Dana Wortley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Climate Change Action Bill 2006 and acknowledge that it calls on the government to take specific action in relation to climate change. Labor will be guided by our planned national climate change summit with respect to further details of Labor’s plans to address climate change. I am pleased to outline our plans to date and to call the Howard government to account on its disgraceful neglect. Climate change is a serious issue with serious consequences and, again, an issue on which the Howard government has a poor record. If it were a report card, you would not want to take it home. It would read: ‘Eleven years of inaction in the face of Australia’s greatest environmental challenge.’

I remember an Australia when summers were summers, winters were winters and rarely did the seasons combine. Our lifestyles were set by the seasons that were clearly defined by the months of the year. You could count on a wet, cold winter. You knew you would get drenched playing netball or watching a local game of footy on a Saturday afternoon. You did not leave home without an umbrella. Our winter birthdays were planned as inside parties. And then, in the summertime, as children we would go swimming after school on weekdays and at the beach on weekends. I recall the simple pleasure of playing with my brothers and sisters under the sprinkler on the back lawn on a summer’s afternoon—sadly, because of our environmental crisis, a pleasure my young son is denied today. There is no playing with water. Back then, our seasons were generally predictable, and we lived our lives accordingly.

Last year, on Christmas Day, Australia was served up all four seasons in the one day: snow in Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania; a hot and humid day in Queensland; the coldest December day on record in Melbourne; a sunny, hot summer’s day in Perth; and a mild day with a maximum temperature of 17 degrees in Adelaide.

Australia’s climate is changing, and it will impact on each and every one of us. Dr Geoff Love, director of the Bureau of Meteorology, said recently:

I expect climate change to affect all Australians. It is the Bureau’s responsibility to provide decision makers and the general public with accurate observations and information about our changing climate.

Now our children and future generations are faced with the possibility that the Great Barrier Reef could be destroyed through warmer seas; the Kakadu wetlands could be flooded; the Snowy Mountains could have less snow—Australian icons and the backbone of much of our tourism industry and regional economies severely damaged.

The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, is due for release this year. Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report released a summary of their report a few weeks ago. According to that summary:

Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values ... The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land-use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture.

The summary says:

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level ...

Further:

At continental, regional, and ocean basin scales, numerous long-term changes in climate have been observed. These include changes in Arctic temperatures and ice, widespread changes in precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and aspects of extreme weather including droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves and the intensity of tropical cyclones.

The evidence is laid out before us. We need climate change policies that will be effective—that will give our children and grandchildren a future.

And the evidence before us too is that we will not get that from the Howard government—the government that last year rushed through legislation in the form of the Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1). It was another lost opportunity to improve on existing legislation, a lost opportunity to address the very real challenges of climate change we are facing in Australia. The government not only failed to take up the opportunity to improve existing legislation but, through the changes, effectively weakened existing legislation. It weakened the protection that the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 provided for Australia’s biodiversity and heritage.

What is the reality? Australia is facing a plant and animal extinction crisis. Twenty per cent of our species are threatened with extinction by the end of the 21st century. Australia now leads the world in mammalian extinctions. So we trail the world in setting the example on climate change and, to our shame, lead the world in mammalian extinction.

The Howard government cannot be trusted with the environment. It has wasted a decade denying the existence of climate change, and Australia is now facing the consequences of more than 10 years of denial and inaction. The government has failed to adequately address environmental challenges. It has failed to deliver on the environment, to the Australian people, to our children and to future generations. There is overwhelming evidence that warming temperatures and associated changes in rainfall and sea-level rise will have consequences both for the world’s environment and for the economy.

Today is World Water Day. Water and climate change are not separate issues; they are unavoidably linked. Future generations will, unfortunately, be the recipients of the severe consequences of climate change. It is our generation, here and now, that must address this issue. According to the CSIRO, by 2030 the water supply for Sydney and Melbourne will drop significantly because of reduced rainfall and higher evaporation from climate change, while their populations will increase by 30 per cent.

Addressing our water crisis requires taking action on climate change. Our environment cannot afford a future of inaction. We cannot afford a future with a government that has wasted more than a decade without addressing serious environmental issues. Only last month, during budget estimates, it was revealed that no analysis at all of the long-term consequences of climate change had been done under this government. This is despite the fact that the Stern report stated that climate change poses economic and social risks in our lifetime ‘on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression’. Yet the government has continued to ignore these immense economic risks to our prosperity and living standards. In fact, the Treasurer, Peter Costello, has not mentioned climate change once in 11 budget speeches.

It was also revealed during Senate estimates that greenhouse issues had not been factored into economic forecasting because their economic impact to date had not been sufficiently large. This is a reflection of a government that has had its head in the sand on climate change for 11 years. Now, in an election year, the government is desperately trying to play catch-up on climate change. We have seen 11 years of scepticism and inaction, while the damage continues. The government has refused to sign the Kyoto protocol and has locked Australia out of a global market valued last year at more than $28 billion.

Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are set to soar by 27 per cent by 2020. Scientists tell us we need to reduce them by 60 per cent by 2050. Only last week there was an announcement by 27 European Union leaders that they aimed to cut their greenhouse emissions by 20 per cent by 2020. These EU countries have goals to reduce greenhouse emissions by 20 per cent while, due to the current government’s inaction, Australia’s greenhouse emissions are set to increase by 27 per cent. What do we have in Australia? We have a Prime Minister who will not even set a date to start cutting further greenhouse pollution.

Today we have a situation where clean energy companies are leaving Australia and taking Australian jobs with them. Only last week, the Australian company Global Renewables announced a $5 billion deal with Britain’s Lancashire County Council and Blackpool Council. Global Renewable has had to go to Britain to realise its ambitions. Only four weeks ago, another Australian company, Pacific Hydro, announced its move to Brazil. According to its general manager, Rob Grant, the growth in Australian clean energy assets has been held back by Australia’s decision to not sign the Kyoto protocol. So the company is looking internationally for investment opportunities in countries that are enacting positive policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address global warming.

As Labor’s shadow minister for climate change, environment, heritage and the arts, Peter Garrett, stated this week:

We need climate change solutions that maintain existing jobs and create new jobs into the future.

Labor supports the coal industry and wants much more investment in clean coal technologies.

Because climate change is a global challenge it brings with it global opportunities and markets. Australia can’t afford to be locked out of this future.

What the Howard government truly lacks on the issue of the environment is good policy and good leadership. It is out of touch when it comes to protecting the planet for future generations.

Federal Labor, like many European nations, has a comprehensive plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change. Federal Labor understands that national leadership on climate change means new opportunities for the Australian economy. A federal Labor government will: immediately ratify the Kyoto protocol; cut greenhouse pollution by 60 per cent by 2050; set up a national emissions trading scheme; set up a $500 million clean coal fund to promote cleaner coal and protect jobs in this sector; and boost the mandatory renewable energy target to encourage, amongst other things, greater use of solar and wind power.

This week, federal Labor released a comprehensive discussion paper outlining its plan for the future of Australia’s coal industry. The paper, New directions for Australia’s coal industry: the national clean coal initiative, outlines Labor’s detailed plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions and create and secure jobs in the coal sector. Practical, immediate action and long-term vision on both water security and climate change—that is Labor’s agenda. Labor is committed to bold, clean energy reform.