Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is interesting that the urgency motion starts off with the need for the Prime Minister to attend the United Nations Climate Summit in 2014. Given that there are myriad challenges that face a Prime Minister of a country at any one time—and we know that there is a challenge facing this country and the greater world at the moment—I would have thought the fact that the Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, was attending this summit sent a strong signal.

She is the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party. She is a very senior person in the government; she is the Minister for Foreign Affairs. The fact that she is already in that part of the world and we did not need to send another person over there sends a strong signal to those attending the conference that Australia takes its responsibility in this space very seriously.

I would like to put on the record at the outset that the Australian government is very supportive of the initiatives of the United Nations Secretary-General to work towards practical solutions with climate action. We are firmly committed to taking practical action to reduce emissions, both at home and abroad. We have a responsibility not only to deal with the emissions that occur in Australia but to encourage those strong overseas emitters to see the sense and the benefit of reducing their emissions as well. As you would know, Mr Acting Deputy President Seselja, Australia is a very small economy and some of the challenges of the larger economies are going to deliver significantly greater results if we are able to reduce the emissions in some of the much larger industrial countries around the world.

Australia has made a commitment to our targets for 2020. Obviously it would be fantastic if our targets were able to be accelerated or increased but we certainly have made a strong commitment to those targets. We have also made a strong financial commitment to the Emissions Reduction Fund of $2.55 billion. This government is taking its role and responsibility in this space very seriously.

The thing that really amazes me is that we stand up here again today and we are not necessarily debating whether we support that there is an issue that needs to be addressed. What we are actually debating is how we intend to deal with it and how we intend to address it. I find it quite distressing that instead of just accepting that the Australian public, on 7 September 2013, did not like the emissions reduction mechanism that the Greens forced on the Labor Party to introduce, the carbon tax. If they just accept that that is not how we want to deal with this particular issue, we could sit down and have some sort of constructive debate about what we should be doing instead of carrying on and debating the merits of climate change time and time again. We do not disagree that we need to take action in this space. So why are we standing in this chamber day after day debating the issues of climate change instead of debating the issues about how best to deliver a response to the issues that we are confronting as a nation and as a world in this space without impacting negatively on our businesses?

We heard through the debate on the carbon tax repeal legislation of companies that were having significant impacts on their businesses, some so significant that they moved their businesses offshore to countries whose emissions reputations and records are much worse than Australia's have ever been. We saw that happen. We also saw the cost of living go up for everyday Australians. We had a carbon tax that basically did not work. It cost a whole heap of money, it caused a whole heap of grief, it damaged a whole heap of sectors of our economy and it did not really work. It really did little more than increase the cost of doing business at the same time reducing competitiveness.

So what the coalition is seeking to do by the changes that we are making is to put in place something that will not just achieve the outcome but that will do so through measures that are not going to send our country broke.