Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Wong’s motion dares to suggest that the Howard government has dragged the chain on climate change for more than 10 years! I think it is in fact longer than that that we have understood the dangers of climate change and greenhouse emissions. As much as I welcome Labor driving this debate now—that is a really good thing—it is coalition and Labor governments that have been dragging the chain for, I would say, 20 years. That is how long we have known about this looming threat to our environment and to our economy. Scientists and environmentalists have been talking about climate change for decades, perhaps for even more than 20 years. Yet neither of the major parties while in government acted in practical and serious ways to address it. Instead of that what we have seen has been largely a ‘business as usual’ arrangement.

As far back as 1988 the Democrats worked in the Senate calling for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and a halt to climate change. In that year we introduced a private senator’s bill called the Ozone Depleting Substances Regulations Bill which aimed to ban the production and use of ozone-destroying CFCs. While the bill was said to have had merit by the major parties, it was defeated by both of them. Senator John Coulter made an interesting observation at the time about the economic policies of the ALP and coalition parties and the effect that these policies would have on accelerating climate change. He said:

... both the Government and the Opposition have adopted economic policies which are oriented towards growth and that growth measures the dollar value of throughput; therefore the increase in ozone depletion brought about by the increasing consumption and release of chlorofluorocarbons is measured as an improvement in the economy; and therefore the signals which are being given by the economic indicators are inimical to a solution to this problem.

Frustrated by government inaction in 1988, the Democrats initiated a Senate inquiry into climate change. The report tabled in 1991 was called Rescue the future: reducing the impact of the greenhouse effect. That report received cross-party support and noted that human activity had resulted in increases in greenhouse emissions causing additional warming of the earth’s surface. It noted that Australia was a very high emitter per capita. It also noted that ‘actions to increase the efficiency of energy use will result in resources and cost savings to the benefit of industry and the community’ and that ‘governments must develop coordinated strategies to meet emissions targets’ and that long-term planning should focus on ‘alternative and renewable energy sources’. Fifteen years later those sentiments remain true. The committee made over 50 recommendations and very few of those were ever enacted.

Eight years later, again frustrated by inaction, I initiated and chaired another Senate inquiry into climate change. The report was titled The heat is on: Australia’s greenhouse future and it was tabled in May 2001, six years ago. This report was highly critical of the lack of action to date and made 106 recommendations in areas of transport, emissions trading, carbon and the land, energy use and supply, climate change and Kyoto—all of which are still relevant today. One of the committee’s key recommendations was the early introduction of a domestic emissions trading system with the aim to build capacity and experience, encourage uptake of fuel switching and energy efficiency, and position Australia to lead the international debate in the development of a global trading system. Six years ago this was recommended, and now the Prime Minister is thinking of getting on board.

The Democrats also recommended in the report that the Commonwealth government, in advance of a domestic emissions trading system, phase in a small carbon levy from 2003 to provide a signal to Australian industry. Where industry could demonstrate that this levy adversely affected their international competitiveness, some or all of those payments could be rebated or returned as a contribution to fund investment in emissions abatement actions within that industry. Unfortunately, it is probably too late for something like this. Recent economic and scientific evidence suggest we have to act now and we have to go with very deep cuts.

The Prime Minister did demonstrate something comprehensively the day before yesterday, on Tuesday, when he answered the question in the House of Representatives. He came back with a retraction some five hours later—no doubt after advisers had told him what a blooper he had made and how there was no way that the government could continue to say that there was no connection between greenhouse and climate change. But that retraction was almost as bad as the original phrase. He said that he acknowledged the connection between greenhouse and climate change but said he thought that he had been asked about the connection between greenhouse and drought and that he thought the jury was out on that connection.

Well, no. What is central to the findings of 2,500 scientists worldwide is that lower rainfall in most of Australia is going to be a climate change outcome of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere that are now much too high and are causing the problems we are experiencing. The fourth assessment report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last week makes it quite clear that global warming is occurring and will result in higher temperatures. That panel is a conservative organisation comprising 2,500 eminent scientists from across the world, and these scientists are in complete agreement about global warming. Scientific modelling from the IPCC, our own CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology all point to rising temperatures, increased evaporation and, importantly, decreased rainfall across Australia. It is true that the IPCC has technically not stated that there is a link between climate change impacts and the drought that we are having; however, the fourth assessment report outlines that for areas south of the 30-degree latitude—that is the majority of Australia—there will be less rainfall. The IPCC also says that the southern oscillation, referred to as El Nino, will mean drier and wetter areas will experience more frequent drier periods.

The Prime Minister is using the equivocation and the preference of the IPCC to use the terminology of ‘high degree of confidence’ rather than ‘certainty’, but the difference is like saying that 99 per cent probability of something occurring is somehow doubtful and that you must only act on 100 per cent certainty. A responsible risk management approach—and we hear much from the government about risk management—is that you weigh the probability of the occurrence against the magnitude of the impact to inform appropriate actions. When it comes to climate change, the scientific community is saying it is 99 per cent certain that there will be a massive environmental impact. How sure does the Prime Minister have to be before he will introduce the reasonable change policies that the rest of the world is already introducing, before his government will manage the risk to Australia through climate change?