Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Waters for her question and, indeed, for the opportunity to talk about Australia's targets, our commitment as a country to meeting our targets, our delivery as a country in exceeding our targets and our determination to maintain that sort of track record in relation to Australia's emissions reductions targets. As a country we can and should—contrary to what comes from those in that corner or indeed the misinformation from those opposite—hold our head high about the fact that, as a nation, when we've made commitments to the world about our emissions reduction targets, we've delivered on those commitments and we've exceeded those commitments. That's been a constant pattern for Australia. In terms of our Paris targets, our commitment is also to be able to meet and to exceed those targets.

That's our determination in relation to what we're doing, building off the fact that, since 2005, Australia's seen a 20 per cent reduction in our emissions. That's been faster than Canada, at one per cent; Japan at 10 per cent; New Zealand at four per cent; and the US at 13 per cent. As I've said before in this chamber, I don't mention that as a criticism of those places but simply to put into perspective what Australia has been able to achieve. It's been done with transformation across Australia in terms of Australian industry transforming, the energy generation mix transforming and, of course, Australian households transforming their behaviour as well. That has seen, for example, in 2020 some seven gigawatts of renewable energy generation capacity installed in Australia in 2020 alone. That is at a rate around eight times faster than New Zealand, Japan or Italy and around three times faster than in Germany, the US, China or the EU. Indeed, one in four Australian households now have rooftop solar, showing that rate of transmission that Australians are helping to make.