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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Climate Change and Water (Senator Wong) to a question without notice asked by Senator Bob Brown today relating to emission trading targets.

I would like to take note of the answer Senator Wong did not give to the question I asked about the Poznan conference which she will be attending next week as Australian’s representative at this global conference on climate change. It was more than passing strange last week when the minister refused to answer my question. It was Tuesday, after I had asked the question three times of the minister as to when she would be announcing the Rudd government’s interim climate change targets, the targets for 2020 in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The minister refused to answer. Then on Friday, at the end of business—4.22 pm, when it was too late for most of the media outlets—out comes a press release from the minister’s office saying that she will announce the government’s targets the day after she gets home, on 15 December.

One can only read into Minister Wong’s actions that we are headed for a weak, Howard-like response from the Rudd government to the growing global contention about climate change. The embarrassment factor is such that the minister could not answer the question in the Senate last week. She does not want to tell the global community what Australia’s 2020 targets will be because the global acclaim that she and Prime Minister Rudd received for ratifying the Kyoto protocol in Bali would turn to global derision if, indeed, that target is going to be five, 10 or 15 per cent. The minister should have answered that question because she knows the answer.

My question this time was: is the government going to push for a global limit of pollution of the atmosphere at 350 parts per million carbon dioxide equivalent, which is considered safe—it is way above historic levels of pre-industrial human history; or 450 parts per million, which we are now rapidly approaching and which is considered dangerous by many scientists as it will heat the planet by more than two degrees and tip us into potentially catastrophic consequences; or 550 parts per million, which everybody and their dog recognises is going to lead to much higher levels and which Professor Ross Garnaut said would lead to the loss of the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu, Ningaloo and much of the productivity of the Murray-Darling Basin and which would also cause massive sea level rises. Senator Wong herself has said that, with the current predictions, such sea level rises will affect 700,000 households on the eastern seaboard of Australia.

It was with some of those households in mind that I accepted an invitation to go to Bermagui on Friday night, where there was a packed meeting of people concerned about logging on the doorsteps of the town. I asked Senator Wong today what the government’s proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from logging of forests and woodlands in Australia will be when she goes to Poznan, because that is specifically on the agenda, and she again ducked answering that question. At Bermagui there is a magnificent forest which should be an extension of this tourist town’s future economy, but its biggest trees—the biggest carbon resource in that forest—are being logged, some to go woodchips, some to veneer and some to sawlog. All of this is needless because we have 1½ million hectares of plantation in Australia which can meet all of our wood needs. This is irresponsible behaviour by the New South Wales and federal governments. This is knocking down the biggest carbon banks, the biggest hedge against climate change, that we have in this country. And of course there is broadscale and clear-fell logging in Tasmania and parts of East Gippsland. The government will to have to address this problem, because with logging and the destruction of our forests and woodlands comes 17 to 20 per cent of Australia’s emissions. That could be stopped overnight, but the minister responsible, Senator Wong, ducked that question. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.