Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

Not only is the member for Gippsland out of touch with his own community but he does not have a clue about parliamentary procedures. Why doesn't he go off to a training program, actually learn something and engage with his community?

I was also in Whyalla. I mention Whyalla because the Leader of the Opposition went there to give them the rosy news that they were going to be wiped off the face of the earth when the climate change package came in, and yet when we went there we were shown opportunities in terms of solar, rare earths and a green-grid strategy in which they were committed to finding an additional 1,300 jobs if those projects come off. That is hardly wiping them off the map; that is expanding their economic footprint on the map.

As far as the Leader of the Opposition is concerned—talking about local government having their prices and things put up—I also went to Wagga during the break and announced an initiative with the Wagga council where, in conjunction with the Low Carbon Australia initiative, they were funding, with up-front, low-interest loans, initiatives to lower the energy footprint of the council. That is a council that sees the need to keep the energy costs down because, if they do not, it will transfer into higher rate bases. They are working with initiatives that the government is funding to help them lower that footprint. They know it, they get it and they are doing it. The only people who do not get it in this chamber are those who sit opposite. When it comes to the carbon pricing initiative we have got bipartisan support in this chamber for what we are trying to achieve. You would not believe it from the misrepresentations, untruths and fear that get spouted from the other side, but both major political parties have a commitment to lowering greenhouse emissions by five per cent by the year 2020. In other words, we agree on the what. The difference is we disagree on the how. The proposal that has been put forward from the other side has been ridiculed by any objective observer that you ask because it is costly, because it does not work and because it actually puts a huge cost on households. In fact, as the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency indicated the other day, it is a cost per household of $1,300 a year. Yet they are talking to us about cost-of-living pressures.

Before the last election the member for Goldstein was saying that the opposition's proposal, which it does not even talk about these days, would take Hazelwood in Victoria out of the equation. However, when the Leader of the Opposition went down there and confronted the Latrobe Valley workers he said, 'Oh no, we're not closing Hazelwood.' So how are they going to implement the policy that they turn against as soon as they come to another audience? The Leader of the Opposition is the chameleon of Australian politics. With every audience he speaks to he changes his spots and he changes his language. He says what he thinks they want to hear but none of it is consistent. He is caught out on climate change wherever he goes.

We are committed to achieving that five per cent reduction and we have the package of measures that will help us do it. That is why all of those community forums I have talked about have engaged in the discussion, because they have wanted to hear the package of measures that we have available to help them do it. This is also an interesting contrast because when the former Kennett government in Victoria privatised the Victorian electricity industry it had no assistance package to help people make the transition. The Liberal Party does not believe in assistance packages. It is even worse, because the other day when the current Premier of Victoria, Ted Baillieu, put out that shonky report to show that our package would cost jobs, when in fact the analysis even indicated there would be an increase in jobs, he ignored the assistance package that we had put in place. The Liberal Party does not believe in assistance packages and when we announce ours it wants to ignore it. What sort of honesty is that, Mr Speaker? What sort of commitment to leadership is it that they would have you believe that they could give? What sort of leadership is it where, in the face of all these massive challenges to us as an economy in transition, having to make the structural changes and face up to the important challenges, its view is that you do it on your own. That is not the Labor view, Mr Speaker, and it never has been. Our view is that we are better off understanding the challenges ahead of us and seeing them as opportunities but developing the assistance packages that are going to help us get there.

One of the other important things that comes from this package—and I would have thought this was important to the National Party because it affects farmers—is that farmers can be the big winners out of this climate change package because the tax does not apply to them in the first place. In other words, they do not pay it. The second thing is that they get the benefit in two ways. They get the benefit because we have significant assistance for them on carbon farming, which is not replacing other farm activities but enhancing them. In its simplest form—and I saw this down at Mount Gambier when I was there a couple of weeks ago—it is biological farming to enrich light, sandy soil by trapping the carbon in the soil. This makes that soil more resilient, particularly in drought. It retains water better and it holds more nutrients. In other words, it lifts the productivity of the industry base that is agriculture. And if that can be measured, and we believe it can, they can also trade it. That is what a market is.

The greatest irony in this debate is that when it comes to creative solutions to the challenge of climate change it is the Labor Party that is advocating the market and it is the Liberal Party that is advocating direct intervention. Robert Menzies would be turning in his grave today if he were listening to this rabble advocating its approach. The market works because the market rewards better behaviour. It rewards cleaner energy options. It rewards cleaner fuels over dirtier fuels. This is where Australia can play at its strengths, but it will not realise those strengths unless it has a market that reflects those comparisons. It is for that reason that Australia has to take an important lead in influencing the shape of that market, a market that reflects good behaviour, smarter practices in agriculture and cleaner energy options over dirtier energy options. That is how we should be doing this.

When I was Minister for Trade those who sat on the other side were always saying, 'Do your best, Minister, in terms of opening the markets.' Here we have the opportunity to have an influence in the newest market of the lot and they are saying: 'Ignore it. We don't want more markets. We don't want open markets. We want to turn on our own traditions because we want to run a grubby, negative fear campaign. We haven't got any ideas. Our way back to office is to run the fear campaign, play to all the people's worst prejudices, play to their fears, and rather than give hope and opportunity, give them fear.' We are the party of opportunity and we will succeed.

See this speech in context