Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you are under the age of 35, every year of your life will have been hotter than the 20th century average and every decade will have been hotter than the previous one. The climate is changing. The world is warming, leading to more extreme events such as record heatwaves, intense fires and drought, heavy storms and deadly floods. Higher land and sea surface temperatures do and will contribute to more intense rainfall and severe cyclones, but a hotter climate will also dry the soil more quickly, change rainfall patterns and create new deserts.

Global warming is caused by pollution, creating a warm-up blanket of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere around our planet. This blanket holds in more heat and to limit the damage we must act. Thirty-five countries have already acted by introducing or are currently introducing carbon trading schemes or taxes. I know some people in my community do not believe we should act. Their arguments against action are constantly changing. A few years ago the principal argument was that the world was not warning at all. It was hard then to argue that. The argument moved on to, 'It's a natural occurrence' and now the argument is, 'There's nothing we can do about it, Australia's too small,' or, 'The cost will be too high.' My concern overwhelmingly is that it will cost our children dearly if we do not act and will cost our economy through the effects of changing climate itself or the risk that a fearful Australia will not develop new technology and will be left behind and punished for it.

There is an argument that we should not lead the way. However, when it comes to pollution, we do lead the way. Australia is the world's second highest emitter per head of population, higher than the USA and China, and beaten only by the United Arab Emirates. By volume we are in the top 20 emitters in the world, coming in as the 15th worst polluting nation out of 195 countries. When it comes to the problem we are leading the world, but we are not leading the world in answers and that is where our attention should be. We should be leading the way in developing technologies in the wind, solar and wave energy and ways to do things with fewer emissions. Our economy is built on the old and we must now transition to the new. The most effective way to do that is to put a price on pollution, requiring the big polluters to pay and compensating low- and middle-income households for any impact on household budgets, but the main purpose of an emissions trading scheme is to drive innovation, to put business throughout the economy to work to transition from old economies to new answers.

Countries such as Germany and China are already reaping the rewards of being early starters in the new energy industries. We need to be clever and take industry with us through the transition, to ensure that our scientists, researchers, manufacturers and innovative businesses find a place for Australia in the world of clean technology. As the world tackles climate change, we need to make sure we are leading the way in answers or we risk being well and truly left behind.