Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Another day, another stunt by those on the other side. I have to say that I think the people out there in voter land are getting a bit tired of it so, as far as I am concerned, bring it on. The more you do it, the more you show how unstatesmanlike your leader is and how you are just a party of nay-sayers and negativity. You have taken opposition pretty hard—I understand that—but, by crikey, the way you are all behaving is abysmal. We have seen this scare campaign before. It is the same campaign we saw about jobs during the global financial crisis, where Mr Hockey said that, under Labor, 300,000 Australians were going to lose their jobs in its first term. What happened? In fact, more than 700,000 more Australians are in jobs today than when the government took office, despite the impact of the global financial crisis.

I cannot help but feel a sense of irony when those opposite, including Senator Fifield, decide to lecture us on taking a consistent position. They are the party of short memories. I mean, this is the coalition that in 2007 went to the Australian people with a policy of implementing an emissions trading scheme. In fact, the singular event that dismantled the bipartisan policy of putting a price on carbon was the election of Tony Abbott as Leader of the Opposition. The Liberal-National coalition have come a long way under Mr Abbott—a long way to the right, that is. If there is any doubt now in the minds of the Australian people that Tony Abbott's motive is to prevent action on climate change, then let me put it to rest. Let us examine the evidence bit by bit.

Exhibit 1 is the manner of Mr Abbott's ascension to the leadership. Let us not forget that Mr Abbott was elected to the opposition leadership on a platform of opposing action on climate change. He rolled Malcolm Turnbull for one reason and one reason only: the then Leader of the Opposition had finally come to an agreement with the government on an emissions trading scheme. Mr Abbott won that ballot by one vote, and now a deathly silence has fallen over those in the ranks of the coalition who supported an ETS and supported putting a price on carbon emissions. But the fact that Mr Abbott won that ballot so narrowly indicates a few things to me: (1) that most members and senators in this parliament support putting a price on carbon; (2) that the opposition is clearly divided on this issue; and (3) that those in the opposition who supported putting a price on carbon in late 2009 are too cowardly to speak out. Exhibit No. 2 in the evidence that Mr Abbott opposes climate change action is his denial of the science of climate change itself. In July 2009 on the 7.30 Report Mr Abbott said:

I am, as you know, hugely unconvinced by the so-called settled science on climate change.

This was followed by a statement in October 2009 at a town hall meeting when he described the argument that human activities were causing climate change as 'absolute crap'. In December 2009 on 2GB he made the astonishingly ill-informed statement that the world's warming had stopped over the last decade, for which he was rebuked by many reputable climate scientists. In June 2010 he told 2GB's Alan Jones that the science on climate change was 'not as certain as many people say'.