Page 813 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 2 May 2007
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It must be embarrassing to be a member of this government and having to talk about the issue of climate change in the absence of a strategy. Even so, it is good to hear Ms Porter, who has apparently just caught up with the literature on climate change, giving us that familiar litany of impacts that the Greens have been talking about and trying to avoid throughout the 1990s. This Assembly thought the matter serious enough in 1996 to set in place a greenhouse strategy with targets—admittedly, they are looking rather low now, but there were targets—to try to avert the impact of greenhouse gases.
I think it is very sad that Ms Porter had to go as far as the United Kingdom to find a leader to quote on this topic. The sad fact is that at the moment there is a lot of rhetoric about climate change in political circles. We are hearing a lot of talk but we are not seeing a lot of action.
It is well known that the Greens support any moves to address climate change and to establish the necessary systems to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This motion is a no-brainer and we will support it. I am less certain about Mr Mulcahy’s amendment, which I have just received. It would be good if these things could be circulated beforehand.
Again, the debate on the climate crisis has descended into the usual ACT Labor government versus federal coalition government debate. This is the way we are playing out the climate crisis in the ACT, and it is just not good enough. We are letting down the people of the ACT. We need to start talking about this in a real way, not asking when so-and-so is going to report or when the states are finally going to get their emissions trading scheme happening.
On the positive side, the Greens have always supported the ACT’s own greenhouse gas abatement scheme, and we applaud moves by states like New South Wales and South Australia to introduce significant renewable energy and greenhouse gas abatement targets. We, too, would like to see the commonwealth government work with the states and territories to establish a national emissions trading scheme. I really hope that that is what comes out of this report on 31 May. If it does, we will support it.
But there is a related issue here that deserves addressing, and that is that the Stanhope government seems to believe that it can simply coast along, riding on the back of other people’s ideas and initiatives, and still have us believe that it really cares about the environment. A really good example of this occurred a couple of weeks ago. Mr Stanhope, who is now the minister for climate change—joining his sexy colleagues Malcolm Turnbull and Peter Garrett, who also have responsibility for climate change, and who would not want to join them!—said that he saw the responsibility for acting on climate change as belonging to individual people. How disappointing.
We heard from Ms Porter that the ACT produces only one per cent of greenhouse gases. Mr Stanhope is turning us into free riders. He says, “Let the other people make the changes. Even though we are the highest consumers of energy in Australia, and therefore amongst the highest consumers in the world, we do not have to do anything because we produce only one per cent of greenhouse gases in Australia.” I thought we
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