Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Science and Water) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Ian Campbell, the Minister for the Environment and Heritage. Is the minister aware of growing acceptance in the corporate world about the need for a carbon-trading scheme at the same time as the government continues to oppose such a scheme? Wasn’t Mr Greg Paramor, the head of the property company Mirvac, making exactly this point when he noted, ‘It’s kind of funny that the corporate world has picked up on this and the government hasn’t’? Isn’t Mirvac now voluntarily working to offset its carbon emissions, in the belief that eventually the government will have to act? Aren’t many other leading businesses also considering following suit? Given that business is leaving the minister far behind and taking real action on climate change, aren’t the minister’s pompous claims about leading the world completely false?