PETER GARRETT AM
Federal Member for Kingsford Smith
Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Heritage

ALP Queensland State Conference, Business Partnership Program

E & EO – Proof only. Check against delivery

Exactly three months ago, Federal Labor Leader Kevin Rudd convened Australia’s first National Climate Change Summit in Canberra.

It was a remarkable day, and for some reasons that may not be obvious.

During the Summit, we heard from leading scientists about the urgent need to stabilise and reduce our greenhouse emissions in order to avoid dangerous climate change.

We heard from experts in emissions trading about work that has been underway for many years, notably from the Australian States including Queensland, to provide the carbon market that business clearly wants.

We heard from many businesses about their desire to work with government to reduce greenhouse pollution, increase energy efficiency, increase profits and grow the economy.

And we heard striking presentations about the potential of technologies including renewable energy, clean coal and energy efficiency – the clean technologies that represent Queensland’s and Australia’s energy future.

But the most remarkable event that day – one that participants continue to comment on - was the conversation over coffee.

It was a rare and welcome gathering that found leaders from the worlds of business and science, the environment movement, community leaders, and of course, Australian Labor, immersed in conversation.

And it was the conversation itself that was truly remarkable.

In a day framed around climate change, the greatest economic and environmental challenge our nation faces, you could not have found a more excited or a more genuinely positive gathering.

It was a conversation that was fundamentally forward-looking, a conversation that recognised climate change presents an opportunity as well as a risk.

As Kevin Rudd said when he convened the National Climate Change Summit, it was truly the beginning of a national consensus on climate change.

I believe this is a conversation we should have more often.

We know that climate change poses very real risks to Australia’s economy, to our future prosperity and to our very way of life.

We know this because the science is in.

And now, increasingly, the economics is in.

Research from the Business Roundtable on Climate Change, ABARE and Frontier Economics has shown that through strong and steady action, we can not only help avoid the worst effects of dangerous climate change, but we can do so while securing Australian jobs and industry now and in the future.

In addition to this mounting economic evidence, Federal Labor, in partnership with the State Premiers, has commissioned Professor Ross Garnaut to review climate change actions, based on science and substantive economic modelling to map out the least-cost pathway to this objective.

When it comes to climate change, there are three key economic indicators:

• The costs of continued inaction and delay;
• The least cost path of strong and steady action to tackle climate change; and, 
• The opportunities for Australian business in a clean technology future.
• The costs of climate change inaction
  

Australians right now are getting a taste of climate change impacts - a 0.8 degree temperature rise, prolonged drought, water restrictions, and extreme weather events.

The first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released in February of this year warned of temperature rises three to four times greater than what we have experienced to date.

Unless we act now, we could see a 3 degree rise in temperature, which would be catastrophic for our economy.

Take, for example, the Australian tourism industry, a $20 billion national export market which creates more than half a million jobs.

Almost 140,000 of these jobs are here in Queensland. Tourism is the third-largest export earner for the State economy, generating domestic and international tourism spending of over ,8 billion.

The Great Barrier Reef alone attracts approximately 1.9 million visitors each year. A 2005 Access Economics study found that tourism associated with the Great Barrier Reef generated over $4.48 billion in the 12-month period 2004-05 and provided employment for about 63,000 people.

A three-degree temperature rise would mean the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef through coral bleaching. I don’t need to explain to anyone in this room what that would mean for the Queensland economy.

Another issue very close to home here is the impact of extreme weather.

CSIRO research predicts extreme weather events, including Category 5 cyclones, bushfires, heat waves and severe floods, are expected to increase in severity or intensity due to climate change.

Extreme weather events cause extreme economic damage. Over the last 40 years, 19 out of the 20 largest insured losses in Australia relate to weather or climate events, with hail, cyclones and bushfires featuring prominently.

These are the localised impacts of a global phenomenon.

And there has been no starker global warning than the report of Sir Nicholas Stern, who described climate change as the greatest market failure in history, and said unless we took concerted action to reduce global emissions, the costs would be “on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century.”

The review Labor has commissioned from Professor Garnaut is, if you like, the Australian equivalent of Stern; science-based, with modelling specific to the Australian economy.

This is the modelling Australia needs to accurately quantify the potential savings from averting dangerous climate change. It is only through understanding these potential economic savings that we can fully measure the net economic impact of strong and steady action and set the least cost path for meeting our targets.

The impacts of strong and steady action

As you would know, Labor has a target to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by 2050. This is the target, based on science, that developed nations must reach in order to avoid the worst effects of dangerous climate change.

The Business Roundtable on Climate Change, which includes leading companies such as BP, Westpac, IAG and Visy, showed a 60 per cent cut can be achieved while “GDP grows strongly at an average 2.1% pa over the period to 2050, in comparison with the base case in which GDP grows on average by 2.2% pa.”

To understand what shaving 0.1 percentage points off Australia’s GDP growth would mean, it’s the difference between waiting 29 years instead of 27 years to be twice as wealthy. And this is even before taking into account the economic savings from averting dangerous climate change.

That’s a figure you won’t hear from the Howard Government. Too often the Government equates action to seriously address climate change as an overreaction.

The opportunities for Australian business in a clean technology future

In some parts of the world, investors are talking about ‘the next industrial revolution’. A key economic question for Australia is whether we will embrace this low-carbon economy, and in fact, whether we will drive it.

According to the United Nations, last year the global market in clean technology grew 43 per cent, and was valued at $71 billion. Projections suggest that the wind, solar, biofuels and hydrogen markets alone will grow to $226 billion by 2016.

The fastest growing energy technology in the world is grid-connected solar photovoltaic, which grew by 60% between 2000 and 2004.

A recent study by the University of California at Berkeley concluded that “the renewable energy sector generates more jobs per megawatt of power installed, per unit of energy produced, and per dollar of investment, than the fossil fuel-based energy sector.”

Australia has the potential to be a regional hub for clean energy – our solar scientists are amongst the best in the world – but that will require genuine investment domestically in clean energy and a suite of policies – including targets – that enable this growth.

You can’t deny that business around the world is moving towards clean technology. Two weeks ago, the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth declared an ambition for Scottish industries “to invest with certainty in world-beating, low carbon technologies. I want Scotland to become the green energy capital of Europe.”

This is the sort of conversation we should be having with Australian business, and to opt out of this conversation, as the Howard Government has done, is to abrogate leadership for Australia’s economic future.

It’s like insisting on using typewriters when the rest of the world has moved on to computers.

Labor is ready to embrace the opportunities of a clean technology future in partnership with Australian business. That’s why Labor has announced a comprehensive action agenda to tackle climate change – an agenda which provides business with the certainty to manage risk, and crucially, gains a foothold in markets where businesses in the rest of the world are already operating.

Labor has identified ten key areas for action:

• Restoring Australia’s international leadership on climate change.
• Developing a carbon market and reforming our institutions. 
• Leading by example through good purchasing practices. 
• Driving a clean energy revolution, including a substantial increase in the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target and investment in clean energy research and development. 
• Helping Australian families to green their homes. 
• Investing in cleaner businesses and creating new jobs - working in partnership with businesses to drive energy efficiency improvements that deliver smarter and more productive industries. As part of this, Labor will establish a $500 million National Clean Coal Fund to invest in advanced clean coal technologies. 
• Investing in sustainable agriculture and protecting our biodiversity. 
• Investing in cleaner transport, including the establishment of a $500 million Green Car Partnership to drive the use of greener, cleaner and more efficient cars. 
• Preparing Australia for the future impacts of climate change. 
• And finally, securing our future water supplies, including investing in urban and rural water projects, fixing leaky pipes, and ensuring that 30 per cent of wastewater is recycled nationally by 2015.
  

Labor has brought forward policies in each of these ten areas, most recently announcing rebates to 500,000 homes of $500 to help install new piping for grey water use or rainwater tanks.

Labor is committed to taking strong, steady action to tackle climate change, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ensure Australia’s long-term prosperity.

We won’t draw a false division between a healthy environment and a healthy economy, and we won’t lock Australian business out of the burgeoning global carbon market and clean technology economy.

We’ll work with business to tackle the great environmental and economic challenge of climate change, and we’ll build on that positive and exciting dialogue we began at the National Climate Change Summit three months ago to deliver genuine climate change solutions.

Thank you.