Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We are talking about 20 per cent and it is pertinent that Senator Barnett got up and drew our attention to it. The amendment I am speaking of is one moved by Senators Cormann, Cash, Back, Eggleston and Adams. Apparently they have sheared off from the coalition. Senator Barnett is still there, so far as we know. We will wait and see what happens when this amendment comes up but, with the way the coalition is, I could not predict from him being there tonight that he is going to be there tomorrow. There have been more coalition members in the corridors tonight than there have been in the chamber. Talk about climate change—there is one thing moving faster than climate change in this parliament and it is the consideration of the coalition. We are seeing a different prescription every hour of the day.

It is very important that we understand what is happening here. Climate change is deeply changing the politics of Australia. I predict a very different future for this coalition, who were in office for all those years in the last half century. On the issues of how deeply we should be attacking this problem—such as what is contained in the very amendment before us—it is difficult for the Greens to say, ‘Yes, we’ll put the limit at 25, but we’re going to call it a negative on 20 per cent.’ We have thought deeply about that. That has been discussed at great length in our party room. We have had the advice from a whole range of scientific and economic experts on this. But, when it comes to the coalition, it does not know how it is going to handle a climate emergency because it has always based its policies on capital and money.

What the Greens are putting forward through our amendments is a prescription for a healthy economy into the future—a la Sir Nicholas Stern, former World Bank chief economist and advisor to the Blair government, who came to Australia and made it very clear that those economies which move in the green direction are going to be the healthiest economies in the world in the decades to come. Here are the Greens advocating economic health and wellbeing into the future, as the coalition—which once held a banner on that—fractures and does not know where it is going. I thank Senator Xenophon for this amendment. It is a difficult one, Senator Xenophon. We are not going to support it, but we congratulate you for putting that alternative before the chamber. We will be very interested to see which components of the opposition, if any, give it support. The Greens will be united on this. I could not guess where the coalition will be voting.