Climate Change is a huge environmental and economic challenge facing governments and communities across the world.
I understand that climate change is an issue of grave concern to many people in Chisholm. The community sentiment is for the Government to take action and set about reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.
The Australian Government believes the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is the cheapest and most effective way of tackling climate change and is committed to the bipartisan emissions reductions targets.
The Opposition’s back-flip on support for the CPRS has undermined the bipartisan support for climate change action and it is now impossible to pass the CPRS. On the other side the Greens argue for a position on the CPRS that would collapse the economy tomorrow.
At the same time, there has been slow progress in global negotiations on reaching a credible global agreement to limit global emissions.
In the face of the Opposition’s obstructionism and the slower progress of global negotiations, we have faced up to the reality that the CPRS needs to be delayed.
Despite this setback, the Government remains committed to tackling climate change.
In the short term the Government will boost our existing investments in clean and renewable energy and support greater energy efficiency measures. That means a faster and more accelerated investment in renewables, and renewable energy technology to help ensure Australia can meet our emissions reduction targets.
We have dramatically expanded the Renewable Energy Target by four times to 20 per cent, so that by 2020, the equivalent of all household electricity will come from clean, renewable sources like wind and solar.
We’ve made the largest ever investment in renewable energy technology development with over $2bn committed to the development of wind, solar, geothermal and other clean energy sources.
We’ve made the largest ever investment in clean coal with $2.5bn committed to develop world leading carbon capture and storage technology and we have shortlisted four projects to move to the next stage of assessment under the Carbon Capture and Storage Program.
We’ve committed over $5 billion in support for energy efficiency measures to help households and businesses cut their energy bills and reduce their emissions.
The challenge of climate change has not gone away and continues to require strong domestic and international action.
