Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Corangamite for his question. If we are looking out to the big economic challenges facing Australia, fighting the fight against inflation is one; second, making sure that we are doing whatever we can to boost long-term productivity growth in the economy; and, third, to do what we can also embrace on the overall, overarching challenge of climate change. Climate change is as much an economic threat as it is an environmental threat as it is long term a national security threat as well, unless we are capable of acting on it.

The government accepts the scientific evidence. The government accepts that the scientific evidence is in that climate change is real, it is happening, and no longer can this nation afford to be in any state of denial on something as fundamental as this. It does go to our long-term interests across the spectrum: economic, environmental and national security. And overall our view has long been, put in simple terms, that the costs of inaction on climate change are much greater than the costs of action.

If you look at some of the data, the Bureau of Meteorology reported that 2007 was the sixth warmest year on record in Australia. Furthermore, 16 of the last 18 years have been warmer than the long-term average in Australia. Again, the CSIRO recently projected that temperatures will rise another one to five degrees by 2070 depending on the level of carbon emissions in the coming decades. This means that we in this country and the world at large are facing the requirement for a global economic transformation to a low carbon economy of an order of magnitude that we have not seen since the great economic transformation of the Industrial Revolution.

This is a deep challenge not just for our country, Australia, but for the entire world. Failure to act is in fact consigning the future for our children to a very dismal destiny indeed. Without decisive action on climate change, we in this country will also be in the front line of the victims of climate change. Australia is the driest continent on the planet. As weather patterns change, this leaves us more vulnerable to impacts of climate change than other advanced economies. Great national assets such as the Barrier Reef and Kakadu are affected. There are also the risks to our farming communities, who are already exposed, as well as water shortages which could in the future make vast tracts of Australia uninhabitable.

Australia must therefore seize the opportunity now to become a leader globally. In the transformation to a low-carbon energy economy, a low-carbon energy revolution is what is necessary. We have an opportunity to become world leaders when it comes to clean coal technologies. We have an opportunity to become world leaders when it comes to the proper deployment and use of renewable energies—what we do in the future with solar, wind, ocean tidal flows and other energy renewables. We have an opportunity to become world leaders when it comes to energy efficiency in our homes and our businesses, as well as in our factories and our mines. This is where we need to position Australia, not in a state of denial but out there ahead of the pack, because it is in our deep economic interest, our deep national interest, to do so.

This government took steps very early in its term to become not just a part of the global climate change problem but a part of the global climate change solution. On our first day, we ratified the Kyoto protocol. Within our first week or two, we delivered that instrument of ratification of the Kyoto protocol to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. And, within that conference at Bali, within that first week, we had the Australian Minister for Climate Change and Water there, not skulking at the edge of the conference, as has happened in previous times. The Australian Minister for Climate Change and Water, within two weeks of this government taking office, was there acting as a co-chair of the important final negotiating sessions of the conference—part of the action, part of the solution; not just a carping part of the problem. And, if there was an opportunity for action on this, I simply pose this question to those opposite: why did it take 12 long years for those opposite to finally harness themselves into action? I ask them this question: do you support ratification of Kyoto now? Will you embrace the possibility of deratifying Kyoto? You do not have any clarity on that either. We in this government therefore are embracing a range of policy measures.

See this speech in context