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senate vote 2020-12-07#12
Edited by
mackay staff
on
2020-12-24 16:39:46
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Title
Matters of Urgency — Climate Change- Matters of Urgency - Climate Change - 2030 emissions reduction target
Description
<p class="speaker">Sue Lines</p><p>I inform the Senate that at 8.30 am today 23 proposals were received in accordance with standing order 75. The question of which proposal would be submitted to the Senate was determined by lot. As a result, I inform the Senate that the following letter has been received from Senator McKim:</p><p class="italic">Dear Mr President,</p>- The majority voted against a [motion](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/senate/?gid=2020-12-07.154.1) introduced by Queensland Senator [Larissa Waters](https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/senate/queensland/larissa_waters) (Greens), which means it failed.
- ### Motion text
- > *That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:*
- >
- > *The need for the Morrison Government to take to the upcoming global Climate Ambition Summit a pledge to increase its 2030 emissions reduction targets in line with the science, noting that the UK has announced a target of 68% emissions reduction by 2030.*
<p class="italic">Pursuant to standing order 75, I give notice today that I propose to move "That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:</p><p class="italic">The need for the Morrison Government to take to the upcoming global Climate Ambition Summit a pledge to increase its 2030 emissions reduction targets in line with the science, noting that the UK has announced a target of 68% emissions reduction by 2030."</p><p class="italic">Yours sincerely,</p><p class="italic">Senator McKim</p><p>Is the proposal supported?</p><p class="italic"> <i>More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—</i></p><p>I understand that informal arrangements have been made to allocate specific times to each of the speakers in today's debate. With the concurrence of the Senate, I shall ask the clerks to set the clock accordingly.</p> <p class="speaker">Larissa Waters</p><p>I move:</p><p class="italic">That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:</p><p class="italic">The need for the Morrison Government to take to the upcoming global Climate Ambition Summit a pledge to increase its 2030 emissions reduction targets in line with the science, noting that the UK has announced a target of 68% emissions reduction by 2030.</p><p>Folk might not recall how pathetically weak Australia's targets are, if you can even call them targets—a 26 to 28 per cent reduction on 2005 levels by 2030. In less 'jargonistic' terms, Australia is currently the highest per capita polluter on the planet. If, by some miracle or by the dodgy accounting tricks that I'll talk about in a minute, we meet those targets Australia will still be the highest per capita emitter on the planet. These targets are pathetic. They are not strong enough. They are not based on science. They are written by the fossil fuel industry that donates to this government and to the opposition. They are writing the death warrant for the Great Barrier Reef, for our agriculture sector and for so many lives and for so much human misery as natural disasters just increase.</p><p>The United Kingdom recently recommended that their targets be increased by 68 per cent. Their government actually listened to their scientific advisers and increased its 2030 target by that amount. When Prime Minister Boris Johnson is making more sense than your own Prime Minister, you know you're in trouble; it's the one thing on which we'd like Prime Minister Scott Morrison to listen to Prime Minister Boris Johnson. But, as I mentioned, our two big political parties are completely in the pockets of the oil, coal and gas political donors, who also offer them very well-paid lobbyist jobs once they leave parliament. And I think all of Australia knows that.</p><p>The Bureau of Meteorology has some very sobering news. It says Australia is not on track to keep global warming to the two degrees that we signed up to as a citizen of this world; in fact, we're on track for 4.4 degrees of warming over our landmass. That's goodbye to the reef, that's goodbye to most of our productive agriculture and that's hello to an awful lot of devastation that is an entirely unnecessary, because we have the skills, the nous and the resources to transition to 100 per cent clean energy as soon as possible. But we're not seeing any of that from this government. On the reef, we just had the final warning bell sounded by the IUCN, with their three yearly World Heritage Outlook, which was released last week, now saying that the Great Barrier Reef is 'critical'. It is the strongest listing that can be given to a World Heritage site, but it's not surprising because we've lost 50 per cent of the coral cover of the Great Barrier Reef in five years with three severe bleaching episodes. We're meant to be heading into a La Nina, but there's concern that there will be yet another bleaching. This is the last warning that this government is going to get before UNESCO decides whether or not to list the reef as World Heritage in Danger. That would be factually accurate, but it would decimate the tourism industry.</p><p>What we need the government to do is to adopt strong 2030 emissions reductions targets. This is the critical decade, but today they want a pat on the back because they've said they're not going to cheat on their homework. They've said they're not going to use the Kyoto carryover credits and they expect some kind of praise, when it was five years ago that most other nations voluntarily said they wouldn't use their carryover credits and when Australia was in fact the only nation that in that initial climate agreement in Kyoto was allowed to increase its pollution. The only reason we have carryover credits is that we were allowed to pollute even more, when all of the rest of the world decided to tighten their belt. So I'm sorry but we're not going to praise the Prime Minister for saying that he won't use dodgy accounting to somehow meet our targets.</p><p>The other dodgy accounting point is that they're now trying to claim that they're on track to meet our targets, because again we're relying on a provision about land use that no other country is relying on. If you take out that dodgy accounting, Australia is in fact polluting more than we were in 2005, which is meant to be the baseline year that we're meant to be 26 to 28 per cent better than by the end of this decade. We are not on a good trajectory. This is a critical decade, and we need the government and the opposition to stop taking the dirty money from coal, oil and gas and start listening to the science bodies. Stop defunding the science bodies and actually adopt some climate targets that we can amply meet, that will generate more jobs, that will protect our reef and our way of life and that will set us up for future economic prosperity. Stop putting your own personal interests ahead of the nation's.</p> <p class="speaker">Matthew Canavan</p><p>In Senator Waters's contribution we really only heard Australia being compared to one country, the United Kingdom, and I'll come to that country in a second. But there was no comparison with any other country, so I for one at first thought maybe we'd gone back into some twilight zone where we were once again a colony of the United Kingdom and we were being told what to do by, according to Senator Waters, our colonial masters in London. Yes, our colonial masters in London would love us to cripple our own industry so they can continue to compete with us. They'd love us to impose huge costs on our own country in a way that many other nations are not doing. But I for one am proud of and cherish the independence that this nation has achieved since we threw off the colonial chains and became an independent country. So, no, I don't think we should slavishly follow what Mr Johnson in London wants us to do. Good luck to him. He's the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and he can decide what the policies are for the United Kingdom.</p><p class="italic">Senator Watt interjecting—</p><p>Here in Australia we should decide what we want to do. Australian elected officials, including the Australian Prime Minister, should decide. Senator Watt was asking if I was a republican. I'm not a republican; I'm a constitutional monarchist, and that does give us independence here in this parliament. I was surprised to hear Senator Waters be not just a monarchist but an absolute monarchist. I think Prince Charles and Prince Harry want us to do these things as well.</p> <p class="speaker">Larissa Waters</p><p>Mr Acting Deputy President, I have a point of order. I am a dedicated republican, so perhaps Senator Canavan can withdraw his outrageous slur on my character.</p> <p class="speaker">David Fawcett</p><p>That is not a point of order. Resume your seat.</p> <p class="speaker">Matthew Canavan</p><p>Well, Senator Waters, start acting like one. Don't just adopt the policies of another country. A proud republican would actually want to cherish our independence and chart our course through the world.</p><p>I want to come to the other countries as well. Senator Waters only mentioned the United Kingdom, but when you look around the world you see that New Zealand, our cousins and good friends, are not meeting their Kyoto targets. The Kyoto targets come due this year, 2020, so New Zealand has about three weeks to meet its Kyoto targets that it is failing to meet right now. It has only reduced emissions by just under three per cent when it promised to reduce them by five per cent. As much as Jacinda Ardern wants to go around the world spruiking that she is committed to net zero emissions by 2050, the fact remains that her country has not met the commitments it made just 10 or 15 years ago, so how can it be trusted to do something in 30 years time?</p><p>Likewise, Canada has barely changed its emissions. It is not meeting its Kyoto targets. Japan is not meeting its Kyoto targets. Almost every other country in the world is not meeting its targets. Then of course countries like China and India don't even have any real targets to meet under Kyoto, or Paris for that matter. But we are. Senator Waters thinks it's through dodgy accounting, which I'll come to. We are one of the few countries that are actually meeting their targets.</p><p>The other main problem I have with the implication in this motion that we should follow the United Kingdom and reduce our emissions in the order of 68 per cent by 2030 is that that will actually do nothing for the environment unless we consume less stuff. I didn't hear from the Greens—and we never hear this from the Greens—that we should not buy as many solar panels, wind turbines and electric cars from overseas. All of these things are made using coal and often in countries with much worse environmental records than we have.</p><p>Every time we put up a wind turbine it takes about 900 tonnes of steel. It takes around 800 tonnes of coking coal to make one tonne of steel. If you times 800 by 900, you see that there is a lot of coking coal embodied in those turbines. Every time you build a wind turbine there are 2,500 tonnes of concrete. Making concrete typically uses a lot of coal too in heating the lime in the kilns. That also has a huge carbon emissions impact. Again, we don't hear from the Greens in this chamber about the need for fewer wind turbines. Of course Bob Brown and Christine Milne are doing great work opposing wind turbines in Tasmania, and all power to them. This mob in here are cheering on the extra carbon emissions we would get from wind turbines.</p><p>Almost all of our solar panels are imported from China. Where does China get the energy to power its factories to produce these cheap solar panels? Coal—and a lot of it used to be our coal. They use coal to produce cheap solar panels that we then happily import. I say to the renewable energy industry, 'If we really want to save the planet, let's make the solar panels here.' I'd support that. I'm not against solar panels and renewable energy, but let's make them here rather than make them in dirty factories in China. Why don't we make the solar panels here? Why do we allow these companies to take government subsidies all the time and then import solar panels from other countries where the jobs are created? Let's make them here in this country in at least a cleaner fashion.</p><p>Of course, if we were to reduce our emissions by 60 or 70 per cent, even if we were to reduce them by 100 per cent—if we were to get rid of our carbon emissions tomorrow—in the words of Dr Alan Finkel, that would do 'virtually nothing' for the environment, because Australia only accounts for roughly 1.3 per cent of the world's emissions. So, even if Australia were to get rid of all of its carbon emissions tomorrow, it would not make a single difference to the world; it would not change the temperature. That was confirmed by our Chief Scientist, Dr Alan Finkel, when a good mate of mine, former Senator Ian Macdonald, asked Dr Alan Finkel at Senate estimates what the impact would be of reducing the world's emissions by 1.3 per cent. Dr Alan Finkel replied, 'Virtually nothing.' And he's absolutely right; it would do virtually nothing for the planet. But apparently we want to push on and continue down this path where we self-flagellate for no actual environmental outcome; we cost jobs in this country but don't help the environment at all. The latest absurdity here is this push to give up our Kyoto credits and give up the fact that we've overachieved on carbon emissions. We have to do that, yet there is never a call from the Greens to penalise those countries who have underachieved. Why is all the criticism of our country? Why isn't there any criticism of other countries? It's because the Greens don't really like Australia. They don't like our country; they don't stand up for it, and they certainly don't want to put Australia first. There's never any criticism of other countries for not meeting their Kyoto commitments.</p> <p class="speaker">David Fawcett</p><p>Order! Senator Waters, on a point of order?</p> <p class="speaker">Larissa Waters</p><p>Yes, a point of order on reflecting on a member of this chamber, and wrongly I might add. I ask Senator Canavan to withdraw.</p> <p class="speaker">David Fawcett</p><p>He referred to the Greens as a party, which is no different to you referring to the Labor and Liberal parties and making inferences about their motivations. Under the standing orders and conventions, referring to a party as a whole does not infringe the standing orders. There is no point of order. Senator Canavan.</p> <p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>
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