Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Chair. I think the arguments around consistency of approach and how these matters are handled are reasonable ones to be explored during these debates. In the end, the minister stood there and made a statement that the coalition did not support abatement through soil sequestration of carbon. I have been attempting to refute that claim, as is perfectly relevant within this debate. I have been attempting to refute that claim by highlighting that we have a consistent position of support. That position has stood the test of time, unlike the government which has flip-flopped on policy and leaders on this issue over the last year and, of course, has lied outright to the electorate over the carbon tax. Those outright lies and the flaws in the policies that the government adopted before are entirely relevant to the issues we are considering.

Let us look at the policies which the government took to the election. They took policies not for a carbon tax and not for an ETS; instead, they took policies for a cash-for-clunkers scheme and a citizen's assembly on climate change. Remember those two beauties? They were ideas of this government. Whatever happened to them? We worked out that the only citizen's assembly Ms Gillard needs is her weekly meeting with Senator Milne's leader, Senator Bob Brown, and we worked out that cash-for-clunkers was likely to be as disastrous a public policy as the home insulation scheme or the green loans scheme, both of which were other flawed policies in this area of climate change policy. So why is it that we are spending a long period debating this issue?