Page 3405 - Week 11 - Thursday, 11 November 2021
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We just need leadership at the national level that parallels that. Minister Rattenbury has explained some of the national problems we are dealing with. We cannot deal with decarbonising the entire economy on our own. We cannot remove the levies that are imposed on electric vehicles that come into our country. We cannot make decisions about fossil fuel exploration and extraction and export interstate. It is beyond our borders. We need our national leaders to do that. That is why we are calling for tripartisan support from those national leaders. We are asking them to come together and deal with climate change together.
I am a big believer that past behaviour is the best guide to future conduct. I am pleased to see a lot of the past behaviour that we have had for the last 10 years on climate change. Just today we have seen three brand new climate announcements that I have never heard of, at least one of which, and possibly more, is Australia-leading. I am pleased to see that we have so many detailed strategies that have so many detailed actions in them. I would encourage anybody who has not had a look at those to have a close look and maybe get their head around them.
I have been following our divestment really closely. We keep asking questions about our divestment from fossil fuel. Every time I ask a question, we have got less in there. We are down to less than one per cent and we are on track to have none soon. Change is happening very quickly. Of course, it does not happen overnight. It does not happen the first day that you ask, but the change is happening very fast. It is important to keep an eye on what is happening, to keep asking the right questions, to keep getting the right details and to monitor what is having an effect.
A number of us went to a very sobering climate presentation yesterday, where Professor Mark Howden was telling us about our national emissions. It is not great news. It is also not great news on global emissions. A very interesting thing is happening with a lot of the climate change scientists and academics at the moment. They are all absolutely apolitical and they stay so far out of the political sphere—and I think they are right to do it—but they are starting to come together and identify those areas of government and politics where they think real climate action is working, because they know they cannot stay quiet anymore.
Mark Howden told us that the ACT government’s trajectory, our climate actions, our past behaviour, the detailed actions that we have set out and the targets that we have committed to, which we are achieving, are on track with the Paris agreement. They are on track to keep our climate safe and stable. If everyone in the world was taking action the way we are taking action, we would have less than 1½ degrees warming. That is obviously not happening right now in this country and it is not happening right now everywhere in the world, but I was really happy to hear it. It is a climate strategy that has been put together with a lot of care, evidence and commitment, and it is a climate strategy that is working.
I am pleased that we have had this opportunity to take all of these firm actions and all of these practical environmental steps up to the next level, to our national leaders, and to perhaps show them that it is not that difficult but it is that important. We need tripartisan agreement at that level from every single party and every single
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