Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Tony Abbott. Thank you for reminding me of that, Madam Acting Deputy President. Mr Abbott’s scare campaign rolled into the Illawarra last Thursday. The Leader of the Opposition managed to make three significant mistakes in a matter of minutes. This is how averse this Leader of the Opposition is when it comes to climate change. First, Mr Abbott still thinks his direct action fraud would be a cheaper and more efficient way than a carbon price in tackling climate change. He said:

I think it’s reasonable to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and you can do it much more cheaply and with much less economic damage by going to the market and directly purchasing emissions, rather than whacking a great big new tax on our cost of living and on jobs.

The fact is that Mr Abbott’s direct action policy will actually cost this country $30 billion. Taxpayers rather than polluters will pay to cut pollution. Under our scheme we want the polluters to pay, not the taxpayers. And there will be no investment certainty provided to industry under the direct action plan. Under Mr Abbott’s plan, households will not receive any assistance to cope with rises in the cost of living, instead they will be slugged an extra $720 at tax time.

Second, Mr Abbott does not understand former Prime Minister John Howard’s emissions trading policy. On ABC Illawarra last Thursday, Mr Abbott said.

You know, the big thing about John Howard’s ETS was that it wasn’t going to happen unless the rest of the world did the same thing.

The Howard government did intend to produce an emissions trading system in 2012. That was the former Prime Minister’s position. At the time, Mr Howard wrote that his policy ‘will ensure Australia leads the world in our domestic approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions’. Where does that quote come from? It comes from the foreword of the Liberal Party’s Australia’s Climate Change Policy, July 2007.

Third, Mr Abbott changed his position on climate change science in just three sentences. The host of the ABC Illawarra said:

So, where is your own mind as far as the climate change science is concerned and what we need to do about it?

Mr Abbott turned around and said:

Well, what I said about 18 months or so back was that the so-called settled science of climate change isn’t always quite what it’s claimed to be.

Nevertheless, as I’ve said repeatedly, it’s important to take prudent precautions against credible threats. Climate change is real. Mankind does make a contribution.

While Mr Abbott calls himself a weathervane when it comes to climate change, this must be some sort of record: two positions on climate change in three sentences. What have we got here? What is this debate really about? This debate is not a debate about whether or not climate change that we are tackling is going to benefit this country and benefit the outcomes of what we are seeing around the world. It is not a debate about how quick, how soon or how efficient we can do it. This is about masking what is really going on in the opposition. It is about seven positions on climate change in two years. It is about a divided party that cannot agree on whether or not climate change exists, whether climate change is real, whether it is man made or not man made and how we are going to deal with it. So let us have a debate about all of that.

Climate change is real, and climate change is happening. The Labor Party accepts that. We know that. We are acting on that. Scientists have shown that in the past 50 years there have been fewer cold nights and days and more hot days and nights worldwide, and that is no more obvious than here in this country. CSIRO states on their website:

Since 1900, precipitation has increased significantly over eastern parts of the Americas, northern Europe, parts of Asia and north-west Australia.

The Bureau of Meteorology in their annual Australian climate statement for 2010 stated:

Australian mean rainfall total for 2010 was ... well above the long-term average ... As a result, 2010 was Australia’s wettest year since 2000 and the third-wettest year on record (records commence in 1900).

For 11 months in 2010, Australia experienced above average rainfall—an occurrence that has only happened once before in 1973.

I will take a minute to talk about the impact of this in the Northern Territory. The CSIRO has produced an excellent report that details climate change impacts on the Northern Territory. It makes for some pretty horrifying reading, I have to say. Temperature increases will increase the risk of heat related death, particularly among the elderly. Climate change in the tropics makes diseases such as Ross River fever more prevalent. The most vulnerable in our society, children and the elderly, will particularly suffer as a result of these diseases becoming more prolific. There is a risk of salt water intrusion into Kakadu National Park as well as other freshwater wetlands, with projections of up to 80 per cent of the fresh water being lost and the ecosystems that rely on it disappearing as well.

The number of cyclones affecting the top end is not expected to increase. But more of the cyclones are expected to be of greater intensity, with them reaching category 4 or 5. The coastal waters of the Territory are relatively shallow and, as such, are vulnerable to an increase in sea level and storm surges. Climate change will have an impact, as we know, on agriculture, livestock and fisheries, with heat stress and cattle ticks affecting Territory beef cattle. Commercial and recreational fishing will also be affected by changes in the sea temperatures, and important ecosystems, like coral reefs, mangroves and freshwater wetlands will also be severely impacted. The Northern Territory had its wettest dry season on record, with September experiencing nearly double its average rainfall. Global ocean levels rose by approximately 17 centimetres during the last century and by approximately 10 centimetres from 1920 to 2000 at Australian coastal sites.

Across Northern Australia—the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Cape York Peninsula and the Top End of the Northern Territory—we had the warmest July to October period on record for mean temperatures for a very long time. Our climate is consistently breaking weather records, not only in the Top End and not only in this country but all over the world. In our annual climate reports, there is higher rainfall and higher surface and ocean temperatures each year. The impacts are devastating, and we are seeing that day after day.

What is the end result? The end result is that it is time to tackle climate change. It is time to take action. It is time to make a decision to do something about what is happening. It is time to decide on a program of massive reform in order to tackle this. We need to get this on the agenda. We need to cut pollution, tackle climate change and build a clean energy economy. You cannot do that if you are squabbling among yourselves, if you have had seven positions in three years, if you have made three different statements in three minutes on the one ABC radio station and if you have leaders ousted because they believe in climate change and replaced with a leader who believes climate change is absolute crap. You are squabbling among yourselves, replacing leader after leader and trying to grasp some sense of reality and some sense of whether you are relevant in this debate. Get on and accept the science. Accept that climate change is happening. Accept that this country needs to do something about it.

In the Labor Party, we have now begun to tackle climate change. We do not have to lead the world. But we do not have to wait and sit back and let everyone else do it and then do it—that is the position of the Liberal Party. They want to wait for the whole world to start to do something about it and then have a bit of a look-see and a bit of a window shop. If they like what everyone else is doing internationally, they might decide to step inside and buy. Australia has never done that. Australia should not do that. And under this Labor Party government we are not going to do that. We are going to start to tackle climate change now. We do not have to lead the world and we do not have to wait for the rest of the world. We have to be assured that it is the best thing at this point in time for this country, and that is what we believe. It is the right thing to do for Australia right now. It is right for the economy and for Australian jobs.

How are we going to do it? We are going to make industry pay when they pollute. We are going to put a price on carbon. We set up the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee. We are taking advice from experts. We are taking advice from politicians in this place who will take part in pushing this legislation through. We are going to put a price on carbon. We are going to ensure that industry pays when it pollutes; that industry starts to get charged for the carbon dioxide that they are pumping into the atmosphere. This will create a clean energy nation.

To help families with the cost of living, we will put a carbon price on pollution. The best way to stop industries polluting and to get them to invest in clean energy is to charge them when they pollute. I do not think that this country got a better explanation of what we are doing as a government—step by step, month by month, each page of the way—(Time expired)