E&OE….
Topics: UN Climate Change Summit
MARK PARTON:
Greg Hunt, of course, is Environment Minister. He’s on the line right now.
G’day Greg.
GREG HUNT:
And good morning Mark.
MARK PARTON:
Almost sounded as though Ban Ki Moon was channelling Kevin Rudd. What did he say? The greatest moral challenge of our time?
GREG HUNT:
Look it is an important and a significant issue. It’s…
MARK PARTON:
Is it the defining challenge of our age, as Ban Ki Moon says?
GREG HUNT:
It is an absolutely critical challenge.
MARK PARTON:
Is it the defining challenge though?
GREG HUNT:
I’ll let others draw conclusions. It’s a critical challenge and for me, in my time, on my watch, I want to make sure that the world gets a good agreement, that we play our part, but we don’t do it in a way which is all about symbols and not about substance. Our problem with the carbon tax was it was an electricity tax, but it wasn’t in any meaningful way reducing emissions.
In the ACT, what we’re seeing is electricity price reductions of up to 12% and so that’s a real world outcome. But instead of an electricity tax, we want to reduce emissions at home by cleaning things up and we want to reduce emissions abroad and we’ve put forward a plan and we’re one of the only countries who have put forward a global plan for a rainforest recovery plan.
Protect the great forests, reduce emissions, avoid deforestation and that helps biodiversity and that helps reduce emissions.
MARK PARTON:
So, you and Julie Bishop and Tony Abbott – very, very keen for people to focus on what we are doing, rather than what we’re not.
GREG HUNT:
Well what we are doing is meeting our targets. I think it’s important to explain that when you use the same period from 1990 to 2020, we’re reducing our emissions by 22% against what’s business-as-usual, or what would otherwise have happened and we’re reducing our emissions by an almost identical amount to America.
The green groups will say, ‘wow look at what America is doing’, and I say good on America, but we’re achieving the same outcome. Over thirty years, not only will our emissions not have increased, but they will have decreased by 5% and decreased by 22% against where they would otherwise have been.
That’s – and a significantly greater amount on a per capita basis, so we’re actually providing a pathway and a model, but you can do this without a massive electricity tax.
MARK PARTON:
There’s been criticism from some quarters that, you know, this is the UN Climate Change Summit, there were so many world leaders that were there, but our Prime Minister made the decision not to attend. Do you think that criticism is justified and was there ever discussion about you attending the conference as Environment Minister?
GREG HUNT:
Look, obviously I disagree with some of the green groups that are making that point and obviously The Greens. Reason being that when you look at world, India, China, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Australia – they’re all being represented at senior ministerial levels. So different countries are able to provide, you know, the leader or a senior minister and in terms of the Foreign Minister, the Foreign Minister is the person who negotiates our international treaties and our international climate treaties.
So she is actually the responsible, designated Minister. The arrangement was we created a super environment ministry with climate, environment, heritage and water all together for the first time, but because of the load of that, the general trend in Government has been to bring international negotiations back into the Foreign Minister’s role and I’ve got to say, I know the previous Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, believed her two Foreign Minister appointments, Kevin Rudd and Bob Carr, were both mistakes.
We don’t think that Julie Bishop was a mistake. She is now almost one of the world’s most pre-eminent Foreign Ministers a year into the job and, you know, within two years I think she will be, you know, looked as (inaudible) Foreign Minister globally. She’s just done an amazing job with the Security Council and she is better known than virtually any other Foreign Minister.
MARK PARTON:
Greg, thanks for your time on it this morning, appreciate it.
GREG HUNT:
A real pleasure. Cheers.
(ENDS)