Page 5058 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 26 October 2010
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In my speech in the in-principle debate on this, I quoted Dr Hansen, who, as we all know, is a climate expert from NASA. I would like to quote a bit more from him. This is paraphrasing. He said that, while you cannot say for any individual extreme weather event, “This happened because of climate change,” what you definitively can say is that, if the CO2 parts per million levels were less than 280, as they used to be, the series of extreme weather events which we have been having over the past few years would not have happened. I ask the Liberal Party—I guess all of us, but the Liberal Party in particular—to reflect upon the costs of the extreme weather events that have been happening in the world, such as the extra cyclones and the floods in Pakistan, which are absolutely devastating.
I would also like to point to something which I read in the Sydney Morning Herald at the weekend. Professor Garnaut is going to be briefing the new climate change committee, and he was asked what advice he is going to give. One of the things that he said he was going to tell them was that Australia is in absolutely no danger of being ahead of the world in terms of climate action. In fact, we are lagging behind. We are lagging behind China; we are lagging behind the United States.
What the ACT needs to do is act for the future—look at our priorities for the future. If we design all our long-lived infrastructure in light of the prospect—not the prospect; at this stage, the actuality—of climate change, and we design it all for a 40 per cent reduction, then, when the time comes when we are forced to do it, we will be ahead of the game. It is going to save the ACT money over the long run if we act sooner rather than later. And it is going to have really wonderful consequences for us—for human beings and all other species.
I would also like to point out that a lot of climate change policies do not have costs; they have benefits. I know that I have harped a lot about solar hot water, but that is something which is a positive economic benefit. One of the examples that Mr Seselja had was that the government should do a costing impact of any increase in car parking prices. If the government does do such an analysis, it will be also very important that it look at the benefit.
I have done a bit of work on active transport, particularly with the Heart Foundation. One of the biggest problems for Australia in terms of public health is lack of physical activity and obesity. Australia has the dubious honour of being the fattest nation in the world. If we change our car park pricing, as Mr Seselja mentioned, so that we have more people walking and catching buses, more people cycling and fewer people driving their cars, then, when we start looking at the benefits to us in terms of human health and reduced hospital costs and medical costs, this will probably turn out to be a benefit.
I would very much like to see any discussion of costs include all the costs and all the benefits. And we would also need to get someone with a much better crystal ball than I or anyone here has got so that we can do it accurately.
MR CORBELL: (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Minister for Energy and Minister for Police and
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