Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on a matter of public importance, the weak and dangerous climate targets we saw yesterday from this weak and dangerous Prime Minister.

First of all, science has been completely absent in the calculation of this target—if you can even call it a target. The Prime Minister has taken the very sneaky approach of changing the base line here on which to calculate the target. It is like standing on a box so you can claim you are taller. Well, you are not any taller and you have not fooled anyone.

When you convert the so-called target back to the proper base line that most of the rest of the world uses—the one that Australia was using until yesterday—it is actually only a 19 per cent reduction on 2000 levels by 2030. That is less than half of the bare minimum that the actual independent science body says Australia needs in order to play its part in trying to constrain global warming to two degrees. They actually say that it should be a 40 to 60 per cent reduction, so in fact it is less than a third of their positive-high ambition range.

So the science has been absolutely absent in the calculation of these targets, which is fitting given that this government wants to abolish that very body, the Climate Change Authority—the independent science advisers that are meant to say, 'Here is how you avoid dangerous global warming to safeguard our way of life, to protect our economy and to protect our very planet.' No—the Abbott government wants to abolish them. They do not like science and they sure as hell are not going to start listening now—more's the pity.

These targets are a recipe for dangerous global warming. They put us on track to not keep global warming to two degrees, which the world has agreed desperately to try to do because beyond that you reach ecological tipping points from which there is no coming back. Instead, this government's targets set us on a track for three to four degrees of global warming. If there is time later I will go through precisely what that will mean for Australia, and it is incredibly sobering reading.

They have shifted the goalposts to try to make their pathetic target look slightly less pathetic and then they have claimed that Australia is in the middle of the pack internationally. Again, that is absolute fabrication. When you actually compare the targets of other developed nations and comparable economies, we are at the back of the pack. You have heard it said, and that is because it is true. We are below the US, we are even below Canada and we are below the EU. The only nation which is anywhere near close to us is Japan. So we are not in the middle of the pack; we are in fact at the back of the pack. And this is from a nation that has some of the best renewable energy resources in the world. We have some of the best sunshine, some fantastic wave and tidal potential, some pretty good wind deposits and some solid geothermal deposits, and still the Prime Minister is happy for us to be at the back of the pack internationally rather than leading and creating prosperity and the jobs of the future, which is what I thought a Prime Minister's job was.

The tragic thing is that, at the minute, Australia is the world's worst polluter per person. The even more tragic thing is that, if these targets are adopted, we will still be the world's worst polluter per capita. Do the figures. For all of the bluster from the Prime Minister, nobody believes you, Prime Minister, because science has not come into your equation. Instead, 'coal is good for humanity', 'wind farms are ugly' and you want to abolish the independent science advisory bodies.

We have heard that coal is good for humanity from the Prime Minister. We have heard that wind turbines are ugly and in fact we heard at the Prime Minister's press conference yesterday, 'The only way to protect the coal industry is to go with the kind of policies that we have.' That is on announcing his carbon pollution reduction targets. He is actually talking about protecting the coal industry. Please, will somebody get this man a briefing from some scientists? I met today with some of the authors of the IPCC fifth assessment report—some of the leading global climate scientists—