Jim Turnour (Leichhardt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Ryan is sounding a bit rattled over there. He has turned a very safe Liberal seat into a marginal seat and I think he is a bit concerned about that. We have heard a bit of ranting and raving from the other side this evening about roads, but I am talking about climate change. I come from Far North Queensland and I know it is a very important issue in my electorate of Leichhardt. I also know that it is a very important issue in electorates like Ryan—inner city electorates where there are some progressive Liberals. These are the sorts of people that in the past have voted for the member for Ryan, but I know they will be looking at the current Leader of the Opposition and the extreme Right in the Liberal Party and be very concerned about his position on climate change. I think that is part of the agitation that we have seen from the member for Ryan this evening in his real concern about his political future and turning a safe Liberal seat into a marginal seat.

We need action on climate change. I have spoken about this issue twice already this year because it is a real threat in electorates like mine of Leichhardt. We have an electorate dependent on the tourism industry. Our economy and our way of life are dependent very much on our environment, on our Great Barrier Reef and on our wet tropical rainforests. We have got great coastal communities in the northern beaches of Cairns, up on the coasts of the Cape York Peninsula and in the Torres Strait that are under real threat from climate change, particularly from rising sea levels in the Torres Strait.

The Rudd government believe in action on climate change, and that stands in stark contrast to the opposition, because they are currently led by Mr Abbott, who has said, ‘climate change is crap’. Those are his words, not mine. Senator Minchin is on the record as saying that human beings have not had an impact on climate change; it is just a natural process. The climate is changing, but the science is clear that humans are having an impact. We need a policy response that is going to take real action—not the con job that we see being brought forward by the opposition.

It is important to remember that prior to Mr Abbott’s leadership of the Liberal Party, going back through Mr Turnbull, Mr Nelson and previous opposition leaders to the Howard government, there was general bipartisan agreement that an emissions trading scheme, a market based scheme, was the best way to tackle climate change. An emissions trading scheme reduces emissions by putting a price on carbon pollution. It does this by requiring emitters to buy a permit for each tonne of carbon pollution they produce. This ensures that the cost of pollution is factored into the cost of production. It is the case that the Rudd government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is the right way to go about reducing carbon pollution, because it does three things in contrast to the opposition’s scheme. Firstly, it puts a cap on carbon emissions so that we know that they will reduce over time. Secondly, it establishes a carbon market that makes the big polluters pay rather than the taxpayers. Thirdly, it uses the revenue raised from polluters to compensate those on low to middle incomes, like pensioners and working families. They are the people that our policy will compensate, enabling them to adjust to increased costs in the economy. The reality is that there is not a cost-free response to climate change.

The Rudd government’s climate change policy stands in stark contrast to Mr Abbott’s con job which will not work as it places no cap on carbon pollution, so emissions will continue to grow. The Department of Climate Change has made it clear that emissions will continue to grow under the opposition’s con job. Their plan slugs the taxpayer, not the big polluters, and will cost more than $10 billion over 10 years—and it is unfunded, which means higher taxes or cuts to services like schools and hospitals. So you have got the opposition talking about being fiscally responsible while announcing policies like their response to carbon pollution, which is basically regulations, picking winners, and systems that do not provide a direct response. We know that a market based system is the best way to tackle climate change. That is what the Rudd government is committed to, that is what the Australian people want, and that is what I know that we will deliver—if not in this parliament then, I am sure, at some stage in the future.