E&OE...
Thank you very much Madam President, my fellow Australians. It is an enormous privilege as Federal Parliamentary Leader and Prime Minister to again address this gathering of the Federal Council of the greatest political party that Australia has ever seen, and a political party to which I personally owe so much, and a political party that has extended to me the most extraordinary privilege that could come the way of any man or woman in this country and that is to be Prime Minister of Australia.
We have understandably spent a great deal of time at this Council talking about the achievements of the past decade but it's important, as well as doing that, that we throw forward to the next decade because it's my passionate view that good though the last 10 years have been, Australia's greatest years lie ahead of us. We are a nation richly blessed by providence with remarkable supplies of resources, a wonderful civic-minded population and a degree of social cohesion and unity which is the envy of the world. Why else do people in their tens of thousands seek to come from the four corners of the earth to live in our country? We are nation that has shown the maturity and foresight to tackle the problems of the years ahead, the Inter-Generational Report first released some five years ago identified the great challenge of the ageing of the population, and the update of that report released before the last Budget, although it still reminded us in a very sober way of the challenges that lie ahead, was also a wonderful report card on the progress that had been made and how in the five years that it passed between the first and second Inter-Generational Report, the economic reforms implemented by the Government meant that the challenge in the years ahead, although still daunting, was not quite as daunting as might otherwise have been the case.
The most recent Budget was the most visionary in the area of higher education for probably 50 years because it laid especially through the Higher Education Endowment Fund and the $5 billion down-payment into that Fund, it laid a framework for further reform and further investment in that area, as well as continuing the process of reform and change in the area of technical education.
We are enjoying the enormous fruits of a resources boom. There is one great difference though between the two sides of politics on the resources boom, one side of politics, the Labor Party, has predicted that it is about to come to an end, or indeed has already come to an end, and is doing its level best to accelerate the process of bringing it to an end through its industrial relations policy. The other side of politics, our side of politics, sees no reason why the resources boom, if the right policies are applied, and we understand that competitive advantage is only maintained by high commitment to domestic reforms, that there is no reason why that resources boom cannot continue for many years into the future.
Our future therefore is one of great hope and great optimism. We'll need to maintain our constant resistance against, and our constant determination to fight, the forces of global terrorism. Terrorism is an enemy the like of which the world has not faced before. The war against terror is not like a conventional war, we're not trying to return an invading army from whence it came, we're dealing with a deadly enemy that operates in a borderless world without any regard for such basic instincts as self-survival. The war against terrorism is taxing the patience of many in the western world but we have to maintain our commitment, our resilience, our determination and our willingness to fight an enemy knowing that that fight will go on for many years into the future. And can I say to all of you that resisting terrorism in one part of the world is as important as resisting terrorism in another. If it's important to Australia that terrorism be defeated in Afghanistan, it is equally important to Australia that terrorism should be defeated in Iraq. A defeat for the coalition in either of those places would represent a huge setback for the cause of the west, an enormous propaganda victory for terrorism, a revitalisation of organisations such as Jemaah Islamiah in Indonesia and the Philippines and therefore represent a direct threat to the general security of Australia.
In recent months there has been very intense debate on the issue of climate change and last Friday I released the report of a task group, uniquely joining together the five most senior bureaucrats in the Federal Government and leaders of industry, a report which analysed the circumstances in which an emissions trading system might be introduced in Australia. And I want to spend a few moments this morning talking about that issue and indicating the Government's immediate response to that report released on Friday. Let me say by way of background that this is an issue that requires a balanced application of commonsense, it requires a measured but determined response, it requires a response that recognises that in the vernacular the world is not going to come to an end tomorrow because of climate change, and we shouldn't imagine for a moment that that is the case, but equally we would be foolish indeed to ignore the accumulated scientific evidence that mankind's behaviour has contributed to the process of global warming. Australia, it should be remembered, is one of the few countries in the world that is actually on track to achieve the emissions target set by the Kyoto Protocol, unlike many of those in other parts of the world that spend a great deal of time lecturing Australia in increasingly moralistic terms about our failures in this area.
And this is quite a remarkable achievement given that our economy is set to grow by 90 per cent and our population by a third over the Kyoto period, and that's from 1990 to 2012. But now we must plan for the world beyond the end of the Kyoto period. The world beyond when the current target that Australia will meet is no longer relevant. And today I therefore announce a number of things by way of response to the report released on Friday.
I announce specifically that Australia will move towards a domestic emissions trading system, that's a cap and trade system beginning no later than 2012.
Secondly, we will as a nation set a long term aspirational goal for reducing carbon emissions but we need to access very carefully with detailed economic modelling the impact any target will have on Australia's economy and Australian families, this target will be set next year 2008.
Thirdly, the scheme will be national in scope and as comprehensive as practicable, designed to take account of global developments and to preserve the competitiveness of our trade exposed emissions intensive industries.
Fourthly, Australia should not pay higher energy costs than necessary to achieve emissions reductions, in other words, governments need to let the market sort out the most efficient means of lowering emissions with all low emissions technologies on the table and that of necessity must include nuclear power.
Australia will continue to lead internationally on climate change, globally and in the Asia-Pacific region. Not in a way that lectures and moralises, but in a way that builds support for global action to tackle this enormous global challenge.
And I very much want to highlight the important fact that our aim is to ensure that firms which undertake additional abatement between now and the start of emissions trading will not be disadvantaged. And this will provide additional confidence to companies already doing an enormous amount to cut their emissions.
This will be a world-class emissions trading system, more comprehensive, more rigorously grounded in economics and with better governance than anything in Europe. Implementing an emissions trading scheme and setting a long-term goal for reducing emissions will be the most momentous economic decisions Australia will take in the next decade. This emissions trading system must be built to last. It needs to last not five or 10 years, it needs to last the whole of the 21st Century if Australia is to meet our global responsibilities and further build our economic prosperity. This is a great economic challenge for Australia as well as a great environmental challenge. Significantly reducing emissions will mean higher costs for businesses and households, there is no escaping that and anyone who pretends to do otherwise is not a serious participant in this hugely important public policy debate. It will change the entire cost structure of our economy, we must get this right, if we get this wrong it will do enormous damage to our economy, to jobs and to the economic wellbeing of ordinary Australians, especially low-income households. The question I pose to the Australian people, quite directly, is this, who do you trust to take these vital decisions about our future? Who do you trust to strike the right balance so our firms and families can plan for the future with confidence? A Government that has given Australia 11 unbroken years of prosperity, that has brought our economy back from high interest rates, high debt and high unemployment, a proven team of economic decision makers that have been tested and have performed for more than a decade or a party that has been missing in action on every key economic decision over that period? A party whose policy approach is steeped in recklessness and symbolism rather than reality and substance?
Yet again my friends, Labor has not done the hard policy work on this issue. Labor says it will reduce Australia's emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 but it won't tell you what the impact will be because it hasn't done the analysis. Peter Garrett, who would be in charge of all of this if Labor were to win office, wants a 20 per cent reduction in emissions from 1990 levels by 2020. He said it explicitly, indeed that's his starting point, because he said it could be 20, 25 or even 30 per cent. Peter Garrett and Kevin Rudd have absolutely no idea what the consequences of these numbers are. A 20 per cent reduction from 1990 levels would do enormous damage to our economy and to Australian living standards. To meet such a target the Emissions Trading Taskforce, that's a group of people whose report I released on Friday, concluded that it would require and I quote,