Climate Change

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (15:57): My question is to the Minister for the Environment. Will one of the options that the government uses to achieve its promise of a carbon neutral Adelaide be the purchase of green power by government departments and agencies?

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: It's a very simple answer; you shouldn't have to get your folder of the hot topics.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (15:57): Well, I'm going to give you a bit more. I thank the honourable member for his most important question. The issues around making Adelaide a leading player in terms of climate change are complicated. They are not helped by the lack of support from a federal Liberal government which doesn't believe in climate change. They are not helped by an attitude of the Liberal Party that climate change is 'crap', as expressed by their leader. It is not helped by an attitude that, in fact, we don't believe the science if the science doesn't support our preconceived ideas about what the right policy should be for this country.

Climate change is a complicated issue that is going to take the very concentrated efforts of world leaders and countries to try to restrict what will come at us into the future in terms of rising sea levels and rising temperatures, which are already locked into the system. Mitigation and adaptation is where the states can play a big role, and that is exactly what we intend to do.

In terms of our leadership role, we as a state government will do everything we can, in connection with other state governments here in Australia and around the world, when our national government fails the test of leadership, which it has so comprehensively done to date. We have seen a report come out today, which comes out of a leading think tank in the United States, which says that our Prime Minister is the most incompetent leader in a Western industrial country in the world.

When you have the world looking at the Liberal Party and its leadership in those contexts, Mr President, you have to understand that we will not get any support from those opposite in time to tackle the most important issues that are facing us as a community today, and that is: how do we mitigate and how do we adapt to the climate change that is coming at us right now?

In terms of how we are going to address these issues, we will be talking to the community, to the Adelaide City Council and to industry as we develop forward a plan to put South Australia and Adelaide on the world map in terms of leadership on climate change and adaptation. We will be looking at all the options and all the available plans for the future mitigation and at how we might prioritise, encourage and incentivise—to use a horrible old Liberal word—to make sure that we can invite and have electric cars, driverless vehicles and hybrid vehicles as a preferred mode of transport into the future.

We will be doing everything we can, working with those people who believe that we need to address issues of climate change, and we will take advice from the experts, which I can say comprehensively that the Liberals will not do.