Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

What a shambles of an argument this opposition has put up to this peculiarly worded motion that is before the Senate today—in fact, I do not even think it has been addressed by the speakers who spoke on behalf of it. One could have taken points of order continuously throughout the debate on relevance to the actual question before the chair. Rather than do that, I thought I would wait to see whether there was anything of substance which the speakers on the other side could put. Frankly, I was not disappointed: there was no substance in what they were saying.

Many of the coalition speakers’ arguments today, and indeed their spokesmen and women’s arguments in the community, remind me of a Peanuts cartoon which was published many years ago. Charlie Brown and Lucy were standing in a playground, and Charlie Brown had just been telling some people some stories, which he described as ‘little-known facts’. When Lucy asked, ‘Charlie, how do you know all these little-known facts?’ Charlie Brown put his hand up to his mouth and said, ‘I make them up’. That is what we just heard, and that is what we have been hearing from the coalition in this debate all along.

When we go to some of their spokespeople, they have been making up prices for the cost of a price on carbon for some time—making up prices. For example, Mr Hunt, on 6 January last year, said the effect of a carbon price on a family would be $1,100 a year. On Lateline on 25 February this year he said it would be $300. Mr Robb, on 27 February in the Sunday Age, was reported as saying it would be close to $1,000. Mr O’Farrell says it would be $500 for electricity. I do not know where the rest is coming from. We are hearing all sorts of stories about a price on carbon, and an effect on the community, when you cannot possibly make a calculation until you know what the actual price is—you cannot do it. They are making it up. They keep making stories up, which is part of what we know, and what the Prime Minister warned of on 24 February, when she said, ‘Get ready for it: the mother of all scare campaigns’. And that is what we are seeing from the coalition now: a plain, simple, politics 101 scare campaign, because they have nothing else to say on this issue.

We had the debate in here started by one of the greatest climate change deniers on that side of the chamber, Senator Bernardi. He has some pretty extreme views on other matters, I might say, but on the question of climate change he has the most extreme view I have heard from that side of the chamber. He actually encourages people to avoid reducing energy usage and says that energy usage is part of civilisation and we should use more! So he completely rejects the substantial consensus of the scientific community on climate change and suggests we should flout that, that we should actually make sure we emit more carbon and that it is a good thing. That is essentially what he has been saying.

Senator Troeth, to her credit, supported the ETS proposal that came through this chamber twice. She now says she does not support this, and that is her right. But at least she would look at a cogent argument and understands and accepts that we have a problem that we need to deal with. Senator Troeth, I believe, could be convinced to proceed down a path of seeking a solution, and Australia’s contribution towards a solution, to climate change; but I could not say that of Senator Bernardi, and I certainly could not say that of Senator Boswell.

Senator Boswell comes in here and talks about how we are allegedly betraying the working class. Senator Boswell voted for Work Choices. If there was a betrayal of the working class par excellence, that was it—so it is rich for him to come in here and bemoan the fate of the working class. He ought to front up to the workers in some of those mines and say, ‘Yes, I voted to remove your conditions, to cut your pay, to make your job less secure, but I really like you and I want to protect you.’ They will not believe him. I do not believe him. I do not think this chamber should believe him either.

We have a problem. The world has a problem, and Australia is a part of this globe. We have to find a solution for it. But, at the same time, we have a responsibility to try to equip our industry to deal with the emerging realities of a global approach to climate change. I recall when in this chamber a couple of years ago this government talked about assisting Toyota to manufacture a hybrid vehicle. It was roundly condemned on that side of the chamber. And all of the other measures to encourage production of more-fuel-efficient cars were roundly condemned on that side of the chamber. We now have the Camry hybrid being manufactured here. We have a new Holden vehicle manufactured here. Ford is going to manufacture a four-cylinder vehicle, although it will bring in the engines. These things were not happening before. They mean keeping jobs here in Australia. That is what this government is doing.

In the same way, dealing with the question of a carbon price is to deal with the problems that will threaten the jobs of Australian workers and our entire community, and the viability of our communities. The only thing that a responsible government can do in these circumstances is to try to find a solution. The Prime Minister came before the Australian people and said, ‘We are going to go down this path. We are going to work with the majority of the parliament—we did invite the coalition but they refused to be part of it—to try to find a solution so that we can put a price on carbon and start to address the problems that this nation will have to be part of, because it is a world problem.’ We will have to come up with something that we can implement as soon as possible and get business and industry to establish their processes to deal with this problem. Then, the better will be the chance that Australian industry will survive the problems of the next two, three, four or five decades, when the world has to address the problem of climate change by pricing carbon. One would have thought that the party of the market economy on that side of the chamber would have supported a market driven approach to problem solving in the business community. But, no, they wanted the taxpayer to pay for any solutions. Ultimately, of course, it is the community that pays the tax. So, unless they were going to vastly reduce services, we were going to see the burden—I think it was $20 billion in the next ten years—fall upon the community, as well as the establishment costs. So we have an opposition that has decided for very opportunistic reasons to oppose a proposal that is in the best interests of this nation to deal with the issue of pricing carbon.

You could not really take seriously what the Leader of the Opposition says on this issue. He has had more positions—I was going to say more positions than the Kama Sutra on this, but it is probably the wrong approach to take because it is not quite that many. But he has had a great many positions on the question—