E&OE...
Thank you very much Julie and Theana, thank you for your very warm welcome. This is but the latest of the occasions that I have had the opportunity of opening your conference at the beginning of our Federal Council meeting, and I want to echo very strongly what you said in your own address and that is the philosophy of our party about the role of women or indeed the role of men in society has been all about choice. And the party has for many, many years recognised the central role of women both in the organisation and increasingly in the Federal Parliament. We have never embraced the patronising approach of quotas; we have never reserved particular seats or places on a Senate ticket for women, rather we have sought over the years through the logical process of the Party organisation making rational decisions to see women emerge in increasing numbers and that has been the case. It happens to be the Liberal Party and the Coalition in government that has produced a Cabinet with the largest number of women in Australia's history; happens to be the Liberal Party that has produced the longest serving female Cabinet Minister in Australia's history and, of course, Senator Coonan is for the first time a member of the Leadership Group of a party in government.
Now these are facts, they are indisputable, they are incontrovertible but they don't connote a belief by the Liberal Party that there are quintessentially women's issues. All issues are of concern to women. There are some issues in politics where women bring special perspectives that we men recognise and respect. But, fundamentally, the view of a woman on defence and foreign affairs is as important as the view of a woman on child care or health policy and equally, might I say, the view of a man on the responsibilities and challenges of raising children is as relevant and as responsible as the views of a woman. Now having stated those markers to, as it were, define where I am coming from, can I thank all of the female members of the Liberal Party for their outstanding support and loyally towards me and to my parliamentary colleagues and the contribution over the years that they have made to the strength and the vitality of the Liberal Party organisation. I have a great story to tell about the way in which the opportunities for both men and women throughout Australia have been enhanced over the last 11 years. I think one of the things that warms me as much as anything has been the extraordinary growth in the number of women starting their small businesses. Of the small businesses that are opened each year, growing numbers, now somewhere between 30 to 40 per cent, of small businesses in Australia are now opened by women and it connotes an expanding role and expanding set of opportunities for women in our society.
Women have shared very, very dramatically, of course, in the explosion in employment over the last year. Average weekly earnings for women have increased by six per cent in the last year to March. The number of new female jobs increased by 134,000 or 2.9 per cent in the last year to April; the same exactly as the increase in the number of jobs for men. And, of course, the changes and improvements to Family Tax Benefits have been of enormous benefit for both men and women. It is a society where there are expanding opportunities and expanding choices available to women and the remarks that Theana made about the choices for women in relation to their family responsibilities are ones that I have always held to very tenaciously and all of the policies that have defined my approach to the responsibilities of men and women towards their children and mothers and fathers towards their children, have been defined by the philosophy of choice. And the decision to be a full-time parent at home when your children are young is a noble choice exercised freely by, overwhelmingly, but not always by women and a choice that should be totally respected. But equally it is not the role of the Government to tell parents how to organise the care of their children. It is the role of the Government as far as possible to make the exercise of all of the choices men and women would want possible and that is what we have done with our Family Tax Benefit policies. It is infinitely easier now for a low and middle-income family to have a parent at home than used to be the case if that is their choice. Equally, the changes we have made to Family Tax Benefits, the easing of the taper in relation to the withdrawal of welfare benefits in the operation of the tax system and indeed the most recent tax changes announced by Peter Costello, which will come into operation on the 1st July, will be of particular benefit for women in the workforce. The great bulk of women in the workforce with dependent children work part-time and the proportion that benefit from those tax changes, where the point at which the 30 per cent tax rate comes into operation is increased from $25,000 to $30,000, will deliver in proportionate terms far greater benefits to women with dependent women in the workforce than to men with dependent children in the workforce because the great bulk of women with dependent children who are in the workforce are in fact working part-time and it is an aspect of those tax changes that will become more apparent after they come into operation. But all of us today are part of the world community whether we are men or women or whether we have family responsibilities, have children or don't have children and one of the issues that the world community is confronted with at the present time is the issue of climate change, and you'd be disappointed if I didn't say something about the taskforce report that was handed to me yesterday and will be made available to the media at 10.30am this morning with a release time of 11.30 this morning. And this taskforce report, which was compiled by the Secretary of my department, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Secretary of the Department of Environment and Water Resources and the Secretary of the Department of Industry as well as senior business leaders including Margaret Jackson, the Chairman of Qantas, the Managing Director of Xstrata, which is one of the largest coal exporters in Australia, a representative of BHP Billiton, a representative of, representatives of other energy companies; represents the most intellectually rigorous analysis of the climate change issue every undertaken in this country.
Now there's been a lot of talk about the alleged inactivity of this government on the issue of climate change, I want to deal with that fairly directly in my remarks, but could I say in relation to the report I was given yesterday, this is the Australian version of what ought to be done because Australia is atypical amongst developed countries. We are a nation with a small population, a very high standard of living and very large natural resources. I won't inflict too many figures on you but let me give you one. Of all of the OECD countries, that's the developed countries in the world of which Australia is obviously one, the percentage of the exports from all of those countries which is accounted for by the resources sector, that's coal and iron ore and gas and uranium and the like, is just 8 per cent. The proportion accounted for by manufacturing goods is 62 per cent. In the case of Australia the proportion accounted for by resources instead of being one that reflects the OECD average of 8 per cent is in fact 37 per cent and the proportion of manufacturing is just 16 per cent. Now that's not to say that resources are good and manufacturing is bad, they're both very good, but the point is our situation is very different from the situation of many other countries with which we normally make comparisons, particularly but not only the countries of Europe and that is why it is essential if we are to do things in this area which we are going to do and do very significantly and very comprehensively, we have to do them in a way that cares for the character and the nature of the Australian economy and cares for and protects the natural advantages that providence has given us.
Now we have taken a period of some six months, and I would say only six months, to put together this incredibly comprehensive report and as a result of doing that we will come to the debate and the advocacy of what is in this report with a broadly based understanding of what is needed. We do need to have an emissions trading system in this country, we do need, obviously as a corollary of that, to establish a longer term target for greenhouse gas emissions, but that target has to be the product of careful analysis and thought so that we know what it means before we embrace it instead of embracing a target first and then trying to work out what it means. That is, to use the language we all understand, putting the cart before the horse. And this analysis which brings industry with us; and in the end the large companies, resource companies that contribute enormously to greenhouse gas emission in this country, some 49 to 50 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia comes from what are called stationary sources, that's essentially power stations. So therefore you have to make absolutely certain that those who are involved in the generation of those both understand and support what we're going to do and we've taken care to ensure that that is the case by the very sensible approach of including them in the analysis.
I can't think of an occasion in the past where you've had such a lock step approach between the most senior advisers to the Government and the very representatives of most of the sectors of our economy that are going to be affected. But, of course, in the end all of us are going to be affected. We can't curb greenhouse gas emissions over the years ahead without paying higher prices for electricity and anybody in the next 12 months, five years, 10 years who tries to tell you otherwise is deluding you, there will be a cost. But the question is to make certain that that is a manageable cost, that it is no greater than we need to pay but equally is...involves an acceptance of a sufficient cost to bring about a change in human behaviour because if there is no appreciable cost there'll be no change in human behaviour and there'll be no reduction in the greenhouse gas emissions contributing to continued global warming; that is a matter of commonsense and a matter of logic.
What this tells me, and what I think it will tell the Australian people is that the decisions we take on a target for greenhouse gas emissions, the decisions we take on all the other accompanying elements of an intelligent climate change policy will be the biggest and most important economic decisions we'll take in the next decade and if we get them wrong, or they are taken by people who don't understand how to run an economy, and you know who I am thinking about, there will be enormous damage done to our economic future.
This is a hugely burdensome and responsible decision. If we get this wrong, if we embrace a target that will do crippling damage to our economy, if we embrace a target that will increase electricity prices more than they should go up, then we will do enormous damage to Australian households and to the broad economy. So there is a lot at stake. That is why we have taken time, that is why we have got everybody involved. I mean we've been listening to lectures from the Labor Party over the last six months about when are you going to do something. Having approached our task in this methodical way, we are well placed in the debate in the weeks and months ahead to tell the Australian people that we actually understand what needs to be done. We're properly informed about what needs to be done and we'll do it in a way that achieves the goal we want of reducing greenhouse gas emissions over time, but not doing it in a fashion that causes unreasonable and undue harm to the Australian economy.
Could I just say one other thing about this issue before I formally open your conference, and that is that hand in glove with what we've been doing in relation to the report I've talked about is the undeniable fact that over the past few years this Government has done a lot more in the area of greenhouse gas policy than it often receives any credit for. I indicated in the Parliament that our programs and policies, for example, have brought forth or supported investments in renewables of some $3.5 billion over the last 10 years. And in 1999 we established a Renewable Remote Power Generation Program and we've added to that and we're now investing about $328 million in that. We've, of course, doubled the rebate for solar panels in homes. In 2004 I announced the Solar Cities series of trials. The first of those was announced in Adelaide in August of 2006 and in Townsville in September of 2006; Blacktown in November of 2006 and Alice Springs in April of 2007.
In October of last year we put $75 million into a large scale solar concentrator in north west Victoria under our Low Emissions Technology Development Initiative and that represents, along with the accompanying investments, the largest solar demonstration investment anywhere in the world. And on the 1st of November we committed $14.5 million to solar energy projects under the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. And the Government has also provided industry grants of close to $30 million for geothermal energy projects and we also announced a broad industry framework for geothermal activity.
I mention some of these things to underline the point that over the years the Government has made very significant investments to bring forth activity and financial commitments by companies in this area. It's a very important issue, it's a very important debate. I did an interview this morning just before I came here for a country radio network with Charles Wooley who many of you will know from 60 Minutes and he's got a wonderful understanding of life in regional Australia. And he was asking me that, you know, in effect, well if the world is about to come to an end, why do you worry about the economy? And you know, if was a fairly logical sort of question to ask me. He said, you know, there will be no economy to worry about if the world is about to come to an end because he says a lot of scientists are saying the world is about to come to an end. And my response was, well I think you know, as in all of these things, my lifetime's commonsense, I hope, has told me that on so many of these issues you have the people who say the world is about to come to an end, which of course it is not, and then you have the other people who say that in 50 years time people will look back on this period with astonishment and say why on earth did those silly fools in 2007 get all in a tizz about climate change because it hasn't really happened. And I said to Charles, I said I thought like just about everything else belonging to the sort of rational western liberal tradition, the truth was somewhere in the middle. And the truth is somewhere in the middle and our approach is somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. Neither of them is logical, neither of them is right, but you do have to recognise that mankind is making a damaging contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. It is affecting the climate, we do have a responsibility to act, but we have a responsibility to act in a measured, responsible fashion that preserves the gains we have whilst making an extraordinary, our own contribution, rather, to solving the problem.
I wish you well. I thank you again very warmly for your contribution to our great cause. I salute the contribution of the women within my Parliamentary Party and preselections for the Senate have yielded a growing number of them in recent months and they will add to the ranks of those who are already there and I appreciate their contribution and I wish you well. I will no doubt see all of you over the next couple of days. Thanks a lot.
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