Climate Change

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (16:41): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Climate Change a question about the state government's commitment to reducing South Australia's carbon footprint.

Leave granted.

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL: First, I would like to congratulate the minister on his appointment. He will correct me if I am wrong, but I believe it is the first time we have had a climate change minister since premier Rann, so that is a good initiative. I refer the minister to the ministerial statement that he made a little earlier today, parts of which were also included in His Excellency the Governor's speech. A number of environmental initiatives were outlined in that speech and the minister has referred to some of them in his statement. My questions in particular are:

1. In relation to making Adelaide a carbon neutral city, my question is: what does that mean? What is a carbon neutral city? Is there a methodology that will be published? How will that carbon neutrality be determined? How will it be audited?

2. I ask the minister about how this new commitment to climate change on behalf of the government sits with other government priorities, such as the government's agenda to vastly increase the extraction of fossil fuels, including fracking for unconventional gas in the South-East of South Australia? What role will the Minister for Climate Change play in determining whether or not new fossil fuel projects will be developed in South Australia? There is no legislative role for this minister, but I would be interested to know what administrative role the minister believes he will play in these important decisions.

The Hon. R.L. Brokenshire interjecting:

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (16:43): I thank the honourable member for his most important questions. I am only saddened that the Hon. Mr Brokenshire has been sitting in the chamber all afternoon sniping from the background. He seems to not have had much of a break over the last few months and he seems to be very grumpy indeed. Perhaps the cows have not been milking—I cannot say.

But I do thank the honourable member for his most important question today. In terms of his first question (what does carbon neutral mean?) being carbon neutral means that the net greenhouse gas emissions associated with an organisation's activities—or indeed the CBD products, services and events—are equal to zero. It is achieved through a combination of measuring and reducing carbon emissions and the purchasing and cancelling of carbon offsets. Carbon offsets, of course, are tradeable units which represent abatement of greenhouse gas emissions.

Had the federal government been a little more—how can I say it, without criticising them too overtly—forward thinking enough, and had the Greens of course not knocked off the Labor government's carbon trading program in the Senate, had they not knocked off the Labor government's emissions trading scheme in the Senate, we would have one now, but the Greens were the people who colluded, combined with the federal Liberal opposition at the time, to take it off the agenda, and they should hang their heads in shame because they are cruelly responsible for making sure we do not have an ETS now.

That is something they need to wear and something that will be brought up for them time and time again. I do not blame the Hon. Mr Parnell for that; he was not there and he was not part of that process, but it was his party that combined with the Liberal opposition to make sure that we do not have an ETS, and that is one of the things many people will regret into future.

To their eternal shame, the federal government has done nothing at all on climate change. We do not expect much more from the Liberal National Party at that level, but we, this state, will be proceeding with a bold agenda and will be delivering on the Climate Change Council's report to us later this year. We will be working through that process with our stakeholders, and I am very pleased to say that I met recently with the new minister in Victoria and the Liberal minister in New South Wales, and we are all very agreeable to working together as states to address climate change issues as states, knowing that we will need to go it alone without the support of the federal government at this point in time.