Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

As has been indicated by the leader, the coalition will support this issue of exemption for these bills. But I make the point that there is a reason for the government to ask for an exemption for bills. It is usually a timely sort of issue but, yet again, the facilitation by the coalition in this particular instance highlights the mismanagement, as the leader said earlier, by this 'hopeless, hapless government'. If they actually had an ability to properly run their affairs in the chamber and to properly run the government then they would not need to be bringing these bills to the chamber to make this request. Is that not reflected in their absolute inability not only to manage their chamber affairs properly but to manage their policies properly and to manage the economy properly? They have an absolute inability to manage anything properly.

In this instance we will be supporting the exemption for these particular bills. But I do question the processes the government has brought to this chamber this morning. Earlier this morning we saw debate on an earlier motion on a controversial exemption for the Clean Energy Bill. And what did we see? We saw Senator Fifield's excellent contribution, reflecting very strongly the position of the coalition with regard to this. And what did Senator Ludwig do? What did the Manager of Government Business do? He gagged debate after only one contribution—excellent though it might have been—from this side of the chamber, with no opportunity, I might add, for the Leader of the Nationals to have a contribution or for the Independents to have a contribution. Bang! He shut it down—'Controversial; don't listen to any debate.' What do we have here? Another similar motion for exemption. Debate is ensuing. There is no commentary from the other side of the chamber; in fact, everybody on the other side of the chamber has disappeared. This is exactly the same process as applied to the earlier bill. But no—everybody has disappeared now. They are quite happy for debate to run on this. It makes absolutely no sense and shows yet again this government's complete inability to properly manage chamber affairs and affairs of the government.

I return to my earlier point: with the requests for exemption, there is usually a reason. There are obviously some good reasons for these particular bills we are discussing at the moment. With the previous bills, though—colleagues, you might well be as perplexed as I am—what is the urgency? We had Senator Evans in here earlier waxing something—I would not say 'lyrical', because it was not quite lyrical; he was waxing, anyway, in quite a loud voice—and saying that the timetable has been set out for these bills coming in, that the coalition should have known about that and that it was appalling that we wanted to contribute to the debate at that point. But at no point did Minister Evans give us any reason for the urgency for the cut-off—not one.

It is interesting to note that the clean energy legislation is not due to kick off until 1 July 2012. So why are we here on 12 October 2011 being told by the government that this is a matter of urgency? It simply makes absolutely no sense—unless, of course, we look a little further. I shall refer to the excellent interim report from the Select Committee on Scrutiny of New Taxes, and I again commend Senator Cormann for the work he has done on this. I will just read this for the chamber, because I think it may well relate to the request for exemption for the earlier clean energy bills:

The international negotiation process to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions is organised around the sessions of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework on the Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Conference of the Parties meets every year to review progress and take decisions on the Convention’s implementation. Additional negotiation sessions are scheduled between each Conference of the Parties to develop the draft text that will go forward to the Conference for decision.

By no coincidence, the next meeting is in Durban, South Africa, in December. I wonder if perhaps that is not the driving factor for the request by the government today for the exemption, because nothing else makes any sense. If this legislation is not coming in till 1 July next year, what is the imperative? What is the biting imperative that we should be doing the bills in the next few weeks? That is the only reason I can see—which, of course, the government has not raised and never would and is trying to keep very quiet. Of course, there are the Greens, as you said earlier, Senator Macdonald; I will refer to your conclusion. Perhaps the Greens may have driven the government to change its mind on this. Isn't it a sad day when we have the Greens, who have 10 members of parliament out of 226, telling the government what to do? That is not democracy in any way, shape or form.

So what we have is a request for exemption for the clean energy bills so that the government and others can go to South Africa and strut their stuff on a stage—'We've got our clean energy bills through the parliament in Australia.' Do you know what this is, colleagues, from the Prime Minister? This is nothing but vanity legislation. This is vanity legislation because she wants the ability to strut her stuff on the world stage, saying, 'Look what I've achieved.' The only thing is that she has achieved absolutely nothing except creating a huge burden for the Australian people—a huge financial tax and an impost that the Australian people are going to have to carry but that is not going to change the climate one little bit. So that is the reason for all this rush. That is the reason that we have to get these bills through so terribly, terribly quickly, and that is so wrong.

Colleagues, you might remember that recently Senator Penny Wong was asked why we were actually moving to a carbon tax and why we had to have a carbon tax. Let me just remind you that the minister's reply was: 'Because the Australian people are not shirkers.' That is apparently the bones for this important legislation. That is apparently why we have to have a carbon tax: because the Australian people are not shirkers. We in this country apparently have to lead the rest of the world even though it is not going to make the slightest bit of difference to the climate—even though the carbon tax is not going to do anything to change the climate.

We have on occasion had bad legislation come through this chamber—there is no doubt about that—but usually, if it is bad legislation, at least there is an intended reason and an intended outcome from that legislation. The intended outcome from the carbon tax legislation, to change the climate, simply will not be effected by this piece of legislation, and that is what is so wrong, and that is what the Australian people understand. They understand that they are going to get hit with a massive new tax that is not going to change the climate one little bit, and that is why they are so against it. Australia emits 1.4 per cent of the world's emissions and, in spite of any protestations from the other side, you only have to look at the work from the Productivity Commission to know that no other country is doing what we are about to do with this carbon tax. That is not me; that is coming from the Productivity Commission. That is not Senator Fiona Nash; that is the Productivity Commission.

So why are we doing it? It is hard to understand why we are doing this. I can only go back to Senator Macdonald's very perspicacious comments, I believe, that the Greens have pushed the government into doing this, because something must have happened. Before the last election the Prime Minister said, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' Other colleagues have said this and we will continue to say this: you cannot get any clearer than what the Prime Minister said. You cannot get any more straightforward than a statement like that. But what do we have now? We have a government that is foisting a carbon tax on the Australian people that they do not want. If the government were honest with itself, it would know that the Australian people do not want a carbon tax. Last time I looked this was a democracy. Last time I looked, you could have your say in this country and you could have your views and your voice heard. On this particular issue, this Prime Minister has taken away from the ability of the Australian people to have a say.

At the last election, the Australian people believed the Prime Minister when she said, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' They believed her. Why wouldn't they? In this country, we are brought up to respect office and expect honesty from those holding high office. But what did we get? We got a lie. No matter which way you look at it, no matter which way you turn it, for the Prime Minister to have said, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead,' and then to give the Australian people a carbon tax under the government she leads—it is a lie. The Australian people are quite rightly looking at this government and saying, 'What did we vote for?' When we look at what this government have done, we are well on our way to an absolute dark day.

What did we see this morning from the Greens and from Bob Brown? It was extraordinary. I have listened for a number of years to Senator Bob Brown and others in the Greens chastising the chamber for the use of the guillotine and how dreadful it was—I keep going back to Senator Macdonald's excellent contribution. It is interesting to note that several years ago in relation to Work Choices Bob Brown said:

We are well on our way to a dictatorship of the executive. In fact, we are at a dictatorship of the executive. We are not on the way, we are there. The parliament is being treated with utter contempt by the Rt Hon. the Prime Minister John Howard as he deals with the decision-making process in his rooms. He just says to his ministers and minions: 'Get on with it. Change the sittings of the Senate. Reduce them to the minimum'—and we are reduced to the minimum—'but extend the length of the sitting'—so we sat last night rather than having another week's sitting—'and then guillotine any debate that gets long so that we can get out of here and not have the government under scrutiny.'

Is this the same Bob Brown? Maybe they replaced him with another Bob Brown, because the Bob Brown we know we did not hear this morning—and that is the point, colleagues. It is the Bob Brown—