Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Hansard source

I take this opportunity to canvass some of these matters. The Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell, is a former Manager of Government Business in the Senate. He spent a considerable amount of time in that job—in fact, some say he spent far too long in that job because the government did not have the confidence to move him from that job. I think he was in that job for six or seven years, so he would surely understand the importance of seeking to progress legislation in an orderly and timely manner at this time of year. I have no doubt that the government strategists—or what passes for strategy within this government—understand that principle. They would not have brought on at this particular time of year such a highly controversial piece of legislation, which has had so little public debate and consultation with the community, unless they understood that these are the circumstances in which governments seek to have legislation passed without proper consideration.

I am in fact quite grateful that the minister at the table is able to draw our attention to some of these questions. It is quite clear that he wants a protracted debate. It is quite clear that he wants these matters canvassed thoroughly and completely—and, if necessary, for some days—and I am only too happy to help them in that regard. It is quite clear that the minister wishes not to pursue the issues properly but to make tendentious points—which forces me to point out that the minister’s contributions are totally spurious. He makes the claim that the opposition is in the business of closing down mines. The minister understands that, in terms of the climate change trigger, we take the view that legislation of this type—409 pages of it—at this point in the 21st century ought to at least mention climate change as an issue. You would think that the government’s thinking would have advanced to a stage where the question of climate change had sufficiently registered with the geniuses who populate the government benches to be included in this legislation.

The government has failed to do what everyone else in the country is talking about, and that is to address the issue of climate change. That is what these amendments do. The government seeks to cover up its negligence and its incompetence by trying to misrepresent the opposition’s position by suggesting that, in a country which has 300 years of secure fuel supplies from coal, we would turn our back on the coal industry. The minister must think we are as stupid as he is to buy such a notion—300 years of fuel supply—that the coal industry is going to be closed down overnight, when he knows full well the opposition’s views on the question of clean coal and when he knows only too well my personal views on the work that CSIRO is undertaking and on other substantial research efforts being made within the scientific community in this country in terms of improving the efficiency and the capacity of our coal industry to respond to the whole question of the greenhouse gas challenge.

Senator Campbell has sought to propagate his ignorant and buffoonish attitudes up and down this country as if people were not awake to the sheer hypocrisy of this government and as if the public were not fully aware of the way in which this government has ducked and weaved on this issue over the last 10 years. This government has gone on its guts to the United States on these questions and moved its position according to the changes within US policy. This government has denigrated its own public servants, who as I have said on many occasions are some of the leading public servants in the world on these matters, and has vilified their work by suggesting that the whole Kyoto process is essentially a waste of space.

We know that the former environment minister did not share the current minister’s view, because Senator Hill understood the need for a climate change trigger. If Senator Campbell were to be consistent with the position taken by this government in 1999, he would be supporting these Labor amendments. On 10 December 1999 Robert Hill released a consultation paper on the possible application of a greenhouse trigger under the EPBC Act. At that time Senator Hill said that ‘introducing a greenhouse trigger would provide another measure for addressing our international responsibilities in relation to climate change and ensuring Australia meets its Kyoto target’. But this minister tries to hoodwink the public into presuming that this was never the position of the Howard government. People who know something about the issue know what complete nonsense Senator Campbell is saying. We used to have an environment minister who actually cared about the environment; we now have an environment minister strutting around the country preoccupied with playing political games with parrots and whatever device he can come up with to protect the political interests of the Liberal Party. He is not about protecting the interests of the environment.

When Senator Campbell was a Democrat, when he learnt his basic politics as a member of the Democrats, he understood the importance of these issues. But since that time he has moved somewhat across the political spectrum to the point now where he is on the extreme right of the Liberal Party. I understand that he has had some problems with Noel Crichton-Browne and a few others in the ugly faction of the right in Western Australia. He now feels he has to mouth these platitudes to try to recapture the ground they once held and thus sees the need to denigrate the work of the moderates within the Liberal Party—and, of course, Senator Hill was one of those moderates. Under the policies that are being pursued by this minister the reputation of those moderates is being destroyed.

We have an extremist government with an extremist minister pandering to the most reactionary elements of the business community in this country with the view to pretending that he has an interest in environmental questions. We have seen the appalling sight of the environment minister seeking to push the line in various committees of this parliament that somehow or another Labor is advancing a position which is anti coal because we are proposing that there should be environment protection measures—in this particular bill it is a proposal for a climate change trigger. No-one ever accused Senator Hill of being anti coal when he put up a position very similar to the one that the Labor Party is proposing now. I do not think anyone with any real understanding of the politics of this country would buy for a moment the minister’s slurs, the minister’s contemptible defamations, in terms of the Australian Labor Party’s attitude towards the coal industry; nor would anyone for a moment take the view that the Labor Party was not interested in ensuring the advancement of the coal industry to the development of clean coal. What Labor Party leaders have said time and time again is that the Labor Party, if elected, will go down the path of clean coal and renewables. It is as simple as that. The minister knows that but he is seeking to completely misrepresent Labor’s position, as he has done here tonight.

I say to the minister that, if he wants to continue this discussion, I am only too happy to oblige him. We will go round for round, pound for pound, for as long as it takes. But as a former Manager of Government Business in the Senate, the minister would understand the consequences of the actions he has taken. I am sure his colleagues, some of whom might occasionally glance at the television screen tonight while enjoying the Christmas cheer, would be very impressed with his performance. I am sure Senator Minchin would be very impressed with the sort of nonsensical, provocative and dilettante attitudes this minister is expressing.

In conclusion, we simply say that, when it comes to these matters, it is appropriate, reasonable and entirely in keeping with public sentiment that there be a simple measure included in legislation of this type that the minister should undertake an examination of projects on the basis of the merits of a particular project and should undertake an assessment in terms of the effect of climate change.