Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The President has received a letter from Senator Fifield proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion, namely:

The Gillard Government’s continued failure to accept responsibility for its broken promise not to introduce a carbon tax.

I call upon those senators who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

I understand that informal arrangements have been made to allocate specific times to each of the speakers in today’s debate. With the concurrence of the Senate, I shall ask the clerks to set the clock accordingly.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to lead the debate on this outstanding submission of Senator Fifield’s in relation to the matter of public importance debate, which is to focus on and highlight the Gillard government’s continued failure to accept responsibility for its broken promise not to introduce a carbon tax. This is the most crucial of debates taking place in this parliament and in the nation at this present time. It is crucial because it will go to the very heart of livelihoods and impact on every Australian family and every Australian household not just next year or the year after but for many, many years to come. It will place a burden on every Australian family and every Australian household if this government gets its way in implementing this broken promise for many, many years to come.

If we are talking about broken promises, it is worth going back and looking at some of the words of the Prime Minister. I would like to start with the Prime Minister on the very topic of broken promises. The Prime Minister back in March of 2009, before she was Prime Minister, stated:

I think when you go to an election and you give a promise to the Australian people, you should do everything in your power to honour that promise.

I am not sure what happened to that willingness and desire to do everything in her power to honour that promise. The Prime Minister in this case appears to have done everything in her power and everything possible to break that promise.

David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Feeney interjecting—

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Feeney wants to talk about the election outcome. He knows that that is just a furphy. He knows full well, like everybody else, that the Australian Greens were always going to hold the balance of power in this chamber in this new parliament and that this government or the opposition, whoever won the election, was going to have to deal with that reality. The Prime Minister knew it, everybody knew it, it was clear for all to see and she should have realised that. If she thought she could not work with them on whatever it is that she claims to have wanted, which during the election campaign was little more than the great talkfest of the citizens’ assembly, then she should not have made the promise that she did make. Back when she was education minister she stated:

... if we want to debate promises made and promises delivered bring it on is what I say.

Well, she has that wish now in her life as Prime Minister. We will debate promises made and promises broken by this government, and we will debate them time and time and time again because of their impact on the Australian people. We debate them because the promises were so categorical and clear cut. There could be no more clear-cut statement made in the election campaign than that of the Prime Minister on the Channel 10 news, five days before the election, staring down the barrel of that television camera when she said:

There will be no carbon tax under the Government I lead.

She followed it up a couple of days later in the Australian, a day before the election, with a big headline and big statement, which was even more concise and with even fewer words:

I rule out a carbon tax.

We all know that politicians sometimes find ways to nuance their words and to put their words in terms that leave a little bit of wriggle room. The Prime Minister left no wriggle room. The Prime Minister gave no nuance. The Prime Minister made clear-cut categorical promises to the Australian people, promises she now proposes to break.

As if this misleading was not bad enough, as if this mistruth was not bad enough going into the election, in trying to sell this carbon tax now and its impact on every Australian family, the government is piling mistruth upon mistruth. It seems every government minister is now going out there into the community trying to run some type of con job to convince people that this carbon tax will not have the impact that anybody who gives it a moment’s thought realises that it will.

Let us take Mr Crean, the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government who said the other day that:

We will return all of the money raised to people through the tax mechanism.

He was suggesting very clearly in his statement that all the money raised by the carbon tax would go back to Australian families, Australian households and Australian people. We know that is not true because today in question time Senator Wong stood up and said, ‘Well, some of it will go to industry and some of it will go to climate change measures’—obviously things that Senator Milne has on her wish list. In fact, at best 50 per cent of the funds raised by this carbon tax will somehow, in a great wealth redistribution plan, be churned back around and given back to parts of the Australian community.

Potentially most households will end up worse off under this plan. We know that because much of the modelling was already done in the CPRS debate. We know that the type of prices that Professor Garnaut talked about in his paper released last week—the paper that is clearly providing the template for where the government will go, the paper that is all anybody has to work on because the government refuses to release any details themselves—will put up the price of electricity by $300 per year per household at the start of this process. We know there will potentially be an impact on petrol prices of 6c to 7c per litre every time you fill up the car. We know that this will flow through everything in the Australian economy, everything that every Australian does. Every time they go out of their home, every time they do virtually anything within their home, they will pay a price for this.

It is not just Mr Crean who is laying mistruths upon mistruths in this. It is also the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Mr Combet, when he proclaimed that he ‘does not expect any significant impact on the overall cost of living out of our carbon price.’ That is quite clearly untrue. Firstly, if there was no impact on the cost of living, why do you need a compensation mechanism? Secondly, it is quite clear that the compensation mechanism will only go to some Australian households and that many millions of them will be left worse off, that there will be a significant impact. So it is mistruth after mistruth built, of course, upon the Prime Minister’s grandest mistruth of them all.

What are we going to see from this government as this debate progresses? We will see that they will dig deep into the pockets of taxpayers once again to fund some government advertising to try to get them out of this, just as they did with the mining tax. We are going to see it come around again on a climate change campaign or a carbon tax campaign. Do not shake your head, Senator Feeney. You, of course, will probably be the architect of this advertising campaign, given your background. You will be the one sitting there making sure that its political messages are crafted because every dollar you spend as a government on this carbon tax campaign will be politically motivated. It will be entirely politically motivated. We will see at least a $30 million campaign, if not more, coming to taxpayers.

But what did the Prime Minister once have to say about government funded advertising? She said:

Labor will end the abuse of taxpayer funded government advertising.

She put that clearly in 2007 running into the election campaign that year. They were her words then. She said:

I am always worried when the Government takes taxpayers’ money and uses it for its own politics, to try and save its political hide, rather than in the interests of the nation …

This is what this government is going to do. It will be yet another broken promise. It will be yet another mistruth told to the Australian people. They will spend millions of taxpayer dollars to construct a political message about climate change and this carbon tax. It will all be to the ends of, to use the Prime Minister’s own words, trying to save their political hide. That is what it will be about—saving their political hide.

In 2007 she also said that many people talked to her about how much they resented these taxpayer funded advertisements on their TV screen every time they tried to watch a program. I believe Australians are all well aware how much their money is being wasted through these advertisements. Mark my words, Acting Deputy President and Senator Feeney, when Australian people see these advertisements they will see through them. They will see it as a waste of taxpayer money. They will know you are trying to implement a con job and they will know that it is yet another mistruth from this government, one of so many in this debate. The government is so unwilling to provide any detail or any certainty as to what on earth they are proposing.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to participate in this MPI debate today. Here we are once again with the opposition attempting to distract Australians from the fact that they have no plan to tackle climate change. Even if they did, they are so divided as a party they could not even find the same song sheet to sing off, let alone sing in unison. We can have endless debates about the Prime Minister’s words prior to the election. When people watch what the Prime Minister has said, comprehend what she has said—which obviously people opposite me are having difficulty doing—and see how she explained herself so well last week on the ABC show Q&A, then they will begin to understand that the climate has changed not only outside but inside this parliament. What we are now dealing with is a minority parliament in the House of Representatives and a Senate in which this government does not have the numbers to pass legislation that it would like to without negotiating with other parties in this parliament, without sitting down and doing the hard yards and getting people around a table and negotiating an outcome.

People opposite should realise that fact—although they probably do not. I remember a time in this parliament when those opposite could tick and flick anything through the House of Representatives and tick and flick anything through the Senate because they had such a vast majority in both houses and there was very little or no scrutiny of legislation. There was no accountability at any time by that government. However, in this political climate in this country and at this point in time, we have a Prime Minister who is a very, very good negotiator, a very good listener and a very good person at being able to compromise our position while, at the same time, getting the end result. We have proven to the Australian people that we are a party that accepts climate change, that is prepared to tackle climate change and that is prepared to make long-term structural reform so that climate change can be tackled and addressed in this country—unlike the people opposite.

We know, everyone knows, that the opposition are not serious about climate change. We know that the opposition have wrecked plans to tackle climate change before and that they will continue to wreck them again. I do not think the Australian public is even sure that the Leader of the Opposition believes in climate change. He has had seven positions on climate change in two years. He cannot make up his mind whether it is real or not real. He cannot make up his mind whether he is going to accept it or not accept it. He cannot make up his mind if he is going to deal with it or not deal with it. That is the real issue here. We can have MPI after MPI every single day in this place and debate this issue endlessly. On this side of the chamber, Labor Party politicians are happy to take you on every single, solitary day. At every minute of every hour, we are more than happy to defend the action that we are taking on climate change. If we look at last Thursday, Tony Abbott made three strikes in three minutes.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator, ‘Mr Abbott’.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Tony Abbott. Thank you for reminding me of that, Madam Acting Deputy President. Mr Abbott’s scare campaign rolled into the Illawarra last Thursday. The Leader of the Opposition managed to make three significant mistakes in a matter of minutes. This is how averse this Leader of the Opposition is when it comes to climate change. First, Mr Abbott still thinks his direct action fraud would be a cheaper and more efficient way than a carbon price in tackling climate change. He said:

I think it’s reasonable to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and you can do it much more cheaply and with much less economic damage by going to the market and directly purchasing emissions, rather than whacking a great big new tax on our cost of living and on jobs.

The fact is that Mr Abbott’s direct action policy will actually cost this country $30 billion. Taxpayers rather than polluters will pay to cut pollution. Under our scheme we want the polluters to pay, not the taxpayers. And there will be no investment certainty provided to industry under the direct action plan. Under Mr Abbott’s plan, households will not receive any assistance to cope with rises in the cost of living, instead they will be slugged an extra $720 at tax time.

Second, Mr Abbott does not understand former Prime Minister John Howard’s emissions trading policy. On ABC Illawarra last Thursday, Mr Abbott said.

You know, the big thing about John Howard’s ETS was that it wasn’t going to happen unless the rest of the world did the same thing.

The Howard government did intend to produce an emissions trading system in 2012. That was the former Prime Minister’s position. At the time, Mr Howard wrote that his policy ‘will ensure Australia leads the world in our domestic approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions’. Where does that quote come from? It comes from the foreword of the Liberal Party’s Australia’s Climate Change Policy, July 2007.

Third, Mr Abbott changed his position on climate change science in just three sentences. The host of the ABC Illawarra said:

So, where is your own mind as far as the climate change science is concerned and what we need to do about it?

Mr Abbott turned around and said:

Well, what I said about 18 months or so back was that the so-called settled science of climate change isn’t always quite what it’s claimed to be.

Nevertheless, as I’ve said repeatedly, it’s important to take prudent precautions against credible threats. Climate change is real. Mankind does make a contribution.

While Mr Abbott calls himself a weathervane when it comes to climate change, this must be some sort of record: two positions on climate change in three sentences. What have we got here? What is this debate really about? This debate is not a debate about whether or not climate change that we are tackling is going to benefit this country and benefit the outcomes of what we are seeing around the world. It is not a debate about how quick, how soon or how efficient we can do it. This is about masking what is really going on in the opposition. It is about seven positions on climate change in two years. It is about a divided party that cannot agree on whether or not climate change exists, whether climate change is real, whether it is man made or not man made and how we are going to deal with it. So let us have a debate about all of that.

Climate change is real, and climate change is happening. The Labor Party accepts that. We know that. We are acting on that. Scientists have shown that in the past 50 years there have been fewer cold nights and days and more hot days and nights worldwide, and that is no more obvious than here in this country. CSIRO states on their website:

Since 1900, precipitation has increased significantly over eastern parts of the Americas, northern Europe, parts of Asia and north-west Australia.

The Bureau of Meteorology in their annual Australian climate statement for 2010 stated:

Australian mean rainfall total for 2010 was ... well above the long-term average ... As a result, 2010 was Australia’s wettest year since 2000 and the third-wettest year on record (records commence in 1900).

For 11 months in 2010, Australia experienced above average rainfall—an occurrence that has only happened once before in 1973.

I will take a minute to talk about the impact of this in the Northern Territory. The CSIRO has produced an excellent report that details climate change impacts on the Northern Territory. It makes for some pretty horrifying reading, I have to say. Temperature increases will increase the risk of heat related death, particularly among the elderly. Climate change in the tropics makes diseases such as Ross River fever more prevalent. The most vulnerable in our society, children and the elderly, will particularly suffer as a result of these diseases becoming more prolific. There is a risk of salt water intrusion into Kakadu National Park as well as other freshwater wetlands, with projections of up to 80 per cent of the fresh water being lost and the ecosystems that rely on it disappearing as well.

The number of cyclones affecting the top end is not expected to increase. But more of the cyclones are expected to be of greater intensity, with them reaching category 4 or 5. The coastal waters of the Territory are relatively shallow and, as such, are vulnerable to an increase in sea level and storm surges. Climate change will have an impact, as we know, on agriculture, livestock and fisheries, with heat stress and cattle ticks affecting Territory beef cattle. Commercial and recreational fishing will also be affected by changes in the sea temperatures, and important ecosystems, like coral reefs, mangroves and freshwater wetlands will also be severely impacted. The Northern Territory had its wettest dry season on record, with September experiencing nearly double its average rainfall. Global ocean levels rose by approximately 17 centimetres during the last century and by approximately 10 centimetres from 1920 to 2000 at Australian coastal sites.

Across Northern Australia—the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Cape York Peninsula and the Top End of the Northern Territory—we had the warmest July to October period on record for mean temperatures for a very long time. Our climate is consistently breaking weather records, not only in the Top End and not only in this country but all over the world. In our annual climate reports, there is higher rainfall and higher surface and ocean temperatures each year. The impacts are devastating, and we are seeing that day after day.

What is the end result? The end result is that it is time to tackle climate change. It is time to take action. It is time to make a decision to do something about what is happening. It is time to decide on a program of massive reform in order to tackle this. We need to get this on the agenda. We need to cut pollution, tackle climate change and build a clean energy economy. You cannot do that if you are squabbling among yourselves, if you have had seven positions in three years, if you have made three different statements in three minutes on the one ABC radio station and if you have leaders ousted because they believe in climate change and replaced with a leader who believes climate change is absolute crap. You are squabbling among yourselves, replacing leader after leader and trying to grasp some sense of reality and some sense of whether you are relevant in this debate. Get on and accept the science. Accept that climate change is happening. Accept that this country needs to do something about it.

In the Labor Party, we have now begun to tackle climate change. We do not have to lead the world. But we do not have to wait and sit back and let everyone else do it and then do it—that is the position of the Liberal Party. They want to wait for the whole world to start to do something about it and then have a bit of a look-see and a bit of a window shop. If they like what everyone else is doing internationally, they might decide to step inside and buy. Australia has never done that. Australia should not do that. And under this Labor Party government we are not going to do that. We are going to start to tackle climate change now. We do not have to lead the world and we do not have to wait for the rest of the world. We have to be assured that it is the best thing at this point in time for this country, and that is what we believe. It is the right thing to do for Australia right now. It is right for the economy and for Australian jobs.

How are we going to do it? We are going to make industry pay when they pollute. We are going to put a price on carbon. We set up the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee. We are taking advice from experts. We are taking advice from politicians in this place who will take part in pushing this legislation through. We are going to put a price on carbon. We are going to ensure that industry pays when it pollutes; that industry starts to get charged for the carbon dioxide that they are pumping into the atmosphere. This will create a clean energy nation.

To help families with the cost of living, we will put a carbon price on pollution. The best way to stop industries polluting and to get them to invest in clean energy is to charge them when they pollute. I do not think that this country got a better explanation of what we are doing as a government—step by step, month by month, each page of the way—(Time expired)

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Whatever the issue, whatever the challenge, one thing is clear: under this government, we will end up with another new Labor Party tax. New and increased taxes as policy responses to everything are part of Labor’s DNA. That is why the people of Australia, the media and people on the coalition side of parliament are very suspicious whenever this government rules out a tax. We do not believe them. Look back to the Paul Keating precedent. Then Prime Minister Paul Keating went to the 1993 election and said ‘l-a-w tax cuts.’ After the election, there was no such thing as l-a-w anymore. This is why the Prime Minister was confronted time after time during the election with the question, ‘Will you be introducing a carbon tax if you are successful at this election?’ Wherever she went, she was asked that question. Eventually, she knew that she had to rule it out; she knew that she had to say, ‘There will be no carbon tax under the government that I lead’; she knew that she had to say, the day before the election, ‘I rule out a carbon tax.’ Otherwise, she would have lost the election; otherwise, she would no longer be in the Lodge; otherwise, she knew that there would be no such thing as a continuation of this Labor administration. We know that, like Paul Keating before her, this Prime Minister has deliberately deceived the Australian people.

Now the Prime Minister is preparing the next deceit. She is trying to say to people: ‘Don’t worry about what I said five days before the election. Don’t worry about me ruling out a carbon tax. I am now going to introduce a carbon tax. And do you know what? It won’t hurt. I will introduce a carbon tax and you won’t notice a thing. We are going to have compensation, we are going to have tax cuts, we are going to increase pensions, we are going to do this and that.’ There is a plethora of announcements about what the government is going to do. There are no details of course and no plan; it is just one thought bubble after another. And what is the Prime Minister really saying? She is saying to the Australian people, ‘Trust me; I am going to make sure that this carbon tax, which I ruled out before the election and I said was never going to happen, is not going to hurt you.’ How dumb does the Prime Minister think the Australian people are? Of course the Australian people know that this carbon tax is all about hurting them. It is all about having an impact on their behaviour. It is all about doing something that will actually change their spending habits.

The reality is that this is bad policy. The previous speaker criticised our direct action plan. Our direct action plan will actually reduce emissions in Australia in a way that reduces emissions in the world. That is not something that can be said about either the carbon tax or the emissions trading scheme. The carbon tax, the emissions trading scheme or any other mechanism that this government may come up with to put a price on carbon will not reduce emissions in the world. I asked Senator Wong last week what the net impact would be on global emissions of the Gillard carbon tax. She was not able to answer that, because the government knows that putting a price on carbon in Australia, putting a carbon tax on or putting an emissions trading scheme in place in the absence of similar arrangements in the US, in China and in other competitor nations will shift emissions into those countries. It will also shift jobs into those countries because it will make business in Australia less competitive. It will make polluting businesses in other parts of the world more competitive.

This government is asking people in Australia to make a sacrifice, to pay more tax, for no benefit at all in terms of reducing emissions. If you are going to make an environmentally friendly business in Australia less competitive than a polluter overseas because they are not part of a comprehensive global agreement to price carbon, then what you have done is increased emissions in the world while imposing a sacrifice on the people in Australia. That is the fundamental problem with Labor’s flawed tax and flawed policy. They fail to understand this. That is why they do not understand the great benefit of the direct action plan put forward by Tony Abbott and the coalition, which reduces emissions in Australia in a way that reduces emissions in other parts of the world to an equivalent amount.

The previous speaker said that we should not have to wait for everybody else and we should just tackle climate change now. The problem is that this government is not trying to tackle climate change. This government is looking at imposing a new tax. This is part of the great con. It is why Prime Minister Gillard advised the previous Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, back in February/March 2010 not to go ahead with his emissions trading scheme. After Copenhagen the debate inside the Labor government changed because they realised that they had a problem. Then Prime Minister Rudd wanted to lead the charge in Copenhagen. He wanted to go to Copenhagen and say, ‘Aren’t we great. We got this legislation to impose a price on carbon through the parliament.’ The reason he wanted to do it, the one single argument he came up with to justify that proposition was so that he could go to Copenhagen and convince all of the other nations—the US, China, India and so on—to follow our lead and do like we have done in Australia. And of course the US, China and India were never going to go down this path. It was very obvious that that would happen in December 2009 in Copenhagen long before congress in the US changed. It was very obvious that the US was not going to go ahead with a cap and trade carbon scheme.

We now have the government’s adviser, Professor Garnaut, out there desperately trying to help the Labor government to come up with ways of salvaging its broken promise, which is bad policy for Australia. He says, ‘Why don’t we link tax reform with the carbon tax?’ The problem with this government is that they do not want tax reform. They want more and new and increased taxes.

Every time they come up with another tax reform proposal, all it means is another new and increased tax. This whole concept of lower, simpler and fairer taxes is not something that comes easily with this government, which is why they have resisted holding a tax summit for so long. In the end they could not resist it any longer. The Independents were on their back so they are going to have it in October now, but it was supposed to have happened in June. We should go for lower, fairer and simpler taxes without having a carbon tax. To link the proposition of tax reform—lower, fairer and simpler taxes—with the proposal of a massive new tax on carbon is just a complete con. It is saying, ‘We are going to take $1,000 from you over here and we are going to give you $500 back.’ Senator Birmingham went in great detail through the deceit by people like the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government, Simon Crean, and others, who are trying to suggest that 100 per cent of the carbon tax revenue is going to be used to compensate households. It is not true. We are having an announcement a day where the government is perpetuating this deceit of the Australian people, which has been going on ever since the Prime Minister broke the promise not to introduce a carbon tax.

Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Both parties went to the election promising action on climate change. Both the government and the opposition now have a commitment to reduce greenhouse gases by five per cent by 2020. So we have a situation where both the opposition—I mean the Liberal Party opposition because I am still not sure where the National Party stands on this—and the government have a commitment to action, and this was perfectly clear in the election of 2010. So it would actually be a breach of trust for the government not to take some action on climate change. It would be a breach of trust not to fulfil that commitment.

In the 2010 election the electors of Australia voted in a way that meant that neither the coalition nor the Labor Party had a majority in their own right. It was the Labor Party, under Prime Minister Julia Gillard, which formed an agreement with the Independents and the Greens in this parliament such that the Labor Party could form government. That means that the Labor Party cannot necessarily take action on its own. It has to rely on partners in the government to take action. That circumstance, which was dictated by the people of Australia, means that the action that the Labor Party took on climate change was different from the action that it would have proposed. But the Labor Party still believes that this is a workable solution in order to fulfil its commitment to reduce greenhouse gases by five per cent by 2020. That compromise has been to introduce a carbon tax in the first years, and that will form a transition period for both business and consumers. That transition period will enable adjustment and stabilisation and it will enable businesses in particular to get systems in place so they can deal with the upcoming emissions trading scheme. This is a very sensible and practical solution. The government has put in place a carbon tax while promising that those households who will have trouble coping with the taxation aspect will be fully compensated.

This action will be the fulfilment of agreements that have been made around the world on climate change and emissions. Those agreements were made in Kyoto, with the Kyoto convention, Copenhagen and Cancun. It is as part of Australia’s commitment to world agreements that this action has been taken. It is a sensible, practical commitment to world action.

The latest commitment of the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Tony Abbott, has been to direct action. To pretend that this is not going to cost business or consumers anything is nonsensical. It will cost business and consumers. One of the estimates is that this will cost $30 billion, so it is no wonder that the Liberal Party are so sensitive about any criticism of that. It is inconceivable that change by direct action will not result in an impost on businesses, consumers and the Australian economy. Report after report, not only from Australia but from overseas, has shown that is not the most effective way to produce a change in behaviour, a change in the way that Australia produces pollution. So it is not only a desperate attempt by the party to differentiate itself from the government but also an attempt that is, according to any report that I have ever seen, bound to fail. There is no doubt that it has some superficial attractions as people see it as an easy solution, but the fact is report after report shows that it will not work.

Incidentally, the need to bring some facts into this debate is why this government is planning to have some sort of advertising campaign to actually show people what the facts of this debate are all about. I certainly hope that advertising campaign will go ahead, because it is well overdue that we bring some scientific rigour and logic into this debate. It has been markedly absent from what those opposite have put. People like Senator Cormann continue to state as facts things which have been comprehensively demolished in a series of reports by various people all around the world. The impact on behaviour by the polluters, on the householders and consumers who use the products of that pollution, must be changed. The impact on behaviour in terms of allowing pollution to go ahead in Australia—by burning coal, by squandering electricity and by squandering energy—really must be reined in and the electors of Australia understand that we must be responsible for our own pollution, that we are using our resources—whether they be coal, gas or petroleum resources—excessively. I think an overwhelming number of people in Australia understand that we are overusing those resources and understand the need to rein in our use. We had a period of plenty when it seemed that these natural resources were limitless and people did gradually overuse these resources, be they water, electricity or whatever. I think people are prepared to change their behaviour and to be given a sense of direction about how their behaviour should change. That is regardless of what is happening around the world.

Senator Cormann ran the tired old argument that whatever we do will not have a sufficient impact on world emissions. That is just not the point. We have to change our behaviour. We have to reduce our own pollution in Australia. That is the important point for us. We have to make sure that we do not squander our limited resources in this country. We do have room in our behaviour to pull back and make sure that we do not pollute our own country; that we do not recklessly use resources that are needed for future generations. That is the point—that is what we must work towards. We must develop the technologies and the habits to ensure that that will happen, and that is the important point. It is not making a sacrifice for no benefit, as Senator Cormann said. It is making a sacrifice for our own benefits and for generations to come.

The public’s receptiveness of that attitude has been proved time and time again. If we have an advertising campaign to put out the facts about emissions and climate change and pollution, that should steer around the debate in this country to a more practical and logical debate—not one that is driven by a fear campaign from the opposition who purport to accept the premise but do not want to put in place practical measures to bring about change. I commend Prime Minister Gillard and the Labor Party on setting out to achieve those measures in combination with their partners in parliament.

Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak in favour of this motion, which has been very well drafted and makes an extremely important point, and I thank Senator Fifield for the opportunity. It is important to note here that we have a government that has broken its promise not only to the parliament but also to the Australian people. We have a Prime Minister who stared into a television camera—looked down the barrel—and said with deception in her eyes, ‘There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.’ Not only that, just a few days before the federal election she said that ‘there will be no tax’ and that was put on the front page of the Australian on 20 August 2010: ‘I rule out a carbon tax.’

These were bald-faced statements and now it is true that many in the community are giving the Prime Minister, Ms Julia Gillard, the name Ju-liar. People can draw their own conclusions from that but clearly there has been a shocking deception and the public has come to that understanding. What was promised before the election and what has happened since the election? There was a promise before the election with the Independents—the country Independents—for a tax summit by 30 June, yet we found out just in the last 24 hours that it has been put off until October. That is yet another broken promise. The Prime Minister promised before the last election that she supported a citizens’ assembly to try to garner consensus on the issue of climate change and the merit of a carbon tax, or an emissions trading scheme, or something similar. Of course, that has now gone out the door. Two weeks ago we had the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Mr Combet, and the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government, Mr Crean, both advocating for and on behalf of the government—one assumes, because they are ministers—that 100 per cent of this tax revenue would be provided in compensation for households and for pensioners. Yet we find out, again in the last 24 hours, that that is not the case. It is not going to be the case at all. They say it will be about 50 per cent. So who is stating the truth? Who are we to believe? We do not know whether to believe it before the election or even less than 12 months after the election. People are breaking their word for and on behalf of the government; it is not good enough. This government is a government of dishonesty and incompetence. That is not acceptable and the Australian people will no doubt send a message at the appropriate time.

The Prime Minister’s view of Senator Bob Brown is a matter for her. She has said that Senator Brown is very calculating. In a keynote address to the Don Dunstan Foundation in Adelaide, she said that Senator Brown leads a party which is extreme. Why would the government form an alliance and a coalition agreement with an extreme party like that? As to why she has broken her promise, her excuse is that there are changed circumstances, that she is now forced into an agreement with the Greens. She is really making it very clear: ‘the Greens made me do it’. That excuse is on a similar par to the excuse that the dog ate my homework. She is saying, ‘I have no responsibility; all care, no responsibility. I am not responsible for my actions.’ Frankly, this is not good enough.

She is now joined at the hip with the Greens in this federal coalition arrangement—the Labor-Green coalition. That is very interesting because as a Tasmanian senator, I know what has happened in Tasmania as a result of the Labor-Green coalition down there. The effect on of the Tasmanian people of incompetence, waste and mismanagement is something shocking. Even just a number of weeks ago, the Premier of Tasmania, Lara Giddings, indicated that she wanted to cut $270-odd million from the Tasmanian budget and thousands of public sector jobs. She should have apologised in the first place and said, ‘I am ashamed of the mismanagement of the economy by my state Labor-Green government.’ Now the economy is suffering as a result. Confidence is at a rock-bottom, all-time low. The Labor-Green experiment in Tasmania is not working. My federal colleagues in this parliament and people on the mainland should be fully aware of that fact and know that the economy in Tasmania is slowing and that levels of confidence are way down. Learn the lesson and do not just blame the Greens and say that ‘they made me do it’. It is not good enough.

Senator Crossin said in this place—and other Labor members and senators have made this point publicly, including the Prime Minister—that the polluters pay. That is absolute and arrant nonsense. Guess who pays? Australian families—mums and dads, households, kids. Everybody will pay not just the polluters. Let me give you the evidence.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under your plan no-one pays.

Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator McLucas is disputing this, so let me make it very clear. Electricity prices will increase by approximately $300 per year, based on the Garnaut report, which came out at the end of last week. Electricity prices will go up and go up big time. According to the Australian Minerals Council, that will double within three years. Petrol prices will increase by 6½c per litre. Gas prices will go up by $2 a week or $104 a year. Water bills will go up $16, according to the Victorian department of environment—that is, at $25 per tonne. Will it have an impact on rates? Who pays the rates? Mums and dads pay the rates. According to the Australian Local Government Association, rates will go up $46 per year. There will be an impact on air travel. The cost of new homes will increase by $4,800, according to the Housing Industry Association—that is, at $20 per tonne, and of course it could be a whole lot more.

We have a lot of concerns and lot of problems. The government indicate they want to spend $30 million of taxpayers’ money on campaigning and advertising to support it. That is a con and it should not be allowed.

John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Climate change is real. The world is warning. The overwhelming majority of scientific opinion acknowledges that this is a result of human activity. If greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow unabated, the problem will get worse. Of course this is not Australia’s problem alone, but we must do our bit as a responsible member of the international community.

Madam Deputy President, I suppose I have some form on this issue. As environment minister in the Keating government, I suggested they consider a low-level carbon levy. I admit that at the time I was virtually alone in my advocacy for such a measure. But I suggest the doubters do as I did: read the reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, and those of our own scientists at the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, which clearly show the climate is warming, and it will continue to do so as a result of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity.

The time to act is now as Australia faces potentially disastrous environmental and economic costs from the impact of climate change, particularly on coastal communities, infrastructure, water security, health, agriculture and energy supply. The IPCC’s fourth assessment report finds that ‘warming of the climate system is unequivocal’. The IPCC reports that emissions of greenhouse gases due to human activities have grown by 70 per cent between 1970 and 2004, and states that most of the ‘observed increases in global temperatures since the mid 20th century are very likely to be as a result of human activities’.

The CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology combined last year to present our most recent picture of Australia’s climate. Both these organisations have decades of experience observing and reporting on Australia’s weather, and conducting atmospheric and marine research. On temperature rises, the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology have observed that since 1960 the average temperature in Australia has increased by about 0.7 degrees. Whilst temperatures have varied in different locations, the overall long-term trend is clear and there can be no denying Australia has experienced warming over the past 50 years. Furthermore, the number of days with record hot temperatures has increased each decade over the last half-century. The decade from 2000 to 2009 was Australia’s warmest on record. According to the World Meteorological Organisation, 2010, 2005 and 1998 were the warmest years on record globally.

The CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology have also reported that the rate of sea level rise increased during the 20th century. From 1870 to 2007, the global average sea level rose by close to 200 millimetres. Over the period 1993 to 2009, sea level rises have ranged between 1.5 millimetres to three millimetres per year in the south and east, and seven millimetres to 10 millimetres per year in the north and west of Australia. They have also reported that over the period of the last 50 years, the surface temperatures of the oceans around Australia have increased by about 0.4 degrees Celsius.

As for the future, the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology have projected that Australian average temperatures are going to rise by 0.6 degrees Celsius to 1.5 degrees Celsius as soon as 2030. They said, ‘If global greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow at rates consistent with past trends, warming is projected to be in the range of 2.2 to 5.0 degrees Celsius by 2070.’ The effect of this on Australia and Australians will be devastating. It is a catastrophe in the making. How irresponsible would it be for Australia to sit on its hands? You cannot pull up a drawbridge against rising sea levels. You cannot change global warming by putting your head in the sand and doing nothing. Climate change is real and is caused by human action. All around the world governments are taking action to reduce carbon emissions. Thirty European countries have had a price on carbon for the past six years. It is time for Australia to do the same. (Time expired)

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

From someone whom I admire that was a quite remarkable speech. From the man who has driven Operation Sunlight and from the man who has protocols named after him—by me, I might add, but still supportive—to come into this place and avoid the key question is quite remarkable. Senator Faulkner can scurry out of this chamber, but not once did he explain why his own leader, five days out from the election, said, ‘There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.’ Senator Faulkner neglected to talk about that.

Senator Barnett quite rightly said that the Australian Labor Party is now apparently using the ‘dog ate my homework’ defence. ‘The Greens forced us into this’—that is another absolute untruth. There are only three reasons that the Prime Minister made those comments five days out from the election. One reason was that she supported a carbon tax but she knew she would lose the election with a new tax and she told a complete untruth to win her way back into government. I am not allowed to use another word in this chamber, but I will use the phrase ‘complete untruth’.

Another reason was that she was happy to tell this untruth because there had already been a grubby deal done with the Australian Greens before the election. The Prime Minister went in with her eyes open, but the Australian people most certainly did not. The third reason, which is the most unlikely one, is that she knew it was bad for Australian families and she did not want one. What put paid to that was the desperate deal she did after the election to make sure we had a carbon tax. If she did know it was bad for Australian families and that is why she ruled it out, how can she front up to the Australian people again to do a grubby deal to get herself back into a false government? They are the only three options.

I will look at my patron seat area of Geelong, which takes in Corangamite and Corio. I thought Richard Marles, the member for Corio, had a little bit more to him than he has been exhibiting in the last two weeks on this issue. Everyone knows the member for Corangamite is completely devoid of any common sense but I thought that Richard Marles, the member for Corio, might have had some. To look at the comments of Richard Marles in the last two weeks in trying to defend this appalling tax and the effect it will have on Geelong just beggars belief. In a remarkable acknowledgement two weeks ago, he said he would be working overtime to protect jobs under a carbon tax. So two plus two equals four and he knows there are going to be job losses under this tax. In an opinion piece today that talked about Point Henry, where a thousand people are provided with jobs in that area with Alcoa and other employers, he said:

I would be lying to say that the atmosphere in the Point Henry lunch room right now is sanguine. A better description might be nervous. And they have a right to be.

‘They have a right to be’—that is Richard Marles, a member of the executive of the Australian Labor Party, acknowledging that the workers at Point Henry have good reason to be nervous. What Darren Cheeseman and Richard Marles need to do is not talk about these matters, but do something—

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Acting Deputy President, on a point of order: I ask that the senator refer to the members by their correct titles.

The Acting Deputy President:

I did not hear what you said, Senator Ronaldson, but if you could observe the usual propriety when referencing members of the other place.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought I had mentioned both the member for Corangamite and the member for Corio, but if I did not I will mention them. Rather than working overtime to save jobs under a carbon tax, surely the members for Corio and Corangamite should be working overtime for the workers in Corio and Corangamite to stop the carbon tax? Why don’t they work overtime for that? They will be damned, as they should be, for destroying jobs in Geelong.

I heard Senator McLucas parroting across the table today the nonsense that everyone is going to be compensated and that only the big polluters will pay. Hello? What do you think will happen with the costs? Where will the increased costs go, Senator McLucas? I will tell you where they will go: to Australian families. How will they feel that? Through 6.5c per litre in petrol— (Time expired)