Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

They came to that conference, where a range of people were talking about what was occurring in their world—I was not at the conference and I know Senator McGauran did not attend—and they begged all of us to take notice of their concerns. I do not think we have the right to move away from that. There are people in this chamber who do not accept that and that will be their position—and no amount of science, no amount of email attachments and no amount of personal evidence will change their minds.

In terms of Senator Milne’s motion and what we move forward to at Cancun, we as a nation need to be informed by the science—and our government is attempting to do that by getting more information through the process led by Professor Garnaut and encouraging each of us to follow up these issues for ourselves. It is not good enough to just sit back and let other people do it. I think there is a tendency to do that in some cases, because it is not easy, it is complex. But when we have the information provided by Professor Garnaut and the Australian Chief Scientist and a range of international bodies coming forward to talk about what is happening in our globe, that is a pretty firm base on which to look at the future and see what our own responsibilities are.

So many people who visit my office can point to what they are doing personally. That is an incredibly powerful message. There are people in our community who are already making personal efforts to change their own lives and look at how they can contribute to ensuring that Australia has a lower carbon future—and, if Australia has a lower carbon future, the world will have a lower carbon future. It is too easy to argue—and we heard it here for weeks—that we should not act before everybody else does because somehow all the citizens of Australia would have to take the pain. I do not accept that. As Senator Milne’s motion says, Australia needs to make an equitable contribution to the global challenge of decarbonisation—and that certainly means we should be aware and informed.

It is inspiring to see what some of our citizens are already doing, in small groups and communities, to change the way they live, travel and communicate. They have put a challenge to us as their government: if they are prepared to do that, why don’t we as a government understand the need and take stronger action together to work forward? We failed that challenge several months ago in this place, and that is sad, but we cannot dwell on that. We have to look at the fact that we have an issue that is impacting on us. We have science that proves that.

No science is perfect. There have been some jokes about getting parliamentarians into one room—if you get a whole bunch of scientists in the one room, you also get conflicting views. But, when you look at the views on balance, you understand the need for action, and that is what the government is taking by setting up the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee—and we hope it will continue to be multi-party. We are trying to share knowledge, to listen to the science and to listen to the community, and we are planning our policies and action on that.

Cancun gives us the opportunity to take our knowledge to a group of people who share a common commitment to the world. There will be challenges. Even since Copenhagen, numerous countries have introduced their own ways of reducing carbon in their economies and societies, and more are signing up to the need. India and China, which we talked about in this place several months ago, have made international public statements acknowledging that they have work to do and will do it. That is a major step forward. Leading into Copenhagen, there was no such statement.

As a result of what occurred at Copenhagen, I would not think the same hope is there leading into Cancun. But it an opportunity for the nations who choose to be there—again, it is really important that nations that turn up to Cancun have made the choice to be there and be part of the discussion. That is step 1. We can share the knowledge and share the science, because that is how we grow, that is how we can move forward. As Senator Cameron said earlier in this discussion, we cannot turn our backs because we failed before. That is something that we will all live with, but we now have the opportunity to develop effective policy and to take our role seriously in the international struggle with the issue of climate change.