House debates

Thursday, 4 June 2009

Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009

Consideration in Detail

9:39 am

Photo of Andrew RobbAndrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and COAG and Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader on Emissions Trading Design) Share this | Hansard source

On the amendments, this is the biggest deliberate structural change, possibly in our history, that we are considering in this House today. There is no doubt, as many of the speakers on our side have suggested and have indicated, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 has been rushed and is ill considered. It has been very much driven by a political agenda, not an environmental agenda. In the limited time available to consider the amendments by the member for Lyne I think they ultimately, in the design of any scheme, would warrant some serious consideration. I think there are issues there: the setting of caps by some independent authority warrants serious consideration—as suggested, something along the lines of the Reserve Bank with interest rates—and the pros and cons warrant proper consideration.

Given that the government has today rejected outright our very common-sense proposal to defer the vote on this bill until such time as we see what the world decides in Copenhagen, just a matter of months away, until such time as we see what the United States does in the finalising of their bill—and bear in mind, being the biggest emitter in the world, they will set the framework, if you like, for the approach of so many developed countries at least and the developing countries—given that there is serious work that has not been done but could be done, should be done and can be done before the Copenhagen meeting, which could also play a part, including things such as the amendments that have been moved by the member for Lyne, it is not our intention to consider myriad technical amendments either by the government or by independent members.

We will ask the government again in the other house to very seriously consider deferring the vote until the new year, when we will have the benefit of knowing so much that is going to happen internationally over the next few months. In that sense and for those reasons we will not be supporting these amendments on this occasion.

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