Senator WATERS (Queensland—Co-Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens) (16:13): I rise to speak on a matter of public importance, the weak and dangerous climate targets we saw yesterday from this weak and dangerous Prime Minister. First of all, science has been completely absent in the calculation of this target—if you can even call it a target. The Prime Minister has taken the very sneaky approach of changing the base line here on which to calculate the target. It is like standing on a box so you can claim you are taller. Well, you are not any taller and you have not fooled anyone. When you convert the so-called target back to the proper base line that most of the rest of the world uses—the one that Australia was using until yesterday—it is actually only a 19 per cent reduction on 2000 levels by 2030. That is less than half of the bare minimum that the actual independent science body says Australia needs in order to play its part in trying to constrain global warming to two degrees. They actually say that it should be a 40 to 60 per cent reduction, so in fact it is less than a third of their positive-high ambition range. So the science has been absolutely absent in the calculation of these targets, which is fitting given that this government wants to abolish that very body, the Climate Change Authority—the independent science advisers that are meant to say, 'Here is how you avoid dangerous global warming to safeguard our way of life, to protect our economy and to protect our very planet.' No—the Abbott government wants to abolish them. They do not like science and they sure as hell are not going to start listening now—more's the pity. These targets are a recipe for dangerous global warming. They put us on track to not keep global warming to two degrees, which the world has agreed desperately to try to do because beyond that you reach ecological tipping points from which there is no coming back. Instead, this government's targets set us on a track for three to four degrees of global warming. If there is time later I will go through precisely what that will mean for Australia, and it is incredibly sobering reading. They have shifted the goalposts to try to make their pathetic target look slightly less pathetic and then they have claimed that Australia is in the middle of the pack internationally. Again, that is absolute fabrication. When you actually compare the targets of other developed nations and comparable economies, we are at the back of the pack. You have heard it said, and that is because it is true. We are below the US, we are even below Canada and we are below the EU. The only nation which is anywhere near close to us is Japan. So we are not in the middle of the pack; we are in fact at the back of the pack. And this is from a nation that has some of the best renewable energy resources in the world. We have some of the best sunshine, some fantastic wave and tidal potential, some pretty good wind deposits and some solid geothermal deposits, and still the Prime Minister is happy for us to be at the back of the pack internationally rather than leading and creating prosperity and the jobs of the future, which is what I thought a Prime Minister's job was. The tragic thing is that, at the minute, Australia is the world's worst polluter per person. The even more tragic thing is that, if these targets are adopted, we will still be the world's worst polluter per capita. Do the figures. For all of the bluster from the Prime Minister, nobody believes you, Prime Minister, because science has not come into your equation. Instead, 'coal is good for humanity', 'wind farms are ugly' and you want to abolish the independent science advisory bodies. We have heard that coal is good for humanity from the Prime Minister. We have heard that wind turbines are ugly and in fact we heard at the Prime Minister's press conference yesterday, 'The only way to protect the coal industry is to go with the kind of policies that we have.' That is on announcing his carbon pollution reduction targets. He is actually talking about protecting the coal industry. Please, will somebody get this man a briefing from some scientists? I met today with some of the authors of the IPCC fifth assessment report—some of the leading global climate scientists— Senator Brandis: The Prime Minister is one of the most intelligent people of his generation. Senator WATERS: I will take that interjection and I again would invite the Prime Minister to perhaps meet with those scientists who are in the building today. In fact, any scientist will do, frankly. It would, I hope, change the Prime Minister's mind. They would, however, have to get through the door, which is currently packed with donors from the coal industry, who have inordinate influence over this government and, I might add, also over the opposition. They need to make sure that it is not the fossil fuel companies but actually the scientists that are dictating Australia's climate policy. The reason for that is that coal is in fact not good for humanity. We have already seen in the last 18 months that coal mines have sacked 32 per cent of their workforce. The transition is on, folks. Where is your plan to help those workers? Where is your plan to ensure that those folks in mostly regional and rural communities actually have long-term, sustainable employment? There isn't one, yet the transition is on globally. I welcome that transition. It is exactly what we need to safeguard our planet and to safeguard the industries that we have that are dependent on a healthy climate—like the Great Barrier Reef, which is an employer of 63,000 people in my state of Queensland and brings in a good $6 billion a year to our economy and which could actually provide those sustainable jobs into the foreseeable future rather than the short-term coal industry, which has sacked one-third of its workforce in the last 18 months. But no; the Prime Minister has well and truly belled the cat when he says that his climate policy is the only way to protect the coal industry. I have talked about the need for a transition plan. Australia has such wonderful potential. The global trend is on. The coal price has tanked, the workers are being sacked and there is no plan from this government to help provide them jobs. The options are there. We could be creating the prosperity, the employment and the economic growth in clean energy production, in manufacturing for clean energy, in public transport, in high-speed rail, in protecting those other industries that need a livable climate like ecotourism and agriculture—the new economy based on innovation and based on our brains, rather than just a dig-it-up-and-ship-it-out, quarry mentality. Instead, we heard Senator Birmingham say, 'The Greens will never be happy with anything we say.' I have to agree with Senator Birmingham. Until the government bases their policies on science, we will continue to criticise them for ignoring science and being in the pocket of the coal industry. As I said, I met with those IPCC authors today, and one of them said something very significant that I thought worthwhile sharing with the chamber. They said, 'Climate change is not an issue for the future; it's an issue for now.' The decisions that we are making now, that this government is making now will shape how we all live. They are shaping the fact that we already have a prevalence of increased extreme weather events. They are dooming us to more frequent and more severe extreme weather events, and I want to illustrate that because I get the sense that the government members are just chatting amongst themselves rather than engaging with the debate. Perhaps I will give them a few concrete examples. In the Murray-Darling, which they profess to occasionally be concerned about, there was a proposed reduction in average flow by 40 per cent—40 per cent less flow in the Murray on a normal year. That is under climate scenarios that already exist. We know that there will be an increase in category 3 to category 5 cyclones, we know that heatwaves will get more extreme and we know of course that global coral reefs, being incredibly susceptible to climate change—in fact susceptible to even as low as 1½-degree increase, which sadly we are on track to exceed—will collapse. Now that is an absolute tragedy when we can take the actions to do our best to avert that absolute environmental meltdown. Yet we have the jokers on this side who think it is hilarious and who refuse to engage in the actual science and refuse to perhaps cognate the importance of the decisions that we are making here today. Instead they say that they want to try and help the world's poor by trying to flog off Australia's coal. Well, the World Bank disagrees with them. It says that coal is no solution to energy poverty. Since when did this government care about poverty anyway? They slashed our foreign aid budget for heaven's sake. In rural India, they do not have an electricity grid and our coal will be too expensive for them. What Australia can provide to the world and to ourselves is clean, affordable, renewable energy that will help us meet this global challenge, do our bit and safeguard our economy. I thought those opposite were meant to care about that, but, no, they just care about the old economy, just the donors, not about the potential for jobs in clean-energy industries. That is where the future lies and that is what we will keep fighting for.