Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

The matter of public importance before the Senate is that Australia needs environmental laws that actually protect our environment, including saving native forests, critical habitat and the climate. When the MPI was first proposed, I thought immediately of a famous businessman. I'm not going to reveal his name until after I've read an important quote:

Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can't afford the risk of inaction.

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Climate change and energy use are global problems …

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We need to push ourselves to make as many reductions as possible in our own energy use first—and that takes time. But we must do this quickly—the climate will not wait for us.

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… becoming carbon neutral is only the beginning. The climate problem will not be solved by one company reducing its emissions to zero, and it won't be solved by one government acting alone.

The climate problem will not be solved without mass participation by the general public in countries around the globe.

That was Rupert Murdoch. I'm not sure it has been read by Sky News or 'Sky after dark', or if they've got the missive, but their own master has very similar views to this senator.

The traditional environmental law approach is primarily regulatory, and we are going to debate a bill, which is before the other place, that is going to attempt to recast the environmental trade-offs between mining or commercial activities—in other words, the fruits of economic liberalism—against nature herself. The bill is structured—as I have seen, although I am not completely conversant with it since it's over 1,000 pages because of the diligence of the minister and his staff. I would challenge the chamber to think about the binary nature of that. Where is the voice of nature injected in that debate? There are other approaches in other countries that take a completely different journey to solving that problem. Nature is given a role and a guardian. Before you dismiss me, Acting Deputy President, as someone at the edge of legal thinking, we give corporate personhood status to our corporations, so why does nature miss out? Where is the arbiter of what nature has to give to us for our enjoyment and endless consumption? Who speaks for her? No-one. The minister signs a missive as judge, jury and executioner.

Perhaps, when we reflect on the coming debate, we might think that we should take a completely different approach. It's happened in New Zealand and Ecuador, and other countries have taken this approach. This is not a new thought of mine. If you seek to search the archive, I have made similar comments in state parliament—but not to such a warm and receptive audience as in this Senate!