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

Believe me, it ain’t all about nuclear power. The Prime Minister says ad nauseum that we should not make changes until every other country comes on board. The problem with that argument is that other countries are already on board; they are taking action. Going back to the UK, they introduced some time ago a small carbon levy just for big industry. They fed that money back into big industry, used it for energy efficiency, and that has transformed their largest energy greenhouse emitters. We have seen huge energy efficiency as a result. In fact, energy efficiency is a huge area where there is great scope for us to make gains on greenhouse emissions, but Australia has relied entirely on voluntary arrangements.

We will be dealing with a bill, presumably in our next sitting week, which will look at the scheme which was introduced by this government—a voluntary arrangement where big business would be forced to put an audit on their energy efficiency and their energy consumption. But even if that audit found efficiency measures that would be effective and would have a short payback time, there would be no obligation on the part of those companies to deliver.

It is just one of the areas where Australia can and must act and where there is great scope for us to reduce our emissions. If you are going to be a world player, as yesterday’s task force paper, that very flimsy document with more questions than answers, seemed to be suggesting, then you have to do far more than Australia has been prepared to do. You have to acknowledge the achievements of other countries. The fact that China has a commitment to reduce by 20 per cent the carbon intensity of its electricity sector is something that this government does not talk about. China is always seen as the one that we have to bring on board and yet it is on board already. It has ratified Kyoto; it is already taking the sorts of steps that Australia is still reluctant to take. It is time to stop pointing the finger at other countries; it is time to look at our own opportunities. It is time to look after this country and to protect it, not just say: ‘We have to adapt to climate change. Too bad, it’s too late. We didn’t listen to the Democrats 20 years ago, now we have to adapt because there’s no other choice.’

It is not good enough either to say that we have to protect coalminers. I heard the Prime Minister say that the other day. Since when has the Prime Minister been worried about a handful of jobs in a particular industry? This is unbelievable. How many hundreds of thousands of people have been lost from the textile industry and various other industries that once thrived in this country? For the government to say that it is suddenly worried about coalminers is just extraordinary.