Published in The West Australian: 11 July 2011

Sunday's announcement of the carbon price package fires the starting gun on the long-overdue clean energy transition.
Western Australia is uniquely placed to benefit from the enormous shift in investment as polluting industries are taxed for the first time and the clean technology sector finally gets the support it deserves.
While all eyes have been on the dollar cost of venting a tonne of C02 into the atmosphere, the Greens have negotiated a broad range of additional measures intended to supercharge the zero emissions economy. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) will be responsible for disbursing more than $3 billion in renewable energy project funding. In addition, a new Clean Energy Finance Corporation will have a $2 billion annual budget funded from carbon tax revenues, a massive injection that is expected to leverage additional billions in private investment.
Unlike the friendless and rejected CPRS model of 2008, this package provides a solid platform on which to develop and accelerate the transition away from polluting fossil fuels. It is a package which plays to Western Australia's strengths: our combination of engineering talent and world-class solar, wind, wave and geothermal resources.
In an important acknowledgement that this initiative will have cost of living impacts, the package introduces tax concessions and compensation for those on low incomes. Treasury estimates the overall cost impacts will be an additional 0.7%, but nonetheless it is important that compensation is well targeted and leaves no-one behind.
Industry compensation too is better targeted in this package than under the defunct CPRS model. Our exporters will, over time, be compensated to the extent of their trade exposure, and some of the most polluting coal plants in the country will be compensated to close, not compensated to stay open - the Tony Abbott model.
The basic principle is to tax polluting industries in order to tilt the economic table in favour of the 21st century clean energy economy. The campaign of deranged hysteria mounted by Tony Abbott and "Lord" Christopher Monckton and funded by some sections of industry is already sounding threadbare and self-interested. It risks evaporating entirely now that the details can be properly analysed.
The timing of the package comes off the back of major advances in renewable energy technology in the last decade. On a recent visit to Kalgoorlie to help launch the ‘Beyond Zero Emissions' proposal for a 100% renewable energy grid, we were hosted by the Goldfields Renewable Energy Lobby to give the Regional Development Commission and the mining sector the first look at how utility-scale baseload solar thermal plants will change the way we power Western Australia while eliminating fuel costs. Solar plants that run around the clock sound unlikely, but they're running now in Spain and North America, and yesterday's announcement opens the door for their construction in our sun-drenched regions. We intend to make sure Western Australia leads the way.
Coupled with local innovations like Carnegie's superb wave energy technology, the ingenious oil mallee plant trialled in Narrogin, and a world-class wind energy resource, it is now possible to plot a renewable energy future for Western Australia. Premier Barnett's gas-heavy ‘Strategic Energy Initiative' will now require a substantial rewrite as we look to a future beyond fossil fuels.
The package addresses the roles land degradation and biodiversity play in climate mitigation, with a massive $1.7 billion investment in landcare to ensure that farmers and Natural Resource Management groups are properly resourced to play a role in stewardship and regional resilience.
In the longer term, this package also sidesteps the bipartisan agreement on a feeble 5% emissions reduction target, with a new Climate Change Authority established to advise the Government on five year carbon budgets needed to reach an 80% emissions reduction objective by 2050. It will set these targets independent of political interference in much the same way as the Reserve Bank sets interest rates, providing advice to Government which in turn establish permit allocations once the system transitions to emissions trading post-2015.
This is a good example of what can be done with minority government, where all parties are forced to sit down and negotiate if they want an outcome. The package isn't perfect by any means, but in a meaningful way it represents the first turning of the ship. This is the first real step along the path to a renewable Australia, nearly 20 years after we signed a global agreement to take up the challenge of climate change. At long last, this great work has begun.
Full details of the package here - http://greensmps.org.au/

This month the world is learning about the ongoing famine in the Horn of Africa, where about 12 million people have been hit by the worst drought in almost 60 years. Australia has pledged more than $11 million in aid. It's heart-wrenching to see malnourished children in refugee camps in Kenya with tubes in their noses to feed them because their hungry mothers cannot.

Closer to home, more than 34,000 women and more than 400,000 children under five die annually in the Asia Pacific region. These women die due to causes relating to pregnancy and childbirth, while children are lost to largely preventable conditions such as malnutrition or poor neonatal care.

The Greens have long argued that Australia can tackle this by spending more of its foreign aid budget on health. Presently, 16 per cent of Australia's aid heads into health projects, compared with 30 per cent spent by Canada and 34 per cent by Ireland. Australia can afford to lift this, especially given our resources boom.

In the 2011-12 budget Australia will distribute $4.8 billion in aid, rising to about $8-9 billion in 2015-16. Despite that jump, Australia will still be allocating only 0.5 per cent of its gross national income (GNI) on aid.

Australia needs to lift its foreign aid spending to 0.7 per cent of GNI, because that's one of the UN'S Millennium Development Goals Australia agreed to last decade. We're running out of time because those goals expire in less than four years.

Foreign aid is often targeted by people who say we should look after Australians first. We recall the Coalition tried earlier this year to have the government shave money earmarked for Indonesian schools. They quietened down when it was pointed out the $500 million was promised by the former Howard government. The Gillard government stood firm.

Britain has also resisted calls to trim its foreign aid spending, which is exempt from the coalition government's major cutbacks to reduce the deficits of the former Labour government. In 2010 the UK government allocated 0.56 per cent of its GNI to foreign aid, up from 0.51 per cent the year before.

Rich countries like Australia can afford to help their poorer residents, as well as their poor neighbouring nations, especially in the fields of child and maternal health. A Papua New Guinean woman is 50 times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than her Australian sister. We must push that figure down. PNG is the largest recipient of Australian aid, so we need to ensure we increase the training of medical and nursing staff and midwives, as well as improving access to and education about family planning and maternal health services.

Australia is backing a global goal on increasing childhood vaccinations in developing countries. This alliance on vaccines and immunisation targets 240 million children to prevent another 4 million deaths - that's roughly the population of Melbourne - by 2015.

Let's not waste the time we have left before the Millennium Development Goals expire in four years. Hundreds of thousands of lives in our immediate region depend on it.

First published in The National Times on July 19, 2011