Senate debates

Tuesday, 8 November 2011

Bills

Clean Energy Bill 2011, Clean Energy (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2011, Clean Energy (Income Tax Rates Amendments) Bill 2011, Clean Energy (Household Assistance Amendments) Bill 2011, Clean Energy (Tax Laws Amendments) Bill 2011, Clean Energy (Fuel Tax Legislation Amendment) Bill 2011, Clean Energy (Customs Tariff Amendment) Bill 2011, Clean Energy (Excise Tariff Legislation Amendment) Bill 2011, Ozone Protection and Synthetic Greenhouse Gas (Import Levy) Amendment Bill 2011, Ozone Protection and Synthetic Greenhouse Gas (Manufacture Levy) Amendment Bill 2011, Clean Energy (Unit Shortfall Charge — General) Bill 2011, Clean Energy (Unit Issue Charge — Auctions) Bill 2011, Clean Energy (Unit Issue Charge — Fixed Charge) Bill 2011, Clean Energy (International Unit Surrender Charge) Bill 2011, Clean Energy (Charges — Customs) Bill 2011, Clean Energy (Charges — Excise) Bill 2011, Clean Energy Regulator Bill 2011, Climate Change Authority Bill 2011; In Committee

12:05 pm

Photo of Chris EvansChris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

This contribution by Senator Abetz again seeks to put off the judgment time; to put off the time at which the Liberal Party and the rest of the Senate get to vote on the bills. This debate has been going for 26 hours. We have had 37 parliamentary committee inquiries into the issue. This issue has been debated at great length in the parliament. The tactic from the opposition from the start has been to make the government use the guillotine. They have not engaged in the debate about the bills at all. I invite people to read their second reading and committee contributions. Their contributions are all anti-Greens bile that shows an obsession with the Greens. But they add nothing to the debate. So we have the last—or maybe the second-last, maybe the third-last—tactic to delay the vote, but nothing to contribute to the debate. The Liberal Party are purely oppositionist: they have nothing to contribute to the important public policy debate. And we have seen this again today; we just saw another contribution from Senator Abetz: nothing to contribute to the debate, bile about the Prime Minister, bile about the Greens—endless political rhetoric, nothing about the challenge of climate change, nothing about public policy solutions to that.

The parliament has had ample opportunity to debate these issues. We have canvassed this issue for many years. At one stage the Liberal Party, under former Prime Minister John Howard, would have voted for this legislation. They would have voted for this legislation because John Howard took this approach to the 2007 election. But, given how this debate has been conducted and the enormous amount of time we have committed to this debate, I move:

That the question be now put.

A division having been called and the bells being rung—

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