Mal Brough (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The last two hours have been a real insight into the future of Australian politics. We have glimpsed the future and we have just watched the past. We saw during question time that the Prime Minister did not engage in mud-slinging and having a go at individuals. Here for once was a Prime Minister at the dispatch box who, when given questions that were designed to do no more than political point scoring, actually explained politics and explained his own position. The honourable member opposite talked about gay marriage—and I know that had a lot to do with the environment and today's MPI! Well done for working it in. But the Prime Minister stood up and said, 'Yes, I have a position that's not the same as everyone on my side of politics, God forbid, and we have a way forward which we all agree on.' We saw the beginning of a new fresh approach which is not adversarial, which is not about aggression but is actually about explaining things to people.

Yes, you in the Labor party, in your partnership with the Greens, have a policy. What we have, though, with carbon emissions policy is a situation where we can actually look at two policies that have been put in place, we can compare their track records, we can contrast them and we can say what has worked and what the impacts have been. It is unlike when you go to an election, where people put up ideas and concepts and we all take them on faith and hope something will happen. With the Labor Party and their carbon tax fact, what do we know? Fact: it cost $24.15 per tonne to actually stop or reduce the carbon emissions. I ask the member opposite, when he gets up, to refute that. We know that, under the coalition's policy, which is different to yours, it cost, for exactly the same tonne of emissions, $13.95. The Labor Party is acting as if we are better off spending $24.15 buying a product which we could pay $13.95 for. I wonder why we owe so much money. I wonder why it is that we are bleeding to the tune of $93 million a day—because that is the economic rational view of the Labor Party. They get wedded to ideology and therefore they say, 'Our way or the highway,' when the reality is, as the Prime Minister pointed out at question time, that there is more than one way to deal with an issue.

We have chosen a particular path, and the proof is in the pudding. We can go back to the Labor Party and ask, 'What other effects did their policy have?' Yes, it increased the price of electricity for households and it made businesses less competitive, but it also drove a lot of our high-emitting industries offshore. It took the jobs, it took the economy and it took the tax offshore. It also took the pollution offshore to less regulated markets, which meant that that pollution still entered the one atmosphere that we have as a globe. It did not just disappear into a black hole. It is actually in our atmosphere, so the environment was not benefited, the economy was not benefited and jobs were not benefited. Why does the Labor Party persist with something that has proven to have already failed?

The broader aspect of this discussion today also turns on the issue of environmental policy and the so-called capitulation of the Prime Minister on environmental policy. He has done really well in 36 hours to capitulate on a policy. Let me just tell you something. I am going to deal with an issue dear to many of the members in this place, and that is the Great Barrier Reef. It is incredibly important to Queensland's economy and it is incredibly important to the ecology and the environment of the world. We know that. We are investing over $2 billion in the Great Barrier Reef. Like the members for Herbert and Leichhardt, the member for Dawson, who sits here, is a great champion of the Great Barrier Reef, because he has so many businesses in his electorate that use the Great Barrier Reef. We do not do deals with the Greens in order to send out environmental messages which are lies. What we deal with is fact. We have delivered for the Great Barrier Reef and we are delivering in our own electorates, with things such as the Green Army engaging people.

We are delivering a new, fresh approach to politics and that new, fresh approach to politics is: let's have a debate on ideas. Don't start slinging across the chamber about hypocrisy and point scoring, because that is yesterday. You are already being left behind. It is sad but true. So come and join the journey to the future and join with us in a debate of ideas. You will lose and you will be recognised by the Australian population for what you are.

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