Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Finance and Administration (Senator Minchin) and the Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation (Senator Abetz) to questions without notice asked by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (Senator Evans) and Senators Wong and Lundy today relating to climate change.

Over the last few weeks and in question time today we have had yet more examples of the innate political opportunism of the Howard government. We are seeing a gradual conversion for political purposes from the government as climate change sceptics to the government as pretend environmentalists. We are seeing a pale green hue suddenly being cast across the treasury bench, not because the government actually believe that climate change is an issue to be addressed but because they understand that Australians believe that climate change is an issue that needs to be tackled and they reckon they had better get onboard in time for the election. That is what all the positioning and all the announcements we have seen over the last few weeks are about and that is what the answers given today by Senator Abetz and Senator Minchin demonstrate.

There is of course a bit of resistance because we know that on the government side there are people who are deeply against a great many issues that Labor and environmentalists have been raising for some time—and we saw Senator Abetz still not being able to help himself, frothing at the mouth and calling people extremists. We also know of course that Senator Minchin is concerned about the fact that policies have been plucked out of the air. We know—and in question time today he failed when given two opportunities to indicate this—that there are real questions about the extent to which the Department of Finance and Administration was even involved in the costings associated with the great water plan that the Prime Minister announced. The spending of $10 billion of taxpayers’ money is announced, and now it appears that the government cannot provide detailed costings.

The government has come up with a range of excuses. The most recent one prior to question time was the Treasurer saying, ‘We cannot provide the details till the states have signed up.’ This of course is a nonsense. If you provide the aggregate figure, you must have some indication of what the detailed figures making up that aggregate are. More importantly, that demonstrates that this is simply another political thought bubble. It is a political mechanism to make it look as if the government is actually serious about tackling our water crisis and serious about contributing to the global challenge of tackling climate change. The government is playing catch-up politics. It has suddenly realised that the electorate believes this is a major issue and it realises it has to play catch-up.

The previous position of the government, as we know, was that they were climate change sceptics. Senator Lundy, who may well refer to this again, pointed out that Senator Abetz has previously referred to climate change in terms of its challenge to biodiversity as being:

… [an] unclear challenge which climate change may or may not pose to our biodiversity in 100 years time.

That is a pretty equivocal statement. It is hardly an unequivocal indication that you understand the long-term threat to this nation’s security and this nation’s prosperity as a result of global warming and climate change. It is hardly an unequivocal statement, but he has to run the line because the government have worked out that they have to at least turn pale green and indicate to the electorate that they actually care about these issues and are prepared to do something about them.

We also all remember—last year I think it was—the then Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, who I notice has not been participating in this debate much, saying in relation to the Al Gore movie, which was an important and significant international prompter of global consciousness around environmental issues and in particular climate change, that it was ‘good entertainment and nothing else’. That is really indicative of what lies at the heart of the thinking of those on the government benches. Many of them share these views; they simply know that they have to respond politically.

The Prime Minister is a very clever politician, and the water fund is a clever announcement, but it is not an announcement that has been well considered previously—nor have the costings been carefully considered. This is a political fix that the government has put in place. It may well be worthy, but the fact that the costings were ill prepared demonstrates that the government has come late to the party.

I also want to comment briefly, in the time remaining, on the Prime Minister now softening his position in relation to an emissions trading regime. We saw the Prime Minister yesterday say:

No, I think we have to examine carbon pricing.

It is a very great step from the harsh words that other government ministers have uttered previously—and, may I say, quite different from the position that Senator Minchin took today. The reality is that the Prime Minister is softening his position in relation to emissions trading, not because he believes in it but because he thinks he has to. (Time expired)