Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the motion. It is worth recalling that we are here because scientists are telling us we have a limited time within which to stop sending polluting CO2 and other gases like methane into the atmosphere. We have a limited carbon budget—mere decades left within which to spend it. A carbon price is not going to be a cure-all. We are going to need a range of government initiatives to tackle climate change. We are going to need a significant renewable energy target, a feed-in tariff. We are going to need Commonwealth investment in a renewable energy grid.

I am less sanguine about the market than the members in the government who seem to believe it will be a cure-all. The irony always struck me, when it came to the financial crisis, that the Labor government was prepared to rediscover its inner Keynesianism, yet when it comes to a climate crisis they are not. I do hope we get to a point somewhere in the not too distant future where we say that we treat the planet with the same courtesy with which we treat a merchant bank and make the same level of funds available to it. We would then be a lot further down the road of tackling climate change.

It is also worth recalling that the agreement across Labor and the coalition of the very small target of five per cent will go nowhere near what is necessary. But because of the urgency of the challenge, we have to put all shoulders to the wheel, to do everything we possibly can to address the challenge. That means, especially in the context of this parliament, looking for those areas where we can find some room for agreement rather than accentuating where we disagree. Part of that, as a starting point, means being honest about what a carbon price is.

Up until now we have presumed that we can continue to put pollution into the atmosphere and treat the atmosphere as free. In the same way that pollution gets put into a river and one presumes that there are no associated externalities, and there are laws to fix it, so too are we addressing the very real problem that putting pollution into the atmosphere has a consequence. The purpose of a carbon price is to say that those big polluters who put pollution into the atmosphere are the ones who should pay. If they choose to pass some of that price down to consumers, there should be mechanisms to redress it. You will recall that one of the reasons the Greens were unable to support the previous Labor scheme was that not enough of the compensation went to low-income households. That will be very clearly at the forefront of the minds of the members of the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee as we work through the outstanding issues.

We have also seen from the Leader of the Opposition a manufactured scare campaign. He has moved breathlessly from saying that climate change is crap to quoting the history of climate change according to One Nation, to making up figures about price impact. It is the manufactured scare campaign which we have seen before from the likes of big tobacco and the big miners. We are going to see it again from the big polluters and the opposition working hand in glove. Just as the billionaires took to the streets of Perth for their Rolex revolution, so too this time are we going to see polluters passing themselves off as proletarians being very hard done by. Increasingly these shrill comments are going to fall on deaf ears. The Leader of the Opposition is going to show himself as the prize fighter who suffers the rope-a-dope, who goes far too early and punches far too hard. Increasingly, members of the community are realising that, if we do not want to be spending an enormous proportion of our GDP in dealing with the impacts of climate change on our children’s future, if we want to save the Great Barrier Reef and all the economy and tourism which flows from it, if we want to make sure there is enough water left in the Murray-Darling, then the time to act is now.

So I say to everyone out in the community, whichever way you voted at the last election, if you want a price on pollution, this is your opportunity to have an impact. I applaud those already out in the debate, from Origin Energy calling for a $25 per tonne price to the likes of the Climate Institute, which the member for Throsby commended earlier, saying that with a $45 a tonne carbon price we will see almost 8,000 more permanent jobs and 26,000 more temporary jobs.

The Greens, through the confidential process of the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee, will put our view about what the price should be, but I say to everyone who is concerned about climate change: whichever way you voted at the last election, now is your time to stand up against the confected outrage that we have seen over the last few days, to stand up in your communities and explain to your neighbours why a price on pollution is necessary and stand up in the press and on the airwaves to speak out for what you believe the appropriate carbon price should be.

18:59:40

The Greens, through the confidential process of the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee, will put our view about what the price should be, but I say to everyone who is concerned about climate change: whichever way you voted at the last election, now is your time to stand up against the confected outrage that we have seen over the last few days, to stand up in your communities and explain to your neighbours why a price on pollution is necessary, and to stand up in the press and on the airwaves to speak out for what you believe the appropriate carbon price should be.

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