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

I am very happy to use Senator Barnaby Joyce’s title and remind him that it is the one thing that will defend him against the oncoming onslaught the National Party is going to get from the Greens. By the way, let me tell my colleagues to the right here that the Greens have overtaken the National Party in voter support right across rural and regional Australia, and that is because the people out there know what is happening to their land and they know who is actually now defending the farmers and the farmers’ interests in this country—it is the Greens, while the National Party has gone holus-bolus across to the miners. Mitch Hooke has more influence on their policy than the honourable Senator Barnaby Joyce. I have not got a title to put in front of Mitch Hooke that might be presentable to you, Madam Acting Deputy President, in this Senate. This is the National Party that sold out on the bush and the tax it is going to put on the bush is accelerating climate change, loss of rainfall, drying out of the atmosphere, worse bushfires and sea level rises. That is the tax of this coalition, which has handed across leadership at least in this Senate to the National Party as of yesterday.

What about the hundreds of jobs and the millions of dollars of investment in Australia’s ski fields? They are already being lost. We are already seeing the exodus of skiers from Australia as the ski fields cannot provide what they used to just a decade or two ago because climate change is playing its wrecking role on the economy. It is another tax from the National Party and the Abbott led coalition on the people of Australia, and it is not just a tax in monetary terms but a tax on jobs, a tax on lifestyle, a tax on the environment and a tax on security in the future. That is the tax that we will not hear about from the honourable Senator Barnaby Joyce, but I can tell you that I will be in Queensland telling the people about this high-taxing National Party that wants to tax every area of living, not just your pockets but your lifestyle, your security and your jobs through inaction and studied reaction to climate change—a tax that is simply going to line the pockets of the polluters in the years ahead.

In leading this debate, the honourable minister said to the Senate that we should and can do better, we should not fall short and we must take responsibility here and now. I say to the honourable minister: we agree. We should not fall short, as this legislation does. We should not be going for a five per cent target when a 25 per cent minimum is what is required. We should be reorienting this nation’s economy to the clean green future that is going to see it leading rather than being held back in the industrialised centuries of the past. We should be ensuring, as Germany has done, that we regulate this economy so that everybody pays their due but the polluters in particular are not rewarded, as this legislation will do.

While we did not get the figures out of the government in the committee stage, there are well over $100 billion of rewards to the polluters over the coming decade. We have locked in targets that cannot be altered from five per cent without a constitutional challenge, which would take billions more out of the pockets of Australians—talk about taxes—and given to the coalminers and the polluters in the coming decades. Why would the Greens go into a Faustian bargain that the government made through deliberation under the pressure of the big polluters? If it is found, as we who listen to the common-sense science around this planet have suggested it will be, that climate change is going to impact on the world in a way that requires we go not just to 25 per cent but 40 per cent in the next decade, why would we lock the people of Australia into legislation which says that under those conditions the polluters will be able to sue the Commonwealth for billions more—money which will then not available for schools, for hospitals, for fast, efficient and clean transport, for job creation and for making this country the renewable leader in the world?

At the end of the day, we have to face a double reality. This nation is already being impacted upon by disastrous bushfires, more frequent and strengthening cyclones, sea level rises, drying out of its agricultural lands and increased storm damage to its cities because of climate change. It is paying a very big tax indeed and it is being robbed of hope in the future by the Luddites. The head-in-the-sand attitude that is exemplified by this Abbott opposition is only going to get worse as we hear the tub-thumping from the deniers and sceptics of the opposition in the coming months.

We do not believe there should be a double-dissolution election if this legislation fails to pass this parliament. We believe the government should run its full term, but we Greens are in here to act on common sense and a responsible response to the challenge of climate change. We proudly do that. We will take that to the people of Australia. We will take that to the people of Higgins and Bradfield this weekend. We believe the people of Australia have more common sense than there is on the opposition benches when it comes to climate change, and we will support that common sense. (Time expired)