Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

Another example—and I pick up Senator Brown’s interjection—is ensuring that, when we burn fossil fuels, we no longer allow carbon from the burning of fossil fuels to go into the atmosphere. So we are working, as I know our friends in Germany are, on trying to capture the carbon at the smokestack and bury it under the ground or under the sea—to stop the carbon going up there in the first place. Of course, we need to work on efficient vehicles and alternative fuels. The government is pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into doing that and transforming how we stop deforestation in Australia and planting new plantations—a whole multibillion-dollar action plan to transform the way we generate energy.

In the Pacific, we are funding a $24.6 million sea level and climate monitoring project, a $4 million project for vulnerability and adaptation, giving $2.3 million for the climate prediction project and $2 million to reduce vulnerability in Kiribati, which I mentioned earlier. We have doubled Australia’s aid budget from 2004 to 2010 to $4 billion annually, and climate change and adaptation is one of the three priority themes under that aid package.

Senator Ferris asked about alternative policies. Labor do not have policies on this; they have slogans. They are saying, ‘Let’s sign Kyoto,’ It is a two-word document—a slogan, not a policy. While the rest of the world is negotiating a new post-Kyoto agreement, they are saying: sign up to something that is 10 years old and that has not worked. Under Kyoto, greenhouse gas emissions have gone up by 40 per cent. We need to find something more effective. Labor are stuck in a time warp on this. They should focus on some serious policies that have some real benefit for the global climate.