Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The birthplace of democracy, Athens, is on fire and so is the west coast of the United States. Europe is flooding and, here in Australia, our own bitter experience means that we know the world is in a climate emergency. Tonight the world's scientists will release the latest IPCC report, warning that the world is heating faster than feared and that we may cross catastrophic tipping points from which there is no return and hit 1½ degrees in just a few years. Prime Minister, your 2030 targets are a death sentence for our country. Will you heed this warning and join the US and the UK by at least doubling our 2030 climate targets? Or will you keep failing to protect Australia and its people from the climate crisis?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government is seeking to achieve net zero emissions as soon as possible. That's what we're seeking to do, and we're seeking to do that by using technologies not taxes. We are seeking to do that not by robbing the livelihoods of Australians around this country and putting upon those—whether they be in the suburbs or the regional towns of this country—higher and higher costs of living.

We're not going to be doing that to Australians. We are going to achieve this goal and address the real action needed for climate change by ensuring that we're investing in the technology which is the game changer, and the game changer not just in this country—whether it's the hydrogen hubs or the many other initiatives; the $20 billion in the technology road map. All of this is designed to ensure that our economy transitions over the course of the next 30 years and to ensure it plays a highly successful role, not only ensuring that we're addressing climate change but, at the same time, ensuring that our economy is strong and successful, particularly in regional areas of this country—that they are not sacrificed at the altar. We're ensuring that they are supported through the transition to ensure that their initiatives, their efforts and their enterprises continue to be rewarded well into the future.

But the member would be interested to know that Australia has this record of not only investing in these new technologies but also achieving our targets, having beat our Kyoto targets by 459 million tonnes. Our emissions have fallen by 20 per cent since 2005, far exceeding those who've come forward with big claims about what they may achieve in the future. Australia is achieving emissions reductions right now: a 20 per cent reduction in emissions since 2005. Between 2005 and 2019, the last year of comparable data, Australia reduced emissions faster than Canada, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, the United States and the G20 and OECD averages. Australia is performing.

There may be those in this place who want to talk Australia down about what we're achieving, but I can tell you the farmers of this country have been putting their shoulder to the wheel on this task. The resources industry are putting their shoulder to the wheel on this task in transforming their industries. Our government is backing them up because our government believes that you can get emissions down, you can keep electricity prices down and you can address the future industrial needs of this country in a way that is complementary, and that you don't have to sacrifice one for the other. I can tell you, our government will not go down the taxes route. Those opposite might. We will not. (Time expired)