Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At this late hour, a hundred yards to our west over in the Senate, the carbon tax is in its final death throes. The Labor Party and the Greens are lining up to vote against the repeal for no less than the sixth time—three times in the House of Representatives and three times in the Senate. The landscape is clear: as sure as night follows day, if the Labor Party and the Greens ever come back to office in this country they will introduce a carbon tax. They might give it another name, but—call it what you like—Labor and the Greens will introduce it.

During debates on the carbon tax, we hear many members of the Greens and the Labor Party taking the high moral ground and claiming that they are the ones taking action on climate change. The question that they never answer is what effect will that action have on what they are trying to achieve—that is, changing global temperatures? I will go through the science and the maths to show what 'taking action' means. Firstly, we know Australia emits around 1.2 per cent of the world's man-made emissions of CO2. We know that at very best the carbon tax would reduce about five per cent of Australia's predicted CO2 emissions from man-made sources. In fact, using the government's own numbers, those emissions actually increase. It is only when they go to the nonsense of buying carbon credits from Botswana and other places that there is actually a reduction.

For argument's sake, let us say that Australia's emissions would reduce five per cent. Therefore, the carbon tax would abate five per cent times 1.2 per cent of global emissions. So the reduction that we will make here in Australia with this 'wonderful' carbon tax will be 0.06 per cent of the world's emissions! Currently, we know that the global concentration of CO2in the atmosphere is around 390 parts per million. We know that that will rise over the next 15 years at around two parts per million annually, because India, China and the rest of the world will continue to use fossil fuels to lift tens of millions, hundreds of millions, of people out of poverty and give them economic opportunity, education and health. So we are looking at an increase of around 30 parts per million over the next 15 years. Therefore, by 2030, the carbon tax would abate 0.06 of 30 parts per million. So the carbon tax would abate 0.018 of one part per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that the carbon tax. If by 2030 we expect to have carbon dioxide levels around 420 parts per million, with the carbon tax, and that massive saving of 0.018, it will be around 419.982 parts per million.

How much warming will this avoid? Because that must be the ultimate aim of the carbon tax. If we go with the IPCC prediction of three degrees of warming over the next century, by 2030 the carbon tax would save 0.00075 of one degree of warming. Expressed as a fraction, that is 1/13,000th of one degree. Here is the real kicker: the most accurately we can measure temperatures is to 0.05, or one-twentieth of one degree. The estimated saving in global temperature from the carbon tax is actually 660 times smaller than what we can measure. If someone came to you and said that they were going to take $550 from every family, every year for the purpose of taking action of reducing 1/13,000th of one degree of temperature—660 times smaller than we can measure—you would think insanity had taken over. Yet that is what Labor and the Greens are taking to the next election.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 8 pm, the debate is interrupted.

House adjourned at 20:00