Page 815 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 2 May 2007
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climate change—get together and make an emissions trading scheme a reality? It must be a real scheme, of course, one with real targets that get lower every year.
If they cannot do that, then what is the good of Labor governments? What do they really offer that is different from what the Liberal government is offering? It is not good enough to indulge in rhetoric and push responsibility onto the federal government. This issue is so serious that it demands action from every level of government. Labor governments cannot just say, “The federal government is not doing anything and we are too small, so we will not either.”
Ms Porter: Mr Deputy Speaker, the Chief Minister was going to speak but he is not here.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ms Porter, you can speak to the amendment or close the debate.
MS PORTER (Ginninderra) (11.43): The government will not agree to the amendment. The Prime Minister’s task force was announced on 10 December. I ask: why so late? The Prime Minister has said that we need to develop frameworks on an emissions trading scheme. Blind Freddy can see that it is too late. What about what exists already? What about the work that has been done already by the states and territories? That work began in August 2006. It has been done. We want the Prime Minister to join with us and not let the states and territories go it alone. We will go it alone, and we are quite happy to go it alone.
The Prime Minister also said that to commit this country to reducing greenhouse gases emissions by 30 per cent within 13 years must do economic damage to Australia. That response to the Stern report shows how much commitment Mr Howard has to reducing greenhouse gases in Australia. He boldly declares that a target that requires emissions schemes to work will do economic damage to Australia. In the short term this naive commitment flies in the face of other people’s experiences, and Dr Foskey has spoken about other experiences around the world. The United Kingdom economy and employment rate have both grown in spite of the specific reduction in targets that they have set and achieved.
Dr Foskey missed the point when she said she thought the states and territories were waiting around for the federal government to come to the party and that we think we are such a small place that it does not matter. The whole point of what I was trying to say before was that all of us, every one of us, do need to take responsibility. It is not the fact that we are a small territory that matters, but the fact that we have joined with the other states and territories and we are already doing the work.
We will be making further announcements, and I am sure the Chief Minister will talk about that later, but it is a fact that we have joined together with other states and territories. We are doing the work. We are reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. This amendment misses the point.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Minister for the Environment, Water and Climate Change, Minister for the Arts) (11.46): Ms Porter
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