Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to participate in this MPI debate today. Here we are once again with the opposition attempting to distract Australians from the fact that they have no plan to tackle climate change. Even if they did, they are so divided as a party they could not even find the same song sheet to sing off, let alone sing in unison. We can have endless debates about the Prime Minister’s words prior to the election. When people watch what the Prime Minister has said, comprehend what she has said—which obviously people opposite me are having difficulty doing—and see how she explained herself so well last week on the ABC show Q&A, then they will begin to understand that the climate has changed not only outside but inside this parliament. What we are now dealing with is a minority parliament in the House of Representatives and a Senate in which this government does not have the numbers to pass legislation that it would like to without negotiating with other parties in this parliament, without sitting down and doing the hard yards and getting people around a table and negotiating an outcome.

People opposite should realise that fact—although they probably do not. I remember a time in this parliament when those opposite could tick and flick anything through the House of Representatives and tick and flick anything through the Senate because they had such a vast majority in both houses and there was very little or no scrutiny of legislation. There was no accountability at any time by that government. However, in this political climate in this country and at this point in time, we have a Prime Minister who is a very, very good negotiator, a very good listener and a very good person at being able to compromise our position while, at the same time, getting the end result. We have proven to the Australian people that we are a party that accepts climate change, that is prepared to tackle climate change and that is prepared to make long-term structural reform so that climate change can be tackled and addressed in this country—unlike the people opposite.

We know, everyone knows, that the opposition are not serious about climate change. We know that the opposition have wrecked plans to tackle climate change before and that they will continue to wreck them again. I do not think the Australian public is even sure that the Leader of the Opposition believes in climate change. He has had seven positions on climate change in two years. He cannot make up his mind whether it is real or not real. He cannot make up his mind whether he is going to accept it or not accept it. He cannot make up his mind if he is going to deal with it or not deal with it. That is the real issue here. We can have MPI after MPI every single day in this place and debate this issue endlessly. On this side of the chamber, Labor Party politicians are happy to take you on every single, solitary day. At every minute of every hour, we are more than happy to defend the action that we are taking on climate change. If we look at last Thursday, Tony Abbott made three strikes in three minutes.