Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Abetz, the Minister representing the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources. I refer the minister to the government’s $23 million taxpayer funded climate change advertising campaign. I ask: can the minister indicate whether the advertisements will tell Australians that under the Howard government Australia is the second highest per capita greenhouse polluter in the world, our emissions are projected to grow by a further 27 per cent by 2020, and Australia is one of only two industrialised nations to have not ratified the Kyoto protocol? If the government’s climate change advertising campaign really was about providing information, wouldn’t it contain facts like these? Or is it instead just another propaganda campaign, more about cynical pre-election spin than providing factual information?

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What the Australian people want to learn through this information campaign has come through very loud and clear to us as a government, because we actually consult with people when we go to our community gatherings. When we talk with people, we get the understanding that all Australians are concerned about climate change and about the environment. What they want to know is not what all the Labor Party’s rhetoric might be, but how can they personally make a difference. That is why, for example, in the information that has gone out to households, we do not tell them that forestry, for example, is the only greenhouse positive sector of the economy. That is an important fact from my point of view, but the people of Australia want to know how they can best make a difference. That is what we are seeking to do in our interaction with the Australian people through this campaign. It is about giving Australians the information they have been seeking so that they can take action in their own homes.

Australian households are responsible for around 20 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, so action at this level, along with government and industry, can make a big impact. Of course what this builds on is the fact that Australia was the first government ever to establish a greenhouse office. It also develops our mandatory renewable energy targets, the phasing-out of inefficient light bulbs, our $200 million global initiatives on forests and climate, and the recent Sydney declaration, which achieved a genuine commitment from leaders within our region to move forward on climate change. We could have incorporated all of that information in the communications with our fellow Australians but they were not really interested in all of that. What they were interested in was how they could personally make a difference, and we have fulfilled that need by this particular communication.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. Hasn’t the government had 11½ years to respond to climate change? Why is it that after all of this time the best that the government can come up with is a $23 million pre-election propaganda campaign? Doesn’t this confirm, once and for all, that this is a government full of climate change sceptics, like the minister himself, who are not serious about tackling climate change and who are only interested in getting re-elected?

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If Senator Carr was not interested in getting elected he would not be making such deliberately misleading statements to the Australian public. What Senator Carr knows is that immediately upon coming into government a previous minister for the environment pursued the issue of whether or not Australia should have an Australian Greenhouse Office, and we established it in 1998—some nine years ago. And yet Senator Carr deliberately seeks to mislead the Australian people by asserting that we had not engaged on the issue of greenhouse gases and climate change until right now, before an election. Senator Carr had better explain to the Australian people why, if his assertion is true, we established the Australian Greenhouse Office nine years ago. The fact is, and I have pointed this out before, of all the questions on climate change, the coalition has asked the most questions since 1996 up until the last 12 months. (Time expired)