Mr PASIN (Barker) (15:57): I think I’ve heard it all now. The member for Bass, if I heard him correctly, said Tasmania will decarbonise the world. Message to the member for Bass: Australia produces roughly 1.2 per cent of global emissions. If we were to reduce that to zero, per se, China on a per annum basis increases its emissions by more than what amounts to Australia’s 1.2 per cent. So, if you think you’re going to decarbonise the world from Tasmania, you keep fighting on, Charlie; you keep fighting on.
The reality is that this is a global challenge, and that’s why we have to play our part globally. What does ‘our part globally’ look like? It looks like meeting our international obligations. We met Kyoto 1, we’re on target to meet Kyoto 2 and, as you have heard from the minister regularly, we will meet our Paris obligations in a canter. What those opposite are doing is participating in what can only be described as a gargantuan effort to virtue signal to the Left of the Australian constituency and say: ‘Don’t run off and vote for the Greens. We’re your climate warriors. We will stand up.’ But what they fail to say is what impact this will have. Remember that the Chief Scientist has said these actions will have no impact—that is, if we reduced our emissions to zero, that alone would have no impact globally.
So what does it mean to everyday, ordinary Australians? We’ve heard of a $9,000 hit on wages. We’ve heard it will cost 336,000 jobs. We’ll see electricity up by 58 per cent. Those are things we knew before we came here this week, but we now know a lot more. We don’t have the kind of detail we should have, but we know it will cost a lot more.
