Senator TCHEN (3:48 PM) —Madam Deputy President—

Senator Bolkus —Where's the minister? You're an imposter.

Senator TCHEN —I am happy to pose as the minister, with your agreement, Senator Bolkus.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —Address the chair please, Senator Tchen.

Senator TCHEN —I was not sure whether Senator Bolkus was raising an objection to my presence in the chamber. Senator Allison's motion raises some most interesting questions. Firstly, should the motion be debated by the Australian Senate, or is it something that should be debated by the United States Senate? Secondly, has the motion been moved by a junior senator from some nascent state of the United States of America rather than an Australian Democrats senator from the Australian state of Victoria? Is the motion simply a symptom of a Freudian yearning to be part of the real Democrats party rather than of the pseudo-Australian Democrats party? These are interesting and important issues because, without their being first resolved, this motion makes very little sense. Certainly its taking up of valuable time of the Senate as a matter of urgency cannot be justified.

Let me expand on this a little. This motion is in three parts. Firstly, the motion proposes that the Senate supports the Kyoto protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The simple fact is that the Senate is well aware—indeed, Senator Allison is well aware, as she was the chair of this Senate committee inquiry into global warming—that Australia has a total commitment to meeting its obligation under the Kyoto protocol. This is made quite clear in the analysis of this report, which Senator Allison referred to and which was tabled in the Senate in November last year.

Secondly, this motion asks the Senate to not support the policy reversal by the Bush administration. I assume that this motion is referring to the Australian Senate, not the United States Senate. I think the Senate is well aware that any support given or not given to one country's policy by another country is a matter between governments. It is a matter of government relationship. It is not an issue for the Australian Senate. The Australian Senate deals with domestic laws within Australia, with the domestic administration of Australia and with Australian internal and external policies.

The third point that this motion seeks to make is that it claims that there have been ill-conceived statements by federal ministers, suggesting Australia should join the United States in not ratifying the protocol in light of serious economic and social implications for Australia for not constraining greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. The reality is that those press statements that were attributed to various ministers were entirely consistent with statements the Prime Minister and other ministers have made—statements the government has made—since before the Kyoto conference was held in 1997.

The Prime Minister's 1997 statement, issued before the Kyoto conference was held, stated quite clearly that Australia is committed to meeting its international obligations on the issue of global warming. However, the Australian government also has an obligation to ensure that any such action taken by the government is consistent with protecting the economic position of Australia in the global market and with protecting Australia's domestic economic and social wellbeing. That is quite clear. That position has not changed since 1997, when the Prime Minister stated it. I must say that that position, notwithstanding the occasional rhetorical outburst from the opposition, has been supported by the Labor Party—although I cannot say the same about Senator Brown, who probably believes that Australia belongs to someone other than Australians.

This motion is therefore nonsense; however, let us take it in a serious manner, since Senator Allison has brought it in here. Firstly, let us look at the Kyoto protocol, to which it is argued Australia should commit itself, without reservation, even further than it has now. The Kyoto protocol was devised as a means to pursue an objective of the UNFCCC—that is, to achieve the stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous interference with the climate system. It also suggests that such a level should be achieved within a time frame sufficient to allow the ecosystem to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner. I emphasise that this is something the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change itself put down as a basic requirement—that it should enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner. The Kyoto protocol operates by means of proposing the establishment of greenhouse gas emission limits and a reduction commitment by each party to the protocol. The protocol requires each party to take action to ensure that their greenhouse emissions do not exceed their assigned limits and to meet their reductions with a view, then, hopefully, to reducing greenhouse gas emissions globally by at least five per cent below the 1990 level by between 2008 and 2012.

As a system the protocol is flawed. Because it is a very general provision, it has a number of problems within it that actually render it extremely difficult to operate. It is generally acknowledged that the pace of climate change will render the Kyoto protocol targets largely irrelevant. There are two reasons for this: firstly, the commitments described in the protocol are relatively modest compared with the projected future rates of global warming. But, more importantly, the protocol applies only to developed countries and does not set emission limits or reduction targets for developing countries. And there is the rub: it has been widely estimated and accepted that emissions in developing countries will surpass emissions from developed countries before 2010. That, in fact, is the sticking point upon which the Bush administration has argued that the United States should not be committed to the protocol.

As the Minister for the Environment and Heritage advised the Senate earlier, the United States is the largest economy in the world, is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world and has its own national interests. The United States government is also committed to maintaining the social and economic structure of the United States so that it is not damaged by any commitment the government might make to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. So it is quite reasonable for the United States to consider alternative approaches and to wait, and perhaps to argue, for a better system. There is nothing sinister about that and it should not be made a requirement that the United States must be a party to any decision of this nature. (Time expired)