we continue to go backwards. It has been noted before but it must be emphasised when we speak on these matters that Australia’s biodiversity has declined in the past decade. Notwithstanding that investment from the Natural Heritage Trust, notwithstanding the fact that the community has rightly applied itself to the issue of conserving and protecting the environment, we still have a decline in our biodiversity—with terrestrial bird and mammal species listed as extinct, endangered or vulnerable rising by some 41 per cent between 1995 and 2005. These are terrible statistics. In 2000 about 5.7 million hectares were assessed as having a high potential to develop dryland salinity and about one-quarter of our surface water management areas as being close to or exceeding sustainable extraction limits. This represents a significant policy failure on the part of the Howard government with a clear lack of strategic priority focus and no national targets or performance indicators—which is the Howard government’s approach. So there is real merit in this proposal from the committee for a national sustainability commission, and a Rudd Labor government would, if elected, adopt a comprehensive policy for the protection and conservation of our natural environment.

I note that this report builds on the excellent bipartisan work of the House environment committee and in particular their previous inquiry into sustainable cities. It is a true disgrace that the Howard government still has not responded to the Sustainable cities report more than two years after its release. The environment minister was an enthusiastic contributor to this landmark report, but he has failed to respond to the report as minister. We were told in Senate estimates in February this year that the environment department had prepared a response to the report but was awaiting the minister’s approval. Seven months later the minister still has not released the government’s report.

If there was ever a test for Minister Turnbull and his capacity to act, this was it. He was an enthusiastic member of the committee and then as minister he has done absolutely nothing about it. This was a highly significant report because it was bipartisan in its advice, two years in the making, where the sustainable future of our cities was considered.

When the Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage tabled its findings on its inquiry into sustainable cities, it called for concerted national action and for the Australian government to assume a leadership role—that was the quotation—but we are still waiting for the Howard government to assume that leadership role. Clearly, at this point, new leadership is required. If the Howard government will not take the necessary action and provide that leadership, it is time for new leadership to develop a more sustainable Australia.

I note that in question time today a number of questions were put to the government, including to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, about climate change spending and about the policies of the government in responding to this most important issue which we now face. It is a fact, as report after report indicates—with some clarity and I think some pungency—that the urgent need for us to respond nationally to the likely impacts our natural environment will face as a consequence of climate change is ever more evident. Yet it remains a fact that the government, in its time in office, has spent twice as much on advertising as it has on climate change programs. In relation to climate change programs, it has now significantly underspent.

We have had inquiries conducted by the parliament with some producing significant bipartisan recommendations—particularly the inquiry into sustainable cities, which went to the heart of Australians living sustainably on the continent. With the majority of Australians living in capital cities or suburbs, many on the east coast of Australia, in urban and suburban conurbations, there is a desperate need for national leadership and an implementation of sustainability principles in planning and the way in which we manage our cities. Here we had a set of bipartisan recommendations. The coalition, the Labor Party, the Democrats and the Greens, every single party in the parliament, signed on to this particular report and its recommendations. Yet Minister Turnbull does not have the capacity to act. That speaks volumes for the emphasis this government gives to sustainability and looking after the environment. That speaks volumes when we consider the report before us today—Sustainability for survival: Creating a climate for changeby the Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage on its inquiry into a sustainability charter. The government just does not take the environment seriously.

So long as we have a government that is willing to spend twice as much on government advertising as on climate change programs, then we get a clear sense of where this government’s priorities lie. There is now an urgent need for us to develop a national approach to figuring through the right mechanisms, means and ways of ensuring that we get this country onto a sustainable footing and that we manage the challenge of climate change. In particular, a national sustainability commissioner, who is able to look at a range of measures, evaluate progress towards goals and targets and assess whether or not taxpayers’ money is being put to good use, seems to be an eminently worthwhile and important suggestion. We certainly do feel that in the area of leadership, in addressing climate change and in responding to the important and critical environment challenges that we have, this government’s failure to take into account the work that is done in the parliament on reports of this kind and its treatment of the recommendations of earlier committees with contempt and lack of action are the surest signs that it is neither prepared nor willing to take the issue of the environment seriously. A Rudd Labor government, if elected, would take the environment seriously and would work robustly to address the issues raised in this particular report.

Debate (on motion by Mrs Irwin) adjourned.

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