Senator LEES (Deputy Leader of the Australian Democrats)(4.53 p.m.) —I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for Australia to agree to legally binding targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

The reason we have moved this urgency motion is that it is obvious that our government is very reluctant, indeed determined, not to have a part of what we will argue today is essential—that is, binding greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. Why do we need them to be binding? I think it is fairly obvious to all of us that the `softly, softly approach', `how about we get on with it', `isn't this a nice idea?' has not worked. We need binding targets if we are actually going to seriously address this huge problem.

If Australia signed on to these targets, it would firstly, and most importantly, help it to protect the environment, but it would create jobs, it would be of long-term benefit to our economy and, as far as the international community is concerned, we would actually be a part of it, rather than a renegade. We would actually take our place as an important player—as I believe we should be. After all, we share this planet and we must be responsible for its long-term wellbeing.

I will not spend a lot of time on the environmental impacts. I think most of us are well aware now of the predictions of sea level rises, the impact on biodiversity, the loss of biodiversity—indeed, the loss of entire ecosystems—the increasing frequency of storms and the growing regularity of the oscillation between drought and flood. Even the insurance industry, particularly in the United States, is becoming more and more active as it realises the cost to it of doing nothing about the increasing frequency of storms.

The government's reaction to the environmental impacts has changed between trying to put them down as minor and suggesting that anybody who seriously considers them is talking about an apocalypse. I suggest that the Minister for the Environment (Senator Hill) should look at who is actually making these suggestions. If he did, he would find it is a group of the world's most eminent and leading scientists in this area—indeed, it is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Even Brian Fisher, the head of ABARE and the man who produced the Megabare model on which you base your position, does not dispute that sea levels are going to rise. His frightening suggestion though is that, rather than worrying about it, we should invite those people from the South Pacific over and have them here as environmental refugees. He suggests that that would be more economically efficient. I suggest that is an attitude this government should not sign up to.

Australia is one of the highest per capita emitters of greenhouse gases in the world, yet here we are trying to build a special case to say that, basically, we should be left alone and we should be allowed to have it our way. This government is using very hollow rhetoric in saying that Australia really is entitled to argue from that position. If you actually examined the facts, you would see how hollow that is. The government asserts that we are doing the best we can and that we have voluntary systems in place, but let us just look at some of the facts.

Let us start with land clearing. Land clearing is about 25 per cent of the problem; it, therefore, has the potential to be 25 per cent of the solution. What does this government do? It lets the Natural Heritage Trust go through and gives money, through that trust, to state governments that are still engaging in wholesale land clearing. Here again, I point out the activities in Queensland. It would not only be a good idea for the greenhouse problem if we stopped that wholesale land clearing; it would be a good idea for our fragile soils, our need for water resources and our biodiversity.

If we look at what the industrialised world has been able to do, we see that it has reduced its energy use per unit of economic output by 25 per cent in the last five years. Australia has only managed five per cent. There is a huge potential to do something better.

Then we can look at the domestic sector. The estimates are that Australia could halve its emissions from the domestic sector, and they are at 17 per cent, by encouraging things like solar hot water services, by actually requiring appliances to have energy efficiency standards—I must stress here that this is normal in the rest of the OECD; we are again so far behind on this—and by implementing decent building codes, something else on which we are so far behind. I am reminded here of a recent article I read that stated that a piggery in Germany requires better insulation than homes in Australia.

Thirty-nine thousand times Australia's daily energy requirements fall on this country every day in the form of solar energy, yet only four per cent of our domestic hot water services are solar. Californian wind farms generate more electricity than the entire Victorian coal fired system. There are real opportunities out there for Australia to develop new technologies, to get clever and to tackle the greenhouse and unemployment problem at the same time.

Our Prime Minister (Mr Howard) keeps saying that agreeing to cut greenhouse gas emissions will cost the economy jobs. Even if that were true—and I stress that it is not—he does not make mention of the damage to our economy of not cutting greenhouse gas emissions. What is going to happen to Australia if exports are affected? If Europe or the United States decide to impose the same energy efficiency standards on imports as they do on domestically produced products, what will that do for Australian jobs?

What happens if climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions disrupts our climate patterns, causing more extreme weather conditions, more droughts and more floods? Of course we will suffer. We only have to look at what is happening now under El Nino—and I acknowledge here that the jury is still out as to whether or not there is a connection between greenhouse and El Nino—and the impact of that short-term climate change over the last few months and the $2 billion that it is now estimated it will cost the Australian economy to see what long-term environment change will do to our agriculture sector.

But will cutting greenhouse gas emissions actually cost jobs? The government keeps citing ABARE research—funded of course by the coal industry—but how credible is that? It fails to factor in the economic cost of doing nothing. It fails to actually acknowledge that industry can make significant advances on fuel efficiency and that industry can switch to alternate energy sources. Even in the short term, if it is a bridging fuel such as coal, enormous savings in emissions can be made.

What they fail to mention is that a proactive government, a clever government, could put in place a mix of policies which would achieve significant reductions in greenhouse gases and actually benefit the economy. The House of Representatives environment committee in 1994 commissioned a study of the economic effects of climate change and policy changes to cut greenhouse gases. In that study they modelled a tax on carbon emissions big enough to reduce greenhouse gases back to 1990 levels. That would have raised enough revenue to completely abolish payroll tax. So we would tax energy more and tax employment less. The results from the study were a rise in GDP of about a billion dollars, a rise in employment of 55,000 jobs and a fall in carbon dioxide emissions of 11.7 per cent. I think those results are very exciting. What does this government do? It ignores them.

The challenge of needing to meet binding targets would create new industries in this country—high-tech jobs in areas like renewable energy, energy conservation and efficiency, recycling, insulation and so on. All of these technologies would be of immense benefit to us and we could then export them into Asia as the developing countries are brought on line once the developed world—those of us who have the financial ability to make the necessary initial changes—have set the standards and set the example. (Time expired).