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

We have before the Senate the government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation which has ‘failure’ written over it in terms of tackling climate change but which is nevertheless a response to what the opposition and the last speaker have described as the greatest infrastructure change in Australia since the Second World War. The problem that confronts both the government and the opposition today is that they reached a pact which, in the centre of it, transferred $24 billion from Australians to the big polluters in compensation for their polluting activities, which are at the core of climate change threatening the planet.

In amongst this arrangement which the opposition made but is now going to vote against—in other words, the amendments to the government legislation from the coalition accepted by the government, which the coalition is now going to vote down itself—is a transfer of $6 billion from Australian households across to the big polluters. It shows the power of the coal industry, the aluminium industry, the cement industry, the logging industry and the big polluters over the two big parties in this parliament, against the interests of the average Australian.

That transfer of $6 billion from households to the big polluters, under the duress of an opposition which is now saying it is going to vote even against that, was a monumental mistake by the government, which should instead have been negotiating with the Australian Greens. We have in this legislation a suite of amendments put forward by my colleague Senator Milne on behalf of the Australian Greens which would have made this truly world-class legislation for tackling climate change. At the heart of those amendments is a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 per cent of 1990 levels come 2020. That target is set by the world scientific nous in 2009, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. What the Greens have put to this parliament is coming from what the world body of expertise is saying is appropriate action—and minimal action at that—if we are to tackle climate change.

I remind the chamber of Sir Nicholas Stern telling this parliament and this nation two years ago that, if we do not act on climate change, our children and grandchildren will pay the penalty. Sir Nicholas, who we heard again yesterday talking about the need for appropriate and proper action, has pointed out that what is required is a commitment of two per cent of gross global product to tackling dangerous climate change now and that, if we do not do this, our children and grandchildren will be facing a six to 20 per cent diversion of their wealth—shared with a much greater population on a much smaller resource base on this planet—50 or 100 years from now.

I know the Prime Minister has said that we must act for our children and our grandchildren, but the question is: do we act according to the world’s brains trust or do we act according to the pressure of the big polluters? The government chose the big polluters, and when the opposition got into the negotiating room with the government it went even further in the direction of the big polluters, against the interests of the children and grandchildren that the Prime Minister was talking about.

We contacted and spoke with the Prime Minister and the Minister for Climate Change and Water in the negotiating process, where effectively the government decided that it was going to court the coalition to come to an agreement in this parliament. It was a disastrous tactic, as we are finding out now, with a coalition overtaken by the sceptics, which is going to renege on that agreement. On 5 November, after a meeting with the minister for climate change, Senator Penny Wong, I wrote: ‘Thank you for your recent meeting to discuss ways forward with the climate change legislation. I have taken to the Australian Greens party room the government’s proposal that the Greens amendments be negotiated, except the all-important targets for greenhouse gas reduction—the government’s five to 25 per cent, the Greens’ 25 to 40 per cent. The Greens have set no equivalent precondition. The Greens position is affirmed; we are ready to negotiate the whole package but want the fundamental targets included in that negotiation. We understand that the government insists on not negotiating its targets. Nevertheless, we ask you to reconsider so that a search for reasonable compromise can be undertaken with full goodwill on both sides.’ But this government refused. It was being selective and it refused to look at the fundamental of tackling climate change, which is setting targets which the scientists tell us must be at least 25 to 40 per cent for developing countries like Australia.

At stake here is the future of this nation, which is more vulnerable to climate change than any other nation on earth and which is already experiencing damage to its economy, damage to its lifestyle and damage to its environment second to no other country on the planet except, perhaps, our neighbouring small island states, which have their whole future at stake. Isn’t it significant that when it comes to the Abbott coalition taking up this final debate on this all-important matter, more important than any other before this parliament this year, it was not Senator Nick Minchin, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, who got up to speak? It was not Senator Abetz, Senator Parry, Senator Brandis or any Liberal on the front bench. They put it across to the tub-thumping Leader of the National Party, Senator Joyce. This is Senator Joyce, who has taken his National Party from being a defender of the bush to being a defender of the big coalminers. This is Senator Joyce, who was behind—until we came to the change of leadership this week—$5 billion going from households across to the big coalminers but has now been at the forefront of scepticism and the scuttling of the agreement made between the Rudd government and the then Turnbull opposition.

The National Party now runs the coalition here in the Senate, and I note the new Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, taking up the National Party rhetoric on climate change about taxes. Let me look at the tax that the National Party, and the Liberals now following behind it under the leadership of the new, far-right Mr Abbott, will put onto the people of Australia. It is a tax that is not in the future but is being paid now. There is extreme damage to the Murray-Darling Basin and other food-producing areas of Australia. The predictions, under the current scenario of climate change, are that productivity in the Murray-Darling Basin may fall by 90 per cent this century as the climate heats up, the air dries out and the productivity is robbed from those thousands of farms in the Murray-Darling Basin. That is 128,000 jobs put on the road to elimination by this National Party leading this Liberal Party in this coalition.

The new coal—C-O-A-L—ition has its sights, through even better conditions than the government would have given with its $24 billion to the big polluters, on enhancing coalmining and coal exports. I would remind the chamber again that this is the economic reality, in Sir Nicholas Stern’s words, that the National Party and the Liberal Party refuse to face up to. Sir Nicholas Stern talked about a free market. People should pay for their actions, for the damage they do.

Let us look at the Great Barrier Reef, which is now on death row because of the National Party and the coalition. The Great Barrier Reef, on even chances, will be 90 per cent dead by mid-century due to two factors: warming of the oceans and acidification due to greenhouse gas pollution. This is the Great Barrier Reef and 63,000 jobs. There are 30,000 jobs in the whole of the coalmining industry in Australia, 75 per cent owned outside this country. There are 63,000 jobs on the Great Barrier Reef and they are jobs owned by businesses, including small businesses, largely in Queensland and also elsewhere in this country, and they are being sacrificed to a slow death by the National Party and the coalition—a $5.6 billion gem, an Australian heirloom, being put to sacrifice by this mob of sceptics.

We are now told that sea level rise is going to be twice as fast as was previously thought: 700,000 Australian households and small businesses in the main on the Australian coastline are threatened by sea level rise this century. That is the tax of this National Party and this Abbott led coalition that people are already paying and are going to pay in bigger measure in the coming decades. The ski fields of Australia are going to be eliminated this century. That is the tax of the Barnaby Joyce led National Party and the Liberals on the people of Australia.