Jeannie Ferris (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell. Will the minister update the Senate on how the government is dealing with the threat of climate change? Is the minister aware of any alternative policies?

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I have said to the Senate and to the Australian people on many occasions, climate change is a very serious challenge for Australia and a very serious challenge for the world. I think it is very appropriate that Senator Ferris should ask this question, and I thank her for doing so. Overnight and on the weekend, Tim Costello and a number of Australian non-government organisations and aid organisations released a report that analyses some of the potential impacts in our region. I have no quibble with the view put forward by Tim Costello and others that there is no doubt that, with warming of the oceans and warming of the atmosphere, we are likely to see changes to weather patterns and to sea levels and that they will have adverse consequences not just for Australia but also for our region. Of course, countries in the Pacific region are very vulnerable. The countries that are in fact coral atolls—very low-lying places like Tuvalu and Kiribati—will be very vulnerable.

That is why the government are working not only internationally with our friends, like Germany, in trying to ensure that, through the United Nations framework convention, we find a post-Kyoto regime that is effective at lowering greenhouse gases across the whole of the globe but also within Australia on domestic policies, putting in place transformational programs. For example, we have seen the Solar Cities announcement in Adelaide recently, which will transform entire suburbs across to solar power; the recent announcement of the solar city in Townsville; and the photovoltaic rebate scheme, which is on track to roll out 12,000 solar homes and solar schools across Australia—a whole gamut of domestic policies.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What about coal?

Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Another example—and I pick up Senator Brown’s interjection—is ensuring that, when we burn fossil fuels, we no longer allow carbon from the burning of fossil fuels to go into the atmosphere. So we are working, as I know our friends in Germany are, on trying to capture the carbon at the smokestack and bury it under the ground or under the sea—to stop the carbon going up there in the first place. Of course, we need to work on efficient vehicles and alternative fuels. The government is pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into doing that and transforming how we stop deforestation in Australia and planting new plantations—a whole multibillion-dollar action plan to transform the way we generate energy.

In the Pacific, we are funding a $24.6 million sea level and climate monitoring project, a $4 million project for vulnerability and adaptation, giving $2.3 million for the climate prediction project and $2 million to reduce vulnerability in Kiribati, which I mentioned earlier. We have doubled Australia’s aid budget from 2004 to 2010 to $4 billion annually, and climate change and adaptation is one of the three priority themes under that aid package.

Senator Ferris asked about alternative policies. Labor do not have policies on this; they have slogans. They are saying, ‘Let’s sign Kyoto,’ It is a two-word document—a slogan, not a policy. While the rest of the world is negotiating a new post-Kyoto agreement, they are saying: sign up to something that is 10 years old and that has not worked. Under Kyoto, greenhouse gas emissions have gone up by 40 per cent. We need to find something more effective. Labor are stuck in a time warp on this. They should focus on some serious policies that have some real benefit for the global climate.