Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Sport and Recreation) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for the Environment and Heritage (Senator Ian Campbell) to questions without notice asked today.

It has been 10 very long years that we have put up with the Howard government frustrating and obfuscating and pretending climate change is not happening, but lately we have been watching them squirm and struggle and try to work out a way that they can accept the fact that climate change is happening and not lose face. The bottom line for this government is that the tide has come in on them on climate change, both figuratively and literally. The government are scrambling to try and find a rational policy to deal with climate change. They have got a long way to go. It is very interesting to note that legislation being debated in this place this week does not go anywhere near it. Despite the specific opportunities presented to the Howard government, none of them have been taken.

It was on only 20 August this year that the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources of the Howard government infamously told the Sunday program that he was a ‘sceptic’ about the connection between emissions and climate change. And then on 27 September, in a disgraceful statement, the Prime Minister said he was not interested in what might happen in 50 years time. What an abrogation of responsibility. What a disgraceful way to let down not only Australia but the global movement to stem climate change. It is a serious threat to Australia’s environment and our ecology. Action is needed on the ground and in legislation, and it is not happening under this government. As I mentioned, we do have a bill before us at the moment, but there is no measure that the government is prepared to support in that legislation that will actually take tangible steps towards turning the problem around.

Today we heard Senator Polley’s question about the 16 faith organisations that have now joined the call for immediate, specific and useful action to stem climate change. They have joined with the community, with business groups, with schools, with children and with the Labor Party and other political parties to call for change.

Perhaps the most obvious and glaring example of the Howard government’s weakness is an incompetent Minister for the Environment and Heritage. Senator Carr today asked a question of Senator Ian Campbell about the Bald Hills wind farm once again having to threaten court action to force the minister to do his job. Let us see what has been going on today. The minister feigned ignorance about the latest submission from the proponents of the Bald Hills wind farm. Either he is completely and utterly incompetent or he is just pretending he did not know, because on the department’s website, dated 20 September 2006, is that submission that the minister claims he knows nothing about. Does that not prove that he is completely incompetent? I seek leave to table the submission for the interest of senators.

Leave not granted.

Isn’t that a disgrace! It is there on the website. We are debating this issue. The act requires this submission to be on the website. The geniuses across the floor here today have decided not to agree to a public document being tabled which informs this debate. That sums up the incompetence that we are dealing with. This government has nowhere to go in the environmental debate. They cannot stand it when facts expose an incompetent minister in question time with just a few days to go of the federal parliament in 2006. It is no wonder it is widely expected that he is going to get the punt. What sort of dope of a minister, who did not even know that this document was on his site—