26-May-2005
Speeches, Emissions Trading Scheme
Question
Mr ROBB (2.43 p.m.)—My question is addressed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Would the minister inform the House how Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions compare internationally? Are there any alternative views?
Answer
Mr DOWNER—First, I thank the honourable member for Goldstein for his question—
Interjection
Mrs Irwin interjecting—
Continue
Mr DOWNER—The pronunciation is Goldstein, I think you will find. Perhaps we can have that debate instead of the MPI later!
The government is taking substantive action to address climate change. The latest figures show that our $1.8 billion national climate change strategy is working. The national greenhouse gas inventory released a couple of days ago showed that our greenhouse gas emissions for 2003 were only 1.1 per cent higher than in 1990. Compare this to, say, Canada’s 2002 emissions, which were 57 per cent higher than in 1990; Spain’s, which were 33 per cent higher; Ireland’s, which were 28 per cent higher; New Zealand’s, which were 27 per cent higher; and Japan’s, which were 21 per cent higher. I use those countries as examples because they have all signed up to the Kyoto protocol. While our emissions increased by only 1.1 per cent from 1990 to 2003, over the same period our real GDP as a country has increased by 51.9 per cent. It shows that we are doing a good job in this country by ensuring that we bring these emissions under control.
The honourable member asks whether there are any alternative views. The Labor Party, as an article of faith, says that we should sign up to Kyoto. This is the policy that even Mark Latham took to the last election, yet the member for Grayndler said yesterday that the 1.1 per cent increase in emissions confirms the Labor Party’s ‘worst fears’ that ‘greenhouse pollution continues to soar’. Let us try to understand what this means. It means that Labor does not believe just in Kyoto; Labor believes that we should do massively better and should have targets way below the targets that have been set for Kyoto. If that is Labor’s policy—since it believes that a 1.1 per cent increase is somehow contemptuous—and if the Labor Party’s policy is therefore more radical than Kyoto, it should tell the Australian public. Such a policy would devastate jobs in this country, it would devastate the Australian economy and we would be back to the sorts of economic conditions we had when the Labor Party was last in office, with 11 per cent unemployment and interest rates of up to 17 per cent for home owners.
The simple fact is that the Labor Party does not know what it is talking about on these issues. On the one hand, it says it believes in Kyoto; on the other hand, it argues that Kyoto is completely inadequate. That sort of incompetent incoherence from the Labor Party is what we are entirely used to.