Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is quite obvious that we are heading towards the debate on the emissions trading scheme—one of a range of possible carbon pollution reduction schemes but one that is completely ridiculous for our nation at this point in time. That debate will be one of the biggest debates that has ever been held in this chamber. That goes without saying. You would have to have been living under a rock to think that that debate is not going to be one of our most hard-fought debates. So it is prudent to clear the decks of other issues prior to the winter break and to go out and find the other bills that we can get through so as not to unduly put at risk things that do not need to be collateral damage in this debate.

You could start with the Rural Adjustment Amendment Bill 2009. This bill is to allow the National Rural Advisory Council to be appointed for a third term. It is a small, non-controversial matter. We could get through it. It is easy. We could get that one out of the way straight away. If we do not, then that body will be basically left without the capacity to continue to operate. Then what do we do? We should not be affecting those people, because they have an extremely important job to do. They are out there looking after the crisis in rural Australia, especially the people who are still affected by the drought, and trying to restructure things. It is something that we could be dealing with right now, in an expedient way, and clearing the decks of it. There is a tax laws amendment bill which concerns, so I am led to believe, overseas employment. That bill should be dealt with now, as should the Health Workforce Australia Bill 2009.

We all know that, as soon as this ETS debate starts, it is going to be hard-fought and bitter and go on for days and days. We have to allow the Australian people every possible chance to understand the full ramifications of what this ETS means. The Labor Party is putting forward the idea that the only form of carbon pollution reduction scheme is their ETS. Well, there is actually a multiplicity of forms of carbon pollution reduction scheme, of which their emissions trading scheme is a very peculiar and distinct subset.

If you look at that Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, the debate we are going to have is going to be about the capacity of Australia to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, in the air we breathe, by 0.0000000798. This is obviously a ridiculous place for Australia to take itself in the middle of a global economic recession. That is the reason there is going to be so much fervour in the fight over this, because we are trying to make sure that the costs that will be passed on to people are not passed on for the sake of a mere gesture—a political gesture with no effect on the global climate but with an absolutely dramatic and detrimental effect on the economy of regional Australia, on farmers, on coalminers and on all the people who are going to be dragged into this gesture-like piece of politics that will destroy regional communities and take away the capacity of people to work with confidence in the future of regional Australia. What else would you expect but an immense debate on that? However, we seem to be using this as a gun to people’s heads. We are going to delay these other bills that could be so expediently dealt with and got out of the way, and for what? For a tactic, by which we make these other people, such as those involved in rural adjustment, collateral damage.

Let us be honest: it really does not matter whether we start this debate on the ETS now or start it tomorrow; it will go all week. And it should go all week, because it is a ridiculous process for Australia to be putting forward an emissions trading scheme prior to Copenhagen and in the form that is currently before us. It would not have mattered whether we started this debate today or last Thursday. This debate will go on for as long as it takes to convince the Australian people of the ramifications of what will happen to them if they proceed with this current emissions trading scheme—what will happen to their lives and what will happen to the economics of this nation—and how completely and utterly pointless it is. Even if you have a genuine concern about the environment, it still is completely and utterly pointless.

The trap that is obviously being laid is the argument that this is a filibuster. Whatever tactics it takes to save the Australian people from this process is a genuine and a worthwhile tactic, and if that has to be to debate this for as long as possible, if the outcome protects the weakest in our economy from the effects of what is a peculiar, detrimental and environmentally pointless piece of legislation, then so be it.

It is always interesting when people throw out the word ‘filibuster’ as if it were a graver sin than murder. The first time it was actually brought into play was by Cato the Younger in 60 BC, and the whole point of it was to stop Julius Caesar making himself the tyrant of Rome. Well, that was a pretty good tactic. He failed in the end, but it was a pretty good tactic to try and bring about a just outcome. And if this debate is part of a process to get to a just outcome—and what you are trying to get in the end is justice for the weakest in our economy—then whatever tactic is available will not be precluded because of some sort of sensibility about what is appropriate in this chamber. We are allowed to debate this issue for as long as needed to give everybody a chance to bring up the issue.

We should debate it, because every day the momentum behind this issue and the belief of the Australian people is changing. More and more, they see that this is going to come and rest on their heads. It is going to rest on their heads in the way they pay their power bills. It is going to rest on their heads as some obscure, bureaucratic, Kafkaesque nightmare that will descend on those in rural places, as people start looking at how many cows you have and how much they are belching and deciding what sort of carbon tax you are going to have to pay after 2013 or 2015—when they will undoubtedly bring it in. The government always seem to be looking at the back end of the cow but not looking at the front end and understanding exactly what the true ramifications of this scheme will be.

I have been looking at some of the modelling that has been put forward. The National Australia Bank talks about the price of carbon ranging between $10 and $100. If a beast produces 70 kilograms of methane and if under the Kyoto protocol—which we have been signed up to or dragged into or made a political point about or a ploy for—we have an uplift factor of 21 on 70 kilograms; that is 1,470 kilograms of carbon. Let’s be even; let’s call it a tonne and a half of carbon per beast per year. Let’s make it halfway between the National Australia Bank’s modelling of $10 and $100 for a credit—that is, $50—multiply that by 1½, so that gives $75 per beast per year. If we look at the ramifications, we will not have a cattle industry. It will cease to exist in this nation, and for what? It is for this number—a 0.0000000798 reduction in carbon. It is absolutely manic.

BlueScope Steel has said that 25,000 people will lose their jobs. That is just one company. For what? For a 0.0000000798 reduction in carbon. This is how peculiar this whole scheme is. The only people at the end of the day who will be barracking for this scheme are people driving their 7 series BMWs in their Giorgio Armani suits who work as traders in the middle of town. They will be collecting the money from the pain that is inflicted on everybody else, because somebody somewhere has to pay. It will always be the weakest members in our economy that end up paying. We talk about the noble gesture of changing the climate when, in the authenticity of that statement, you have not got a skerrick of a hope of changing the climate from a domestic position.

This is a forerunner to the sort of debate that we are going to have. In the meantime, we can get out of our system the Rural Adjustment Amendment Bill, the Health Workforce Australia Bill, the tax law amendment bill—all these issues can be dealt with expediently. We can clear the decks of those issues and then move on to the debate in proper. I hear the Greens talking about the morals of filibustering. From a party which created the stunt last week of trying to draft off the people in the Caroona—