Party Lines: Who's leading on climate change?

Each week SBS asks two bloggers, one Labor and one Liberal, to discuss issues that have arisen on the campaign trail. This week we ask them: How important an issue is climate change, and who's tackling it better?

The bloggers have had their say on the issue, but what do you think? Which party is leading the way in tackling climate change?

Liberal Member for Mitchell, Alex Hawke:

Climate change used to be the 'greatest moral challenge of our time'. Now this diabolical issue could be left to 150 random people plucked from a phone book.

How did it come to this? Australians rightly care about our environment. But what are we to make of a Government that warns of the need for a big new tax that couldn't wait a minute longer, now trying to hide the idea until the next election?

Last November, Julia Gillard told Australians that 'delay is denial' and that we 'can't afford any more inquiries, reports or investigations into climate change'.

Last week we were presented with what could at best be called a stop-gap policy - Labor talks of a gathering a 150 Australians together for a 'Citizens' Assembly' to consider action on climate change. Another talkfest, except here it's the 2020 Summit meets the Copenhagen conference.

Julia Gillard is claiming to be going forward, but she has revived the indecisive approach we all experienced under Kevin Rudd's Prime Ministership of committees, enquiries, and summits. It's all about the election, and very little about governing.

Instead of trying to hide the fact, Labor needs to come clean on the real cost of its plans which will hit householders with higher electricity prices under the Emissions Trading Scheme. Julia Gillard has suddenly gone all coy about how much her ETS would cost mums and dads, especially pensioners and people on low and fixed incomes.

The real question about climate change is not who can try to scare the electorate with tales of the worst Armageddon, but what practical and cost-effective action we can take to give the planet the benefit of the doubt.

The Coalition understands this and has a $3.2 billion direct action plan to tackle climate change. We believe in real responses, real actions, and real results.

This was a plan announced by Tony Abbott and Greg Hunt early this year. It remains the only substantive climate policy on the table. By contrast, Labor has a plan for a big new taxpayer funded focus group.

The centre-piece of our direct action plan is for a $2.5 billion Emissions Reduction Fund. It would work like this: offering incentives for the lowest cost abatement of carbon. That means providing incentives to clean up power stations and to farmers to use innovative practices that reduce carbon emissions while also improving the quality of their soil.

We believe in offering cost-effective and practical incentives – not the big stick approach preferred by Labor. Our direct action measures will achieve the agreed target of 5 per cent lower CO2 emissions by 2020. They will help to deliver significant environmental outcomes – without the need for a great big new tax.

Labor doesn't know how to solve big environmental problems. After all, it was Labor that gave us the pink batts disaster and the green loans debacle. Instead, they just want higher electricity prices – but only after the election.

Our future environmental challenges, and our economic prosperity, are far too important to trust to Labor on climate change. Their track record of debacles, back-flips, delays for political expedience, and cost blow-outs will do more harm than good.

Former NSW Premier, Barrie Unsworth:

The challenge of global climate change and how best to deal with it is a vexed question confronting all the world's developed and developing economies.

Failure to achieve consensus at the Copenhagen conference last year indicates the complexity of the issue.

To develop an appropriate Australian response, the Labor government throughout 2009 sought to build a consensus within the parliamentary process in negotiation with the Coalition to secure legislation to minimise carbon emissions.

The then Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull responsibly led his party in these discussions but was ultimately removed from his position by the climate change sceptics, led by Tony Abbott.

In Australia emissions from coal fired electricity generation are a major source of carbon released to the atmosphere, and clearly alternate sources of generation must be developed, to contain and reduce its contribution to global warming.

The immediate problem confronting all Australians is that the consumption of electricity inexorably increases with population growth, and the higher per capita utilisation of energy required by the lifestyle of our modern society.

Commerce and industry are also major consumers and any reduction in their use of energy would adversely impact the economy.

Julia Gillard realising that it is essential to secure greater understanding and acceptance by the Australian community of the need to contain the growth of energy consumption, proposes that a consensus be built on a full appreciation of all aspects of climate change.

That is why she has proposed a National Forum of Australian citizens to consider the phenomenon of climate change and to examine appropriate responses.

In addition the Prime Minister has announced a

$1 billion expenditure program to expand the application of renewable energy sources for electricity generation, an immediate and practical approach to the problem of climate change.

By way of contrast the Coalition, mainly for political purposes, has proposed a minimalist program which does not achieve the emissions reduction required to address global warming.

All Australians must be made aware of the crisis facing our and future generations if nothing is done to effectively address the issue of climate change.

It therefore follows that Labor's proposal to build a universal consensus on the need to conserve energy and significantly develop alternative sources of electricity generation is by far the most effective way forward in dealing with the issue of global warming.