In their own words; Milne on DOHA

Christine Milne Australian Greens Leader

Monday 10 December 2012

Interview on ABC Breakfast with Fran Kelly

Transcript

Subjects: Doha climate change talks, budget surplus, Marcia Langton

FRAN KELLY: Well after much haggling at the Doha climate change conference, a deal was finally struck on the weekend to extend the life of the Kyoto Protocol. Australia was joined by the 27member European Union and eight other industrialised nations signing up again for binding emissions cuts by 2020. The treaty, viewed as an important interim measure while an international agreement covering all emitters is negotiated over the next four years. But Kyoto has its critics – it covers only 15 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions in the world. Greens leader Christine Milne is among those who don’t believe developed countries like Australia are doing enough to stop global warming. Senator Milne, welcome to Breakfast.

CHRISTINE MILNE: Thank you Fran.

FRAN KELLY: Christine Milne, marathon talks managed to extend the existing Kyoto Protocol and the world’s worse emitters though are still not out of it if we think about the US and China certainly on the same level that Australia is, no real move to a new agreement to cut greenhouse emissions. Do you hail this as progress?

CHRISTINE MILNE: Well you have to say Fran it’s a tiny step at a time when we need to be taking a giant leap, and it feels very much like the frog in the pot of water that is getting hotter and hotter. Unfortunately this formula is what happens every time. If you go back to Copenhagen and then even last year in Durban, there’s always a great flurry of activity, there’s panic in the last few days, and then there’s desperation to come out with something that shows you’ve made some progress, there’s extended talks, and then there’s a big announcement that we will talk again next year. The fact of the matter is we are on track to 4-6 degrees of warming. The developing countries are becoming more and more desperate in their pleas in these conferences to say look, who’s going to take my people? Look at what is happening to the world. Our country is being swamped with extreme weather events and so on and being overwashed and losing cultural sites and the rest of the world says oh yes but it’s too expensive for us and meanwhile we’re all in this together, and really countries like Australia have to do more. The US of course is recalcitrant and is one of the biggest problems there, and of course China is not in a rush either. So we really are in a difficult situation Fran, it’s very hard to see where the momentum is going to come from to match the political action with what the science demands.

FRAN KELLY: As you say though, we could have before Doha occurred we could have choreographed how it would end and it ended that way with the same form of words essentially being used by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, the European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard, our own Environment Minister Greg Combet all describe it as an important but essential first step, how do you make a change, how do you change this stance and this sense of urgency that as you say the science demands is certainly not matched by political action. If anything I think at Doha it seemed this sense of urgency seemed to be depleted more than usual, certainly coverage of it and interest in it seemed less than usual. Why do you think that is?

CHRISTINE MILNE: Well at one level I think the world’s media doesn’t report these conferences as well as they might anymore because of the low expectation that anything is going to come from it because as we just discussed the same thing happens every year. But equally it’s not really going to change the dynamic until the US and China decide they’re really going to get serious and that’s when everybody will sit up and take notice again, and it’s going to require a combination of other countries to grab the initiative and really demand that happens and take it up to them and that isn’t happening at the moment because countries like Australia are still throwing in their lot with the umbrella group, with the Russians, with the Canadians and so on and undermining bold action against developing countries rather than-

FRAN KELLY: – But that’s not quite fair because Russia and Canada pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol, Australia signed up to the extension.

CHRISTINE MILNE: But we chair the umbrella group in these negotiations and I can tell you throughout the Doha negotiations Australia was there fighting for the carryover of hot air into the second commitment period, Australia was fighting to maintain the windfall gains it got from forestry, plus the hot air surpluses and still only put up a half a per cent reduction on 1990 level so yes we did sign on, I’m pleased we did, but we are nowhere near the level of ambition. And his partner Tony Abbott’s fault I might say Fran because the Government is terrified of losing what they call their bipartisan five per cent reduction. If Tony Abbott stopped being so recalcitrant on climate change and started to call for a decent level of ambition, then I am sure the Government would feel freer to move, but unfortunately the Coalition has, I’d say that context, the coal industry the mining industry in Australia has greater pull on the Government than has the call from developing countries.

FRAN KELLY: The political realities are, as you describe, the Australian Government has legislated target of five per cent reduction of 1990 levels by 2020 with the caveat that it would scale that to 25 per cent over the same timeframe if other countries in the world sign up, now you’ve described that as a failure on the Government’s part but that is ahead of a number of countries nevertheless, countries like America, and more than that the Australian Government has also legislated for a price on carbon.

CHRISTINE MILNE: Absolutely and that’s because as you are well aware Fran that was the agreement the Greens secured from the Prime Minister in order for them to have government and I’m very proud of the fact that we got the Clean Energy package and that we have now have an emissions trading scheme in place. The US really is the problem – President Obama didn’t spend any of his political capital on addressing global warming in his first term, he really now has to do that and there’s no sign of that in Doha, and that’s where we will see what happens, but unfortunately he has placed energy security higher on his agenda by absolutely accelerating shale oil for example, massive pollution from shale oil, just like Australia is prioritising coal seam gas and coal exports, and as long as the fossil fuel sector has this kind of control over the political process we are not going to get the breakthroughs we need. And of course the costs go up, not just human costs, which are enormous around the world, but you know, Australia is having to agree to the principle of loss and damage that was agreed in Doha which is that developing countries are suffering right now, as indeed everyone is suffering, and they’re saying you have to start paying a reasonable amount of money for the damage you are doing to us, and it really brings home what Nicholas Stern said years ago that the cost of doing nothing outweighs the cost of action.

FRANK KELLY: In terms of loss and damage and financial aid because that was another element, the climate funding for developing nations was an element on the table here in Doha and Australia has backed a deal that offers poorer countries financial aid for the loss and damage they suffer. Now there’s been some interpretation that locks us into a $3 billion annual bill, do you think that does lock us into that and is that enough?

CHRISTINE MILNE: Well it certainly locks us into some share of that. Australia has already been part of the fast track financing over the last three years and we have put in, I don’t know around about 600 million or something to that fast track financing, but we now go into the long-term financing where there are pledges on the table for 100 billion and Australia would have to take its burden share of that 100 billion and I would think that 3 billion is probably at least our burden share. But that really starts to highlight the cost of not acting, the cost of the damage around the world. But honestly look at ourselves in Australia, look at the extreme weather events we are already suffering. Victoria has just announced it’s setting up an emergency agency, every state is going to have to do that. Flood levies won’t be one-off, already insurance premiums are through the roof, we really have to grapple with this problem, we are facing a climate emergency and I just don’t think there’s any community ability to influence government at the moment against the power of the resource companies to say there is a climate emergency and we want to act on it.

FRAN KELLY: Senator Milne, there’s plenty of speculation that the Gillard Government will over summer quietly dump its promise to deliver a budget surplus, in fact there’s growing calls even from business for it to consider that rather than risk sending the economy into recession, would you welcome this?

CHRISTINE MILNE: Oh yes Fran we’ve been calling on the Government to ditch the surplus for some months now, pointing out that, as you just said, many leading economists have been saying trying to get what is effectively a political surplus is costing Australia way too much and in the debate when the Government abandoned support for single parent and when we were campaigning and still are for an increase in Newstart, the Greens have been saying you simply can’t get your political surplus on the back of some of Australia’s families who are struggling the most, and we’ve also said this is ridiculous, if we want to nation built with real investment in public education with investment in disability insurance for example, with looking after our environment, you actually have to pay for those and raise the money so we’ve been saying two things: ditch the surplus and secondly let’s actually take this on and raise the money, and we should have actually had the super profits tax, we’re prepared to block the loophole in the mining tax, we’re prepared to get rid of fossil fuel subsidies, we’re ready to raise money and certainly I think it’s absolutely sensible to ditch the surplus and I call on the Government to do it.

FRAN KELLY: And just finally Senator Milne, Marcia Langton, Indigenous Leader Marcia Langton in her Boyer lectures has been very critical of the environment movement. She talks of the racist assumptions in the movement, that aboriginal people are enemies of the wilderness and she accuses conservationists and governments of racist chicanery. Do you have a response to that?

CHRISTINE MILNE: That’s been her view for a long time and I have heard her speak on that on many occasions but there are equally a number of aboriginal leaders around the country who have worked very cooperatively with the environment movement. We’re doing that over at James Price Point at the moment and also on the Cape and it’s actually aboriginal leaders working with the environment movement to try to protect areas on the Cape-

FRANK KELLY: – That’s her point isn’t it when she describes the tension that sometimes exists between green activists and indigenous landowners over developments say on what might be otherwise described as wilderness areas, she says these aren’t wilderness areas, they are aboriginal homelands shaped over millennia by aboriginal people, in other words they have been looking after the land for that long.

CHRISTINE MILNE: Certainly they’re aboriginal homelands there’s no question about that, but the environment movement has been working with aboriginal communities to maintain and look after them and in fact one of the things that the carbon farming initiative that I was really pleased about is that we managed to get the regime of savannah burning recognised as a methodology so that indigenous communities could benefit from what is their traditional knowledge. So the Greens have been working and the environment movement with indigenous leaders right around the country for a long time. There’s a difference of opinion in aboriginal leadership, just as there is across the broader community.

FRAN KELLY: Senator Milne thank you very much for joining us.

CHRISTINE MILNE: Thank you Fran.

Yeterday on Tasmanian Times: Anna Reynolds: The End of Another Climate Conference