Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

The Labor Party and the Greens in this chamber cannot accept the facts. They come in here and give 15-minute speeches, repeating the same question ad nauseam, repeating the same erroneous assertions ad nauseam, and when I come in here to provide a response to the political attack points and to some of the questions which have been put, I get interrupted by point of order after point of order. Senator Lines made the point that the Howard government in 2007 supported an emissions trading scheme. That is, of course, true, but guess what? The world has changed since 2007. To put it in language you might understand, you might remember a guy called John Maynard Keynes. I know that people on the other side of the chamber are all in favour of Keynesian economics when it suits them. To use the words of John Maynard Keynes, 'When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?'

Remember when former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd went to Copenhagen? He was desperate to get the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme through the parliament before he went off on his 'Kevin 747' jumbo jet to do a deal to ensure there were carbon pricing agreements right across the world because Kevin was going to fix it. But guess what? He failed. It was very clear after Copenhagen that there was no prospect of an appropriately comprehensive global agreement to price carbon. Remember the absolutely outrageous way in which former Prime Minister Rudd described our friends from China who were also participating in that particular conference—an outrageous and completely unbecoming way for an Australian Prime Minister to refer to our friends in China? What became clear in Copenhagen was that there was no prospect of an appropriately comprehensive global agreement to price carbon. In the circumstances, we made a judgment on Australia's national interest.

In the absence of an appropriately comprehensive global agreement to price emissions in the way suggested, in the absence of any likelihood that that will change at any time in the future, you have to remember that Labor in 2008-09 was trying to say to us that the carbon price modelling was based on an assertion that the United States would have a fully-fledged emissions trading scheme, equivalent to the Australian scheme, in place by 2010. Guess what? It did not happen. Then the next modelling suggested I believe that they would have one in place in either 2015 or 2016. Guess what? It will not happen. So just accept the facts.

Accept that the facts have changed. Accept that the government made a judgment on what is in the national interest. Accept that we made a judgment that we do not want to impose sacrifices on the community, that we do not want to weaken our economy for something that does not make a difference to the environment. We can continue to go around and around in circles and continue to go through the debate which we had ad nauseam in the lead-up to the last election, on which the Australian people passed judgment. Senator Lines asked who is supporting our policy. Guess what? Here in Australia we have a very old-fashioned way to assess what policy propositions are being supported and it is called an election. There was an election in September last year. The election result was very clear. You might not like it. You might not accept it. You might be unhappy about it, but at the end of the day it is the job of the government to deliver on the commitments we made to the Australian people in the lead-up to the last election and that is what we will do.

You can give us as many 15-minute rants, repeating the same question ad nauseam to keep this debate going into next week. It will make no difference. We will not stop until this terrible carbon tax is gone. We will not stop until we have delivered the benefits to families, to pensioners and to our economy which come with scrapping this bad tax.