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Tuesday, 11 October 2011
Page: 11319

Mr MURPHY (Reid) (09:01): These bills will support jobs and competitiveness and, over the first three years of carbon pricing, will provide $9.3 billion in help to safeguard jobs in high-polluting industries facing international competition. This will ensure the Australian economy remains competitive in a world that is moving to reduce carbon pollution. There will be much more support for renewable energy, including investing $10 billion in renewable energy. Low-pollution and energy-efficient technologies and improvements in energy efficiency will help households to save money on their bills and will help our efforts to cut pollution. Exhaustive federal Treasury modelling finds that the Australian economy will continue to grow strongly as we create a clean-energy economy of the future by pricing carbon.

Australia is working towards a legally binding international framework for cutting carbon pollution and tackling climate change. In the lead-up to the Durban climate change conference at the end of the year, Australia has proposed a range of actions that countries could take in the international negotiations to help build a legally binding climate change mitigation framework. These measures build on the strong action countries around the world are already taking to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

I now return to a suggestion by Climate Action Network Australia. Ours is a mega-diverse country, biologically speaking, but the rate of species extinction here is amongst the highest in the world. As such, Australia has a particular responsibility to make necessary reductions in greenhouse gas pollution in order to stabilise the earth's climate. The Climate Action Network is telling us that solutions to climate change are available for us today. For each unit of power produced, green-power projects employ more people than fossil fuelled power stations do. There are more economic benefits for regional communities in the industries preventing climate change than in those causing it. These solutions will not be introduced without a determination by governments and the public to make major changes to the way we produce electricity, provide transport and use the land. These bills must be supported for the future of our country and our children.