Kay Patterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As it is commonly known—SPSLCMP, however it might be pronounced! It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s under the Labor government—you have to give credit—as an Australian government response to concerns raised by member countries in the South Pacific Forum over the potential impacts of human-induced global warming on climate and sea levels in the Pacific region. The primary goal of this project is to generate an accurate record of variance in long-term sea level for the South Pacific and to establish methods to make these data readily available and usable by Pacific island countries. The project is now in its fourth phase, which commenced in January 2006.

But let me go back over some of the earlier work, because I had a particular interest in this. It is amazing, in this job, how you scan across areas about which you knew nothing and have to learn a lot. When I was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, I went to a trade conference in Samoa. While I was there I launched the first of 12 continuous global positioning systems for the Pacific island countries as part of this $24 million program funded through AusAID. The CGPS is an early-warning system linked to a tide gauge to help Pacific island countries monitor and respond to any changes to sea level and climate as the result of global warming and greenhouse effects. This makes the Pacific region the first group in the world to measure changes in sea level with an absolute degree of accuracy.

So here we are, out there in front, assisting our Pacific island neighbours to monitor more accurately changes in sea levels. They needed much better data collection and analysis to assist them to develop policies and to properly plan for any problems associated with climate change and sea level rises. I was not aware until then that the challenge of measuring sea level changes is made difficult when factors like movements of the earth’s crust, earthquakes, tides and volcanic activities all have to be taken into account. The CGPS is linked to the tide gauges and will be used to determine the absolute sea level changes in individual Pacific island countries. In the past, water levels were measured to a level of precision plus or minus 10 millimetres using conventional tide gauges. This was suitable for monitoring changes to sea level due to storm surges, tsunamis and other natural hazards. But to look at the very small and gradual changes in water levels caused by global warming and greenhouse gases, conventional gauges were not sensitive enough. Using state-of-the-art technology, improved sensors, digital recording and additional meteorological inputs, ocean levels can now be monitored with an accuracy of better than plus or minus one millimetre. This is required, as the present estimate of global sea level rise is about 1.5 millimetres per year.

Other stations linked to the tide gauges will be installed in the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Cook Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and the Federated States of Micronesia—and I think there are, at this stage, still two of those to be installed. The data will be sent to AUSLIG in Canberra, where scientists will analyse the data and information. AUSLIG work closely with the National Tidal Facility Australia, NTFA, at Flinders University in Adelaide, who are responsible for the tide gauge stations measuring relative sea level changes and then calculating the absolute sea level trends in the region. The results are fed back to scientists and government planners in each Pacific island country and to regional organisations. These stations have a life of more than 20 years to support this work and the Pacific governments, ensuring a continuous flow of sea level and climate information to the governments and the international community over that period. That is a major and significant contribution that has been undertaken, originally by the Labor government and continued by the coalition. That is a practical and sensible way of going about assisting Pacific island nations.

One of the other things we have done is to launch the Australian Pacific Technical College, which the Prime Minister announced in October 2006. The Australian government will provide $149.5 million for the establishment and operation of the new Australian Pacific Technical College. The college aims to provide Australian standard training to Pacific island students from throughout the region and will be a significant resource for island countries. It is to be headquartered in Suva and will include training centres and country offices in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Vanuatu. An important element of this college will be to ensure access by students from all island countries, including the smaller island states. This will be assisted by a generous scholarship scheme worth $10 million in the first four years.

This college aims to offer appropriate courses for people if they continue to live in those island states or need to move because of changing sea levels. It will offer courses in hospitality, tourism, health and community services, automotive trade, manufacturing and construction, and electrical trades. The first intake of students was to take place in July this year, and it is anticipated that in the first four years 3,000 students will graduate from that college. The courses will be delivered by Australian registered training organisations, contracted to the Australian government’s overseas aid agency, AusAID. The college will have close links to industry to ensure the relevance of training to employment. The college will assist economic growth in Pacific island countries by addressing skills shortages and increasing workforce competitiveness. It will also assist in the mobility of skilled workers between the Pacific Islands and developed countries.

Here we have just two measures which are practical and sensible: measuring sea level changes more accurately than is being done anywhere else in the world and training 3,000 people, in the first four years, from a range of countries in the Pacific in courses which will have relevance for their own country and if they need to move.

When Mr Howard was at the Pacific forum last year, there was some debate about the issue of changing sea levels and the issue of what should be done for people living in the island states most likely to be affected. Mr Howard told reporters that there were two sides to the labour mobility issue: shifting people was one argument, but some of the Pacific leaders were concerned that their skills base would be weakened if they lost too many workers to New Zealand and Australia. When we think something is a good idea, we have to consider what the impact will be on the country. By training those people, giving them skills and preparing for the fact that there may be changes, not only will they be able to help their country if sea changes are not as drastic as some people claim but also they will be assisted to be more highly mobile if there are changes. They may not come to Australia and New Zealand; they may choose to go somewhere else for their qualifications.

If they do not have qualifications, they will have very little choice other than to accept the sorts of suggestions being put forward by the Greens. I do not think that is the best alternative. We are a party of choice. If we can educate these people and if sea level change is not so great, they will be much more useful in their home states. If it is the case that they need to move, they will have greater mobility and greater choice, and they will be useful to any receiving country. I do not know whether we could take them all. If they have had training at Australian technical level, that will be an advantage to any receiving country.

Do you know what? Sometimes I would love to be in a minority party, because I read the explanatory memorandum. What does it say? It says: ‘There may be some financial implications. But don’t worry about that.’ They will not explain. They will not even try and estimate the financial implications. I will tell you what the financial implications are. My information might be a bit out of date, but, when I was the parliamentary secretary for immigration, every thousand refugees cost us $25 million over the first five years, and then they start to make an economic contribution. I imagine that would be higher now. We have one of the best resettlement programs in the world. If the Greens had done a modicum of homework, they might have been able to put a guesstimate in there. But instead they have this little, fleeting sentence, ‘There will be financial implications.’ Are we going to reduce our humanitarian intake? Are we going to put more money into the budget? The Greens can be as flippant as they like, but in the end we have to balance the budget. And to have, in their explanatory memorandum, some offhand comment about the cost shows that this bill has not been thought through.