Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

Or hear it! Whatever. But I think it is important, given the parliamentary secretary's contribution or response—or nonresponse, in this case—to again put on record the Labor Party's position because it is—

Senator Birmingham interjecting—

I will ask you a number of questions, Parliamentary Secretary, and perhaps—

The TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN: Order! Senator Brown, just resume your seat; you will address your remarks through the chair, and senators on both sides of the chamber will remember that under standing order 197, regardless of the fact that you may disagree with the person speaking, they have the right to be heard in silence.

I appreciate that and I will try to ignore the parliamentary secretary. One of the things I wanted to ask about was the Emissions Reduction Fund and a number of other initiatives that are planned under the Direct Action Plan. But, as I said, I think it is also very important, given some of the comments by the parliamentary secretary, to restate the Labor Party's position. We have been very clear about our position on climate change. We accept the science of climate change and we believe that something needs to be done and that something real has to be done. I personally think that the parliamentary secretary agrees with that as well.

The Labor Party believe that the most cost-efficient way to deal with carbon pollution is an emissions trading scheme. An emissions trading scheme, a market based mechanism with a legal cap on carbon pollution, is the cheapest and most effective way to reduce emissions while encouraging business. Labor accept the science and the fact that we cannot afford to leave the challenge of climate change to future generations. We know that climate change is real and that something must be done—and, as many of the contributions that have been made here tonight and on other days in this debate have said, it has to be meaningful action. It is a simple, basic logic. It is a logic that we must listen to in the interests of our children, their children and future generations of Australia and of all countries around the world.

If the government continues down this path and has its way in terms of the Direct Action Plan, history will not be kind to it. It is a government that will look foolish for ignoring the science. It is a government that has ignored the biggest problem of this century because it has lacked the courage to tackle the real issues.

Carbon pollution changes our weather and harms our environment. That is the best available science that we have. The experts agree. All the reputable scientists say it is a fact that the climate is changing and humans are accelerating that change. That is why governments from all around the world are taking action, meaningful action—and that included the previous Labor government. Labor argue that we should tackle the problem and that Australia should back itself to compete with the rest of the world by still acting responsibly for future generations. Those future generations would be proud to be able to look back on this period of history and see that Australia made a difference. Instead, they are likely to read about an isolationist Australian government that shrugged its shoulders, paid a bit of lip-service, tore up a policy that was making meaningful change and established a slush fund of billions of taxpayer dollars to hand to polluters.

The coalition, as we have heard, want to replace the clean energy laws with this dud of a policy, Direct Action, that nobody with any economic or environmental credibility thinks will work. As I have indicated, they want to—