Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That—

(1)   Divisions may take place on:

  (a)   Thursday, 13 October 2011, after 4.30 pm; and

  (b)   Monday, 21 November 2011, before 12.30 pm.

(2)   The order of the Senate of 22 November 2010 relating to the days of meeting of the Senate for the year 2011, be modified as follows:

     Insert "Monday, 7 November to Thursday, 10 November".

(3)   On Tuesday, 1 November and 8 November 2011:

  (a)   the hours of meeting shall be 11 am to 6.30 pm and 7.30 pm to 10.40 pm;

  (b)   the routine of business from 11 am shall be consideration of the government business order of the day relating to the Clean Energy Bill 2011 and 17 related bills; and

  (c)   the question for the adjournment of the Senate shall be proposed at 10 pm.

(4)   On Thursday, 3 November and 10 November 2011:

  (a)   the hours of meeting shall be 9.30 am to 8.40 pm;

  (b)   consideration of general business and consideration of committee reports, government responses and Auditor-General's reports under standing order 62(1) and (2) shall not be proceeded with;

  (c)   the government business order of the day relating to the Clean Energy Bill 2011 and 17 related bills shall have precedence over all government business;

  (d)   divisions may take place after 4.30 pm; and

  (e)   the question for the adjournment of the Senate shall be proposed at 8 pm.

(5)   The government business order of the day relating to the Clean Energy Bill 2011 and 17 related bills be considered under a limitation of time and that the time allotted be as follows:

  (a)   on Thursday, 3 November 2011, from 3.45 pm to 4 pm—second reading;

  (b)   on Thursday, 10 November 2011, at 4 pm—all remaining stages, excluding consideration of any messages from the House of Representatives; and

  (c)   on Monday, 21 November 2011, at 6 pm—all remaining stages, including consideration of any messages from the House of Representatives.

(6)   Subject to paragraph (5), this order operate as an allocation of time under standing order 142.

This motion today, should it be successful, sets in place the way in which the Senate will handle the package of clean energy legislation in November this year. It is important to pass this motion today for the benefit of senators, their staff and parliamentary staff to have clarity about when we will sit in November to deal with the Clean Energy Bill. I do not intend to spend a great deal of time in setting out the issues that are substantive to this motion but rather to provide the Senate with the opportunity to be forewarned of the hours that we will sit.

I could of course list the various acts that the opposition, when they were in government, dealt with and the way that they managed the chamber, but I do not intend to take us to the detail of those issues. I could contrast that with the moderate, measured way that the government has managed the chamber in the past 3½ years, the generous time the government has provided the opposition for dealing with issues in the Senate and, of course, the way that the government has set out this motion to provide for the hours of debate.

The opposition's record of managing the chamber when in government—if I could just take us there fractionally—speaks for itself, particularly during the fourth term of the Howard government when the now opposition had a majority in this place. They used their numbers to gag debate almost routinely. Over 30 bills were debated under guillotine during the Howard government's fourth term. The opposition are in no position to condemn this motion today when they look at their record.

The truth is that, when a government has a majority and can exercise it, it should do so with principles in mind, it should do so courteously and it should allow sufficient debate so that people can contribute to the debate and it does not end up in what would be described as a filibuster. In terms of managing the legislative program, it is important that the program does proceed. We have an important group of bills to pass through the Senate and it is the intention of the government, with the support of the Greens, to pass this legislation.

The key question is whether guillotine motions are arbitrary and restrict debate or whether they actually permit the chamber to devote a decent amount of time for constructive debate of the legislation. On occasions a constructive allocation of time for a motion can ensure that the chamber operates so as to manage its business and to effectively review legislation rather than be captured by political grandstanding and filibustering that drags out the debate on the legislation.

This motion is the right motion to ensure that we can move through both the second reading and the committee stage of these bills in the time allocated, which is set out in the motion. It provides for a reasonable time for debate, and it is, as I have indicated, an important package of bills that the government is seeking to pass in the time allocated in the motion itself. The Senate of course does need to consider this legislation, but it does not have to do so in an exhaustive way, and where everyone is exhausted, with ad hoc additional hours. What we have done in this motion is set out reasonable hours to ensure that people do not become exhausted. But we do need to ensure that, as we have set forward, these bills are passed by 21 November. I also foreshadowed that the government will be seeking to pass the Steel Transformation Plan Bill and the bill establishing the Australian Renewable Energy Agency by 21 November 2011. That means that on 21 November there will be two further bills on which we will seek the opposition's agreement to debate.

The clean energy package that the government will shortly bring to this chamber will conclude the first of a significant phase of the parliament's response to climate change. Parliament has spent untold time and energy on this issue. The parliament first considered the issue in 1994, almost 17 years ago. Since then, there have been no fewer than 35 parliamentary inquiries—36 if we add the current Joint Select Committee on Australia's Clean Energy Future Legislation looking at this package of bills. Exhaustive policy work has been undertaken on this issue. The Howard government itself was responsible for much of this work and adopted the conclusion of the work undertaken: a price on carbon was opposition policy until almost two years ago. This legislation will deliver a carbon pricing mechanism.

The motion for the variation of hours seeks to set reasonable parameters for the debate on the clean energy legislation in the Senate, with four additional sitting days in November and additional hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The Senate will have a fortnight for the debate of the package. So, ostensibly, the first week will allow for speeches in the second reading debate to continue and the second week will be for the committee stage and any amendments foreshadowed. By allowing a reasonable allocation of time for debate on this package, this motion will allow at least 20 hours of debate in each of the two weeks—

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If I can be bold enough to assume that the opposition will allow the debate to progress without endless procedural motions or interruptions, then the time available will be theirs to spend on the second reading and committee stages. The opposition can of course choose to add to that time through MPI debates and other opportunities that are available, or they can spend the additional time—particularly the four sitting days added to the program—actually debating the substantive matters of the bill. The government is not seeking to curtail question time, notices, the adjournment debate or private senator's business; all of that remains for the opposition to use effectively. The motion does remove general business for those two weeks, but this is to ensure that we can conclude the debate by 21 November, with the bulk of the debate taking place in the first two sitting weeks of November. This motion will allow relatively normal parliamentary sitting weeks, as I have indicated, with considerable time for the second reading and committee stages of the legislation package.

The government anticipate that the opposition will use this time to debate constructively, to review the legislation, despite their clear position of being opposed to the legislation. Their position is of course on the record. I would encourage them not to take the time to filibuster during this debate but to constructively use the time available to debate the substantive issues contained within the two bills. In fact, they could demonstrate that this morning by supporting the passage of this motion so that we can ensure that those two weeks are available. I am not so sure the opposition are going to do that; I suspect they are going to oppose it and I suspect they will continue to debate this for some time. However, we are keen to ensure that we do get on with parliamentary business and that we do not spent interminable time in filibustering, stretching out the debate, when we have important legislation to conclude this week as well.

Finally, I remind the Senate of the context of this debate. This package is the culmination of an extraordinary amount of work over the past 17 years. In the past three years, there have been numerous committee inquiries into the issue, with one joint committee inquiry completed this year; exposure drafts of the legislation from that inquiry; and, finally, the joint select committee inquiry due to report next week. The issue has been considered at length. It is now time for this package of bills to be debated. This motion for the variation of hours will put in place the appropriate mechanisms to ensure that the opposition have sufficient time to proceed with the debate, and I hope they engage in that process and contribute constructively to the debate. I seek the support of the chamber for this motion.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition oppose the motion which seeks to extend the hours of the Senate. The reason we do that is that the Senate is currently being confronted with an unseemly rush to get a package of legislation through this chamber, a package of legislation that is built on deceit. The Labor government went to the last election saying 'there will be no carbon tax'—and, but for this package of legislation, there would be no need for these extended hours. It is amazing, isn't it, how the Labor Party are able to dress up their deceit of the Australian people? They call this the 'clean energy' package. It should be called the 'dirty hands' package, because that is exactly what it is. It is based on their deception of the Australian people, whereby Ms Gillard said about a week before the election, when the polls were neck and neck, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' Either she deceived the Australian people or she has to accept that which a lot of Australians now suspect—that she in fact is not leading this government but Senator Bob Brown and the Australian Greens are. No matter how Senator Ludwig, Labor and the Greens try to dress up this clean energy package, it is a dirty package and it is a deceitful package. There is no doubt that, if Ms Gillard had said to the Australian people six days before the last election, 'There will be a carbon tax,' she would not be Prime Minister today and Mr Abbott would be the Prime Minister of a majority coalition government. No matter how much they seek to dress up the morality and the importance of this package—even calling it a clean package when it is conceived and built in deceit—the Australian people know what this is about. It is about rushing through a deceit on the Australian people.

This is a package of some one-and-a-half dozen bills. Labor boast that this is going to be the biggest change to the Australian economy ever. Let us just assume for the moment that their boast is right. If their boast is right, how is it that the only parliamentary examination of this package of bills is to be the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Clean Energy Future Legislation that was set up where Labor and the Greens ruthlessly used their numbers to get the chairmanship and the deputy chairmanship, completely and utterly against normal parliamentary procedure. That is how desperate they are to ensure that there is no proper examination of this legislation. This committee—which has to report, if I recall correctly, by 5 October, within 19 days—will be one of the most truncated committees ever for a package of this size. The committee is starting the hearings today. Guess who its first witnesses are? The department of the Treasury. Has Treasury finished its modelling? We as a coalition asked that question yesterday of the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Senator Wong. She refused to answer. When a point of order was taken as to relevance about the very specific question, 'Has the modelling been finished?' she again refused. The committee today will be discussing with Treasury the impact of this legislation in the absence of the Treasury modelling having been made available to it.

But Senator Ludwig says how gracious the government are in giving us all this time. If they were genuine, they would be giving us the Treasury modelling. Why do we need new Treasury modelling? Because the first lot of modelling was based on $20 a tonne and we now know it was the Greens that foisted $23 a tonne on this hapless and hopeless government. This is a government that cannot get a trick. I do not know what it is about them but they have this unique capacity to come out with big headlines with everything else turning to custard underneath. Remember cash for clunkers, pink batts, Building the Education Revolution, green loans, solar panels, the East Timor solution and the Malaysian solution. No matter what area of government endeavour you look at, this is a government that is highlighted by one word—incompetence. With this package of legislation they add another word, and that is deceit.

We are being asked to support legislation—and support the rushing through of legislation—of an incompetent government which has based its mandate and this legislation on deceit of the Australian people. Why the rush? Why does the legislation have to be passed, as this motion would suggest, by 21 November? In fact, the parliament is scheduled to sit for a week after that, so why can it not be finished at least at the end of the current proposed parliamentary timetable? Why does it have to be truncated before the parliament rises?

I ask the government and the Australian people: why would you seek to impose a carbon tax—the highest, the heaviest and the most damaging carbon tax anywhere in the world—at a time when the International Monetary Fund is telling us to be prepared for a double-dip recession, at a time when the economy especially in Europe and the United States is not flash and at a time when we should be fastening our seatbelts for another economic crisis? When they are warning us that commodity prices may well start tanking very shortly, here is this government hell-bent on imposing not only a carbon tax but also a mining tax just to make sure that if one does not kill off the Australian economy the two combined will hopefully have that effect.

Why this rush? It is amazing how history repeats itself with this Labor government and they cannot learn from their past mistakes. This is a government that sought to go to Copenhagen with legislation, and we remember that. We would have been the clowns of Copenhagen. We would have been seen as the fools of the world, going to Copenhagen with a legislated Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme when not a single other country in the world was going to do that. Not content with or learning from that failure, Labor are now desperate to get Australia to go to Durban so we can be the dunces of Durban and wave legislation around and say, 'How clever are we: we have legislated a scheme which is going to destroy Australian jobs, destroy the Australian economy and do nothing for the world environment to boot.' We know that to be the case.

The question the government have to answer is: why is there this indecent haste on a policy that they promised the Australian people they would not implement? Indeed, the Australian people are quite right to ask how it is—especially in the House of Representatives where every single Labor and coalition member was elected on a promise of no carbon tax—that in all likelihood a majority of House of Representatives members are now going to vote for a carbon tax. How is it that this Greens tail can wag the Labor dog? The reason is that there is no spine in the dog. Ms Gillard, when confronted with the spoils of office, was willing to forego any promises she had made to the Australian people. She was willing to trade anything to remain Prime Minister. I do not care what she trades in a personal capacity but I do mind, and the coalition minds, when she trades Australia's future in doing so—and that is what she has done. She will be recorded in history as having done so and will be judged very harshly.

I remind Senator Ludwig and those who are genuinely interested of the need to ventilate issues. The Labor Party were always against tax reform and the goods and services tax. We accepted that, but that change, that reform to the Australian economy, spent five months in this chamber and was scrutinised by four specialist committees—five months; four specialist committees. Labor and the Greens—wait for it—will not allow a single Senate committee to have a look at this legislation. They will say, 'We have this joint committee,' but it will have to report within 19 days—not five months—and at this stage it does not even have the new Treasury modelling. How can the committee do its work without the Treasury modelling? It is a joke and it is treating the Australian parliament and the committee with contempt—other than those committee members who are part and parcel of and conniving with that contempt, such as the deputy chair, Senator Milne, who is willing to be part and parcel of this deception of the Australian people.

Ms Gillard went to the last election promising there would be no carbon tax. She then said she wanted to build a consensus about putting a price on carbon. I congratulate her; she has achieved a consensus. The consensus is against a price on carbon. The consensus is against a carbon tax. Yet she is wilfully flouting the will of the Australian people and she is willingly flouting her own solemn promise to the Australian people—the promise that she solemnly made, staring down the camera, speaking to the Australian people, saying that there would be no carbon tax.

As I go around the country, electorate to electorate, little newspaper to little newspaper—regional papers—the Labor Party are always telling us how important the carbon tax is. What they never tell us is why they went to the last election on a no-carbon-tax promise. They do not apologise to their electorates and they do not explain to their electorates why they changed their minds—they just hope they can airbrush it out. When confronted, they cannot provide a single answer other than that the Australian Greens foisted the carbon tax upon them. That is the shame of the Australian Labor Party. I am sure that the Labor Party of the Ben Chifleys and the John Curtins of this world would never have countenanced the sort of hectoring and bullying and blackmail which this government is willing to submit itself to from the Australian Greens.

That is why it is good to see a genuine labour representative in this place like Senator Madigan from the DLP. At least he understands the impact this carbon tax is going to have on the workers of Australia and on the businesses of Australia. He also understands that it will make not one iota of difference to the world's environment. I would invite any Labor speaker or indeed any Greens speaker in this debate to tell us how much world temperatures will go down if we legislate this carbon tax. Can they tell us how much less sea levels will rise if we legislate this carbon tax? Whenever I am in a debate with a Labor or Greens member or senator, I continually ask that question and they can never give a response. What is the reason? Because they know it will make no difference. This is all about a huge cash grab by a desperate Treasurer and a desperate government wanting to do the right thing by the Greens and trying to scramble together enough money to make their budget balance.

Is it not bizarre that overnight another Labor Treasurer who has been unable ever to deliver a surplus gets, as did Lehman Brothers and Paul Keating, some gong for economic management while great Australian Treasurers, such as Peter Costello, never got one? It really does make one wonder how these international organisations operate when Lehman Brothers get an award—and, my goodness, they have a lot to answer for—and Paul Keating, the man who got us into all the debt that the coalition had to clear up, gets a gong and now Mr Swan gets a gong. I think it is a perfect trifecta. Mr Costello should be very happy that he was never given a gong, because he would be in very uncomfortable company if he were to have got one.

But I digress. The simple fact is this: this package of bills, this dirty package, is based on deceit. The Labor Party know it. It is not based on good economics, it is not based on good social policy and it is not based on good environmental policy. I see Senator Brown in the chamber, a man who is able to make great prognostications about the future of our nation. I still remember 1981, when there was a proposal for a clean energy power generation scheme in Tasmania. Senator Brown led the charge against it. Do you know what his proposal was as an alternative power supply? The building of a coal fired power station. That was his proposal when Director of the Wilderness Society of Tasmania.

The good thing is, when people stay around for a while you can ask what were their predictions 30 years ago; what was their public policy proposal 30 years ago. We would have had a coal fired power station in Tasmania belching out CO2 emissions if Senator Brown, then Director of the Wilderness Society, had had his way. Of course Senator Brown in this debate will make all sorts of predictions about the future, about what is going to happen if we do not pass this legislation, but I just remind people of some of the other predictions that Senator Brown and the Greens have made that simply have not come to pass.

This is a government beholden to the Greens. It will do whatever the Greens require of it. I know that there are many Labor people who do not want to vote for this package of bills. They know it is destructive. They know it is going to devastate the Australian economy in the absence of world action. We as a coalition say you can change and show leadership in a sensible manner through a direct action plan without mugging your economy and without mugging Australian jobs. Yet Labor, having promised no carbon tax, are now seeking to rush one through this chamber—and of course inflict it on us so that they can go to Durban as some sort of heroes. They will go to Durban as the dunces of the world, having legislated a dirty package that will destroy jobs, destroy the wealth of our nation and do nothing for the environment.

I ask again, how can the government assert it is giving us enough time on this debate while it is withholding fundamental Treasury modelling? As the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Clean Energy Future meets today, that modelling will not be available. When we ask questions about the impact, day after day after day on behalf of this government Senator Wong simply refuses to answer the questions that do need to be answered. Can I simply say to Labor: you might be able to get away with it in the chamber in 2011 but you will not be able to get away with it when the Australian people cast their verdict on you. You cannot make a solemn promise to the Australian people and then simply discarded it like a soiled tissue as being of no consequence. This is a matter of the most serious nature. The Australian people do not want this carbon tax, they do not want this government, and we as a coalition will fight this all the way.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I say at the outset that the Greens will be supporting this motion for due process and for an orderly debate on the carbon price package for this nation. This goes way beyond what the coalition in office allowed this chamber when discussing, for example, the second tranche of the sale of Telstra, where we had a guillotine brought in, a very truncated debate, a one-day committee and, bang, through it went.

Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But you're better than us, Bob.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The opposition member is saying that the Greens are better than the Liberal Party, and I have to accept that interjection—I agree. It is amazing that the coalition, these conservative upholders of the good, although they have been listened to in silence, are interjecting now that I have got to my feet. I am always fascinated by their bad behaviour when they are losing an argument.

If I might plagiarise Oscar Wilde, if there is one thing better than Senator Abetz refusing to talk to you, it is when he talks you up. When he became minister for forests under the Howard government his first statement that very day was that he would not talk to me as a Greens senator about forests in Tasmania. I guess that was a mixed blessing as far as I was concerned. Here we have him in the chamber today talking up me and the Greens as being the nation's strongest political advocates for action on climate change. I thank him for that. It is only fair and proper that I do. By the way, he made reference to the Treasurer, Mr Swan, getting a gong overnight for the state of the Australian economy and its ability to ride through the recent global downturn. I want to congratulate the Treasurer for that accolade. It is a high accolade for him and the government and for Australia, and it should be recognised as such. This award does this nation good, and the Treasurer is to be commended for it.

We now have in prospect an orderly process for the debate on this worthy carbon package—but a package which is way short of where the Greens think we should be taking Australia as a leader in climate change action around the world. This worthy legislation deserves to pass this parliament and to pass it this year. The government has brought forward an orderly process in this motion. The Joint Select Committee on Australia's Clean Energy Future is sitting now with cross-party representation looking at the legislation and taking further advice from business, from the unions, from non-government organisations and from the community at large. It will report back to the parliament and when we get toward the end of the parliamentary year we will have a process for two weeks of debate in the Senate of this extraordinarily important legislation.

This legislation has been the subject of almost unprecedented public debate, media scrutiny and input from right across the nation and, when I look at the polls, has huge support from the 1.5 million people who voted Greens at the last election. I commend the government, the Prime Minister and, indeed, the Independents in the House of Representatives—Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott—for the process and the responsible way in which, a year after a committee was established by this parliament—quite unprecedented, cross-party representation, both houses involved—we now have a package of consensus legislation before the parliament which, given all the circumstances, will move the nation forward in taking reasonable action on climate change. It certainly does not have any winner taking all. It is a consensus arrangement and it is one that we are committed to.

I must make reference here to my colleague and deputy leader, Senator Christine Milne, who is at that committee at the moment, for her proposal to establish that committee. For the record, I refer also to the Prime Minister because, when I went in to put Senator Milne's proposal, the Prime Minister had by happenstance the same proposal to establish a committee, because the Labor Party and the Greens had different positions. Prime Minister Gillard had the maturity to say, 'We cannot at the outset here come to an agreement. Let's go to the wider Australian public, to business, to the non-government organisations and to the community as a whole through a committee process. Let's bring in the experts to establish the way forward.' She has been pilloried for a statement on no carbon tax made during the election campaign but what is passing strange about that is that the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, who in a memorable submission on the 7.30 Report said you cannot have faith in words that are not written down—'What I say is not necessarily what I will do'—has advocated what Senator Abetz has just described as a direct action plan.

What is not said there is that this commits the opposition to the same target as the Labor Party, which is a 5 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from Australia over 1990 levels by the year 2020. But the process is very different. If there is one thing to be said about a failure of the media, it is its failure to put the spotlight onto this direct action plan of Senator Abetz and Mr Abbott.

The preliminary figures from Treasury were that that action plan by 2020 would cost Australian households, on average, $720 per household per annum. But the difference between that and the Labor-Green-Independents formula now before this parliament is that not only is it more but also there is no compensation for householders. They would be paying that through the teeth.

In the last couple of weeks, to compound this fact that the opposition intends to pulverise the household budget to foster the big polluting industries—because that is where the money from households will go; it is to give the big polluting industries money to clean up their act—Mr Abbott, the honourable Leader of the Opposition, said that he would not allow international offsets. That means that the big polluting industries, as part of meeting their need to cut greenhouse gas emissions overall, could not in their trading profile go overseas and purchase offsets such as potentially protecting rain forests or, better still, buying into real renewable energy projects elsewhere and so prevent or offset the release of greenhouse gases in other countries.

By doing that, he is saying that these big polluting industries must find within Australia the totality of such offsets. Treasury has had a look at that prospect and its modelling—and this apparently escaped Senator Abetz because he was after Treasury modelling but this is out in the public arena and he did not want to go there—is now that every household in Australia, on average, by 2020 under the Abbott-Abetz plan would be hit by $1,300 extra in electricity bills and—here is the rub—with no compensation.

The Labor-Greens-Independents model gives every household across the spectrum the opportunity for offsets and, on average, that compensation means that households will be compensated for an increase in power costs flowing from action to clean up the environment. Indeed, some low-income earners, including pensioners, get a bonus out of it. They get more money than there will be in projected power price increases down the line. With this is an effort to get householders to use the compensation flowing from the money raised under the Labor-Greens-Independents formula off the big polluters to invest themselves in household measures which will save energy and lower their household bills. It is a double win for households.

But, under the Abetz-Abbott plan, households will be smacked an extra $1,300 per annum by 2020, with no compensation and, therefore, no opportunity to purchase the equipment or get the advice that will help cut their power bills. In fact, they are faced with an inhibition to do that because they will be out of pocket. Where is that money going to go? It will go to the big polluters. So that is the alternative of the Abetz-Abbott opposition, supported by Senator Joyce and the National Party in this place.

They have talked about a great big new tax. Well, they are going to have great big new power bills of $1,300, on average, per household by 2020, with no compensation and an inhibition on people to reduce their consumption. Whereas there is a stimulus, an opportunity, through compensation for all households so compensated in Australia to reduce their power and to feel good about that because they are contributing to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in this country, which is the biggest per capita greenhouse gas polluter on the face of the planet, certainly amongst the richer nations. At the same time, of course, they will be better off.

There is a simple dictum here, which you will hear in the upcoming debate. The Abetz-Abbott prescription is to take money from householders and give it to the big polluters. The Gillard government-Greens-Oakeshott-Windsor prescription is to take money from the big polluters, who are very often largely foreign owned and export their profits, and give it to the householders. That is the difference. I am sure the current inquiry that got underway this morning will be able to add greater information to that winning profile for the Australian public that is invested in this legislation, which is having a fair go in terms of public scrutiny and which will have a fair go in terms of two weeks debate here in the Senate before it is finally put through, if the Senate so decides, in time for us by the end of this year to have Australia as one of the leading nations when it comes to action on climate change.

I listened to the ABC's radio news channel a few days ago, to a BBC question session on Al Gore, the former Vice-President of the United States who has become a champion of action on climate change. What became apparent is that, when you get outside the boxed-in debate within politics in Australia, you can hear from such an eminent figure, who shared in a Nobel Prize for work on climate change, accolades for Australia for now being up there with China and India, which recently put a tax on coal, as leading the world in new action to tackle climate change.

In an hour or two I will be talking to the very important conference on tourism and transport, which I think the Prime Minister might be addressing at about now in this parliament. One of the things that will concentrate the minds of the conference is the future of one of the great tourist icons in Australia, the Great Barrier Reef. Senator Abetz may say what he likes but the fact is the science says that with carbon dioxide being absorbed by the ocean and the ocean becoming more acidic, even if you set aside the impact of coral bleaching through warming of the oceans, the Great Barrier Reef is faced with massive damage later this century through acidification, the increasing acid component of the ocean which prevents the corals from replicating. There will be massive damage, and yet we have a coalition—and I am afraid we have to look at Labor on this, which wants to promote greater coal exports out of Australia by the largely foreign owned coal industry, with one of the expenses coming out of that being the threat of massive damage to this great icon of nature on the planet, which is one of the earlier recognised World Heritage components of Australia's magnificent natural heritage.

  According to Queensland government figures, the Great Barrier Reef supports over 60,000 jobs and has a $6 billion annual economy the majority of which, unlike with the coal industry, flows through into the coffers of small business and to the regional economy.

Senator Bernardi interjecting—

Senator Joyce interjecting—

I have coalition members interjecting. They have an opportunity to dispute those figures if they wish to, Madam Acting Deputy President.

Senator Bernardi interjecting—

We are getting 'shonkiness, rorting, despicable, corruption'—those are words coming from the opposition, and it just shows you, Madam Acting Deputy President, the level of debate that we are going to get from this coalition. Of course, the people listening to this are getting a registration of the ability, the intellectual baselessness of the way this coalition approaches politics in Australia in 2011. Their speakers were listened to in complete silence in this place, but here we have the National Party and Senator Bernardi—you can hear it, Madam Acting Deputy President—cutting across me from two seats to the right with a level of debate which puts shame on the coalition.

That having been said, I stand here as the leader of the Australian Greens who is proud of the work we have put into this legislation, the positive nature of it, the way in which it will move Australia forward, the way it honours future generations of Australians through action rather than inaction and the very fact that built into it is a social justice component.

I end this contribution by repeating that this legislation will take from the big polluters and give to households. The opposition's prescription is to take from households to give to the big polluters. We are proud of which side we are on in that debate.

Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Here we go again. As with every problem that the current government faces, it is somehow the opposition's fault. Failed border protection policy? That is our fault. Falling consumer confidence and falling business confidence? That is our fault. And here today with the parliament's legislative agenda, apparently the government's difficulties are yet again the opposition's fault. We had an extraordinary press release issued on 13 September by Senator Evans which sought to make that claim. It was also a media release that was pretty disrespectful to the Australian Senate. It was headed 'Extended sitting hours for Senate to pass legislation'. It said the Senate will sit an extra week and have extended sitting hours for the remainder of the spring session to deal with the government's full legislative agenda. The only problem is there was no proposition at that time before the Australian Senate to do that. The Australian Senate had not considered that particular proposition. I will give Senator Ludwig credit: he would never show such discourtesy and disrespect to the Australian Senate by issuing a press release of that nature.

It was quite extraordinary. On 13 September that release was issued. Here we are on 21 September now for the first time having this matter before the Senate to debate. It just goes to show the level of disrespect and the level of contempt that the Leader of the Government in the Senate has for this chamber, that he would put out a press release stating what the Australian Senate was going to do before the Australian Senate had even had the opportunity to consider it. It was compounded by Mr Albanese, who on 12 September declared that the upper house would sit an extra week starting on 7 November. How great is that: the Leader of the House telling the Australian Senate what it will do. In the press release by Senator Evans he accused the opposition of delaying tactics and that is part of the justification which Senator Ludwig canvassed, delaying tactics apparently by the opposition, as to why extended hours and an extra week are needed. That is wrong. It is a pretty obvious point: we are an opposition, this is a house of review and we have actually got a job to do to scrutinise legislation. We are not going to curtail debate because the government does not enjoy scrutiny. Let's face it, it is not as though this government has an unblemished record on public administration that does not warrant a bit of decent scrutiny.

Senator Evans in that same press release said:

It is time for the opposition to stop its negative obstruction and start dealing with legislation in a constructive manner.

We do. This has been an exceptionally constructive opposition. We routinely facilitate the swift passage of non-controversial and time-critical legislation. In fact, last week, with the cooperation of the opposition, I think it was 14 bills that passed through this chamber. This week already we have had four bills pass through the chamber, and one of the first items of business today was exempting four bills from the cut-off—something which the opposition readily agreed to because we take a practical and a constructive approach to the management of business in this chamber. But there is no obligation on this opposition, or any opposition for that matter, to facilitate bad legislation. There is no obligation on us as an opposition to deny due scrutiny to bad policy. There is no obligation on any party particularly to facilitate legislation that seeks to break a solemn election commitment. So the opposition completely rejects the accusations of delaying tactics, of negativity and of obstructionism canvassed in Senator Evans's press release and also by Senator Ludwig.

There is another point that is important to bear in mind, and that it is the government's obligation to manage their legislative program within the sitting schedule that it publishes. That sitting schedule is published at the end of each year for the coming year. That is the government 's call. They set the timetable; they set the agenda. We reject the request for the extension of hours and the extra sitting week because the government should be able to manage within the hours that are scheduled. That does not mean that as an opposition we always will say or always have said no to extra hours. The opposition have on occasion agreed to extra hours for government business. But the onus is on the government to make the case for a change to the sitting schedule and they have not done so. So we will be voting against the proposed extension of hours and also the additional week.

The government will respond, no doubt, as they usually do, that the opposition does not like to sit late, but I think you would be hard-pressed, Madam Acting Deputy President, to find an opposition that has worked harder than this opposition. If the government needed more time, they should have scheduled extra weeks in the first place. As I said, they are the government, they scheduled the sitting weeks and it is their responsibility to manage their legislative agenda within that schedule. But, if you were to listen to those opposite, this is apparently another problem of the opposition's making.

One of the great lies here is that the government lacks the capacity to properly manage the legislative agenda. They certainly have the ability—I guess that is a better way to put it—to manage the legislative agenda but they lack the capacity, it would seem. In the House the government has a governing block and in the Senate the Labor-Greens alliance has the numbers, as we have seen with Senator Brown and his extraordinary declaration today that he is very comfortable with the guillotine being exercised. We have heard minister after minister over recent weeks declaring how well the parliament is going and how many pieces of legislation have passed the parliament. Many members of the gallery have cited those ministers, saying, 'Well, you have to give it to the government, they have got a lot of legislation through.' But the government cannot have it both ways. They cannot in one breath say that the parliament is working well, with legislation flying through it, and then in the next breath say that the opposition is being obstructionist. It defies logic to hold those two propositions in contention at the same time.

The crux of the motion that is before us is the matter of the government seeking an extra week of parliament. That week is being sought for one reason and one reason alone: the carbon tax. The opposition feel absolutely no compunction to accede to this request. The proposition the government is putting to the Senate for an extra sitting week is essentially that the Senate should be complicit in facilitating the government to break a solemn commitment to the Australian people. That is really what this motion is about. They are asking the Australian Senate to be complicit in facilitating a lie. The opposition will not be complicit in that venture. We will say no. The Prime Minister went to the last election vowing not to introduce a carbon tax. Every Labor member and senator in fact has a mandate not to introduce a carbon tax. There could be nothing clearer.

In seeking to sidestep that particular fact, Senator Ludwig referred to how long the proposition of putting a price on carbon has been in public debate. He said we have been debating this since 1994. Give me a break! I would have thought that the proposition before the Australian people—in fact there was no proposition before the Australian people in 1994, so I should say that the extent to which this matter was in public debate surely would have been a completely different concept. It was something that was barely in the public consciousness. To cite back to 1994, and any public discussion that there might have been then, as some justification as to why we do not need proper and decent scrutiny in 2011 was, I thought, a little far-fetched.

There is absolutely no rush to get this legislation through the parliament. I have not heard a credible rationale as to why debate on this package of bills in the Australian Senate should be restricted to two weeks. The only rationale I can glean is that it is an attempt to deny appropriate scrutiny. Already we have 19 bills being corralled into one committee. It is a committee that is stacked and does not reflect the makeup of the Australian parliament. It is a committee whose deputy chairmanship, against all convention in this place, has gone to the Australian Greens. It is stacked and its outcome is a foregone conclusion.

It is bad enough that the government sought to evade the scrutiny of the Australian people at the election. It is bad enough that the government went to the Australian people with a lie. It is bad enough that the government formed office on the back of a lie—we know it well: that there would be no carbon tax under a government led by Ms Gillard. Does anyone seriously believe that the Australian Labor Party would have won enough seats to form government had they come clean with the Australian people before the election? There is only one answer to that: no, of course they would not have. We all know that. That is why they fibbed to the Australian people in the first place. I do not think it is a stretch to call that a form of electoral fraud, not in a legal sense, not in a technical sense, but in a moral sense. That electoral fraud is something the Australian Labor Party will be accountable to the Australian people for. It is something that the Australian Labor Party will ultimately be answerable for at the polls.

The place in which we stand today is the place where the government of the day is answerable and accountable in between elections. We know that they fibbed to the Australian people and there is nothing we can do about that here today. But in between elections this is the place where the government is accountable, and it is in the committees of the parliament, as well, that there is accountability. Having evaded public scrutiny the least the government should do is allow the most full-blooded scrutiny and debate in this place. The government's answer to that is, 'Look, what are you complaining about. We are scheduling an extra week and some extra sitting hours.' No, that is not good enough. You had a legislative program and you should have managed within it. This package of bills is so significant that it should not be a matter of weeks being allocated to it; it should be a matter of months being allocated to it. We have heard from the Greens that this package has to go through the parliament because of a conference at Durban. A conference at Durban? I am sorry but I am not terribly fussed about what whoever is at that conference in Durban thinks. I care what the Australian people think. I care about the effect legislation passed through this parliament has on the Australian people—on their cost of living and on the capacity of business to sell their goods and services. That is what I am concerned about, not some conference in Durban. I am not concerned with providing an opportunity for the government and the Greens to strut about waving their legislation and saying, 'Terrific, aren't we great. Look at what we got through.' That could not be of less interest to me and it could not be of less interest to the Australian people. Durban is an artificial barrier. It is bad enough that the government fibbed to the Australian people. It is bad enough that they formed government on the back of lie. The very least this government should do to seek to salvage some dignity is have a proper full-blooded debate in this place. They should go to the Australian people. They should call an election, but we know they are not going to do that because the result would be clear.

Helen Kroger (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They would lose.

Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They would lose. They do not want to present themselves to the judgment of the Australian people. The model for scrutiny of significant economic change is the goods and services tax, which I think was change for good, unlike the carbon tax. I would argue that, whether you think the carbon tax is good or bad, it is a much more far-reaching change to the Australian economy than the GST ever was and, as such, it deserves greater scrutiny. The model for scrutiny is the GST as introduced under the Howard government. The contrast between our approach to significant economic change—I will not call it 'reform' because it is not—under this government and the significant economic reform under the previous coalition government could not be more different.

Firstly, the coalition sought a mandate at an election. There was no hiding, no subterfuge. Having won a mandate, we submitted our legislation to the most searing and searching scrutiny of any legislative package in the history of this parliament. At that time, the GST legislation sat on the table in the House before it was debated—something which has not occurred with the carbon tax legislation. After it passed the House and came to the Senate, the GST legislation spent five months in Senate committees—not a couple of weeks; five months. And after 25 November 1998, when the Senate established the Senate Select Committee on A New Tax System, that committee referred issues to three separate Senate references committees. At that time we had a total of four Senate committees examining the goods and services tax legislation. We followed a good and proper process. We introduced the bills, they sat on the table, we did not rush and the House had hours to debate. We did the right thing. We subjected the legislation to the appropriate scrutiny of the Australian parliament after having sought and gained a mandate.

The government should withdraw this motion for extra hours. They should withdraw this motion for an extra sitting week. They should also discharge the 19 carbon tax bills currently before the House. They should call an election. They should submit themselves—their tax, their legislation, their policy—to the judgment of the Australian people. If they did that and if they won, I would be the first person to say, 'Fine, bring the legislation on. Let's have a Senate committee process.' Even then, if they followed that process, I would still be arguing that there should be a good five months of scrutiny in this place for a package of this magnitude.

Even if the parliament as a whole thinks that something is a good idea, that legislation is worthwhile, we still have a role to perform in the Australian Senate and in Senate committees—to be a fresh set of eyes, even on legislation for which there is wide agreement. For legislation for which there is not wide agreement our role is even more important—that is our job, that is what we should do.

Those opposite have made it clear that they have nothing but unbridled contempt for the Australian people. Those opposite do not care what the Australian people think. In fact, worse than that, they have contempt for what the Australian people think and they want to actively deceive the Australian people. Never in my time in professional politics of 20-plus years have I seen an act of this magnitude by a government of premeditated deceit of the Australian people—nothing with such premeditation and nothing of this size.

We reject this motion to extend hours. We reject this motion to allocate an extra sitting week, not because we are against the parliament doing its job but because the government should be managing within the program it laid out at the start of the year. We on this side of the chamber will not be complicit in providing the opportunity for this government to facilitate a lie to the Australian people.

This legislation should be taken back to the Australian people and if, by some miracle, this government happened to win an election on that basis, they should then be subject to appropriate parliamentary scrutiny. We will reject this motion. This government have failed in their duty to be upfront with the Australian people and they are failing in their duty to provide proper scrutiny for this package of bills in this place.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was interesting to see that Greens Senator Bob Brown was channelling Oscar Wilde. What always comes to my mind when I think about Oscar Wilde is:

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

The motion before the Senate is about the cessation and guillotining of debate. It forms part of the sense I have of the absolute hypocrisy of where the Greens are. I have to be honest. Ever since the Greens voted against an inquiry into the rape of an Aboriginal girl in 1988 by youths from the John Oxley Youth Detention Centre, one Annette Harding, I have not taken them seriously. They lost their moral compass at that moment. At that moment they just became like everybody else. So now we see the continuation of this duplicitous type of arrangement of the feigned and faux nobility that they try to exude and then the reality of actually what they are given the dirty little tricks that they are starting to play, whether it is the anti-Semitic edge that they have now got with the boycott of certain shops that they stand behind without even blinking, whether it is voting against the inquiry into the rape of an Aboriginal girl in 1988 at the John Oxley Detention Centre, a rape that nobody denies and that we have been trying to purge and trying to clear for so long—and they were part of that cover-up—and whether we are now we seeing the guillotine of a debate, something that in the past they continually said that they would not be a part of. We have seen the metamorphosis of the Greens and they are now just another party. So let us dispense with this allure of some sort of nobility, some sort of an edge and maybe some sort of a sense of righteousness and of purity, because that is lost; it is gone. Of course, the other issue as to that is this $1.6 million donation from Wotif and then the question is asked by Senator Bob Brown on that proprietor's behalf. It is absurd how it is done with this stupid little smile that they get on their face when we talk about this. Why do they do it? How does this happen?

Now, apparently, we have to get this through because they want to go surfing at Durban. It is all about Durban. It is time to go to Durban: Durban is nice this time of year, the Greens have to get there—so we have to get this through. There is the whole metamorphosis of this debate. It started as being about global warming and then it became about climate change and now it is about clean energy. It just changes like the days and as one thing is stated as being absolutely ridiculous they just move the debate on. As we know, the reality is that this tax is not going to change the temperature one iota. What I will give the Greens credit for is that they are about to bring about a new creed that it is immoral to be provident and now we have this new gospel, and the gospel needs a creed and the creed is this piece of policy. That is what it is: it is the structure around it; all new religions need a creed to stand by and this is it. The purpose is not so much to do with the environment, because it does nothing for the environment; the purpose is about a form of social re-engineering and a form of change. I do not know how the Labor Party got themselves sucked into this. I honestly believe, and I fervently believe this, there are people on the other side in the Labor Party who know that this is an absolute crock but they are doing it to curry favour with a group that are going to destroy them and you can see that in the polls at the moment. It is not smart for the party of Curtin, Chifley and—dare I say it—Whitlam to be sucked in by this. So it is not about changing the climate and I can understand the sense of unease that certain members such as Senator Conroy have about this—and they are justified in feeling that unease because—

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Kevin is very close!

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Kevin is close. Kevin is getting very close. I do not want to say much but the number nine comes to mind when I think about Kevin—and this is going to be yet another fiasco. But let us have a look at this inquiry and transparency. Where has it gone as far as regional Australia is concerned? Where is the inquiry as to regional Australia on this? We have got an inquiry in Sydney, we have got an inquiry in Melbourne and we have got one in Canberra—and I hope they are not saying that is regional Australia—but what has happened to regional Australia? What has happened to those fighters for regional Australia, Mr Oakeshott and Mr Windsor? Where is the inquiry that they got to take this piece of legislation out to the country, to the epicentre of the effect of this tax? But, no, we cannot go there because there will be dragons out there so don't go there! It is like the margin analysis on old maritime maps, saying 'don't go there, don't talk to the people of Tamworth and don't dare talk to the people of Orange, and don't go talking to the people of Longreach, but talk to the people of Melbourne; talk to the beautiful people. Have them come in. Make it nice and quiet and sedate because we've just got to get this through because Bob's got to go to Durban'.

So, when we think about regional Australia, we should think of the source of the wealth of this nation: the area where the coalmines are, the area where the iron-ore mines are, the area where the cotton fields are, the area where the wheat fields are and the area where many of the tourism venues are—the area that is going to get absolutely smacked between the eyes if this tax goes through. That is not an ambit claim. That is the result of some of the inquiries that have been made by state Labor governments when those governments have been more honest than the federal government on this issue and have talked about the epicentre of effect—the towns of Rockhampton, Gladstone and other places that are going to be hit with this, as will the Hunter Valley. So I say to Kirsten Livermore: you went to your people and gave a warrant that you would not be a part of a carbon tax. Well, Kirsten Livermore, you have misrepresented it; you have told an untruth to the people of Rockhampton. To Joel Fitzgibbon and Sharon Grierson in the Hunter Valley: you have told an untruth to the people of the Hunter Valley —

Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Joyce, could you refer to the members and the other place properly.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just as much as the Prime Minister has misrepresented her position so has Sharon Grierson and so has Joel Fitzgibbon.

Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Joyce, could you give the members of their correct title, please.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Joel Fitzgibbon MP, Sharon Grierson MP and Kirsten Livermore MP have misrepresented their position. So why does this need oversight? Because this is the Green-Labor Party-Independent alliance—the glee club—who are the same people that gave us the ceiling insulation debacle where we spent $1½ billion putting fluffy stuff in the ceiling for the rats and mice to sleep on and then spent another billion dollars pulling it all back out again after we had set fire to 194 houses and had, tragically, killed four people. It is that type of acumen that is now, at pace, bringing in this carbon tax. They are the same people who brought us the Building Education Revolution where transportable dongas were landed in yards and places such as Manila in northern New South Wales for—whatever it was—$1.8 million for a transportable, bolted together modular bit of gear. People have been absolutely ripped off and touched.

The people who brought us the Building Education Revolution are going to redesign the economy on a colourless, odourless gas. We look at what is happening overseas right now in Spain, Italy, Greece and the United States of America, and, in the middle of that, it is culpable that our nation should even contemplate going down this insane path whilst we are sitting with $205 billion in gross debt at a time when we are in a boom and we should be collecting money and putting it in the bank. We are remarkable. We reach the absolute pinnacle of our times as far as our resource prices go and this buffoon, who may or may not be the Treasurer for much longer, has managed to rack up $205 billion in gross debt.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That includes all the states as well.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We will put the states on top of that. On top of that we have the Labor Party states responsible for $252 billion of more debt. They do not care about how you repay it; they have not got a clue about how you repay it. They are always the same—they just get into a monstrous amount of debt and then when the place is on fire they run away.

This is the same group of people who brought us the war on obesity. What happened to that—was it a win or a draw? What happened to the fat people—where are they? It is a very bellicose arrangement that exists on the other side, because after they finished fighting the fat people they went to war against the homeless. Why don't you just leave them alone? Keep your hands in your pocket—stop picking fights.

I have found lately that we are increasing the amount that we are going to be sending overseas on scams. We have gone from buying $2.7 billion in carbon credits in 2020 and sending that overseas to buying $2.8 billion that we will be sending overseas. What is another $100 million between mates? I was looking at prospective letters and in the future we might get a letter like this from the office of Mr Soolaimon Bellowof the African Development Bank: 'Please transfer $2.8 billion into my account and I, the Auditor-General of the African Development Bank, will during the course of events deliver you some carbon credits.' Of course, where we are going is just so logical! You know where this ends up? Down the track we will end up sending $56 million a year overseas. People must be falling over themselves laughing at us and saying: 'Something has happened in Australia. There is something in the water in Australia. The Greens have obviously managed, in the dark of the night, to legalise marijuana. They're all just hooking up. They've got some crazy ideas. They're crazy people over in Australia. They're cooling the planet and they are going to be sending all of us $56 million a year in 2050.' Do not worry about our pensioners, do not worry about their teeth, do not worry about our kids—no, we have got a job to do: we must find every scam artist on the globe and send them a cheque for carbon credits.

Then we are giving the Greens their own bank account—a $10 billion bank account. In it they are going to come up with ideas because they are ideas people—straight to the pool room. We are going to have ideas coming from them—a new set of global warming jousting sticks. The ideas are going to be like those which we have seen in America where, the other day, they wrote off a loan in excess of $535 million. It was just one of those green ideas. These things seem to come unstuck. The problem is that they do not make much money. They tell us about green jobs. Where are these green jobs? Where are these people? I am looking for one. I ask Australia: if someone out there has a green job please ring up and tell me where you are, because we are apparently all going to have green jobs. We do not have to worry in the future about our coalminers or meatworkers. We do not have to worry about the manufacturing industry, which they used to represent, because they are going on this perverse path of green jobs—of wind chime manufacturers and duck pond makers. That is how we will survive in the future when we have got to pay back their stinking debt: we will survive with just green jobs and beautiful thoughts.

This nation really has got to wake up to itself. It just cannot go on like this. The New South Wales Treasury figures show the carbon tax will lead to 31,000 lost jobs in New South Wales, but over 26,000 of these will be in regional Australia. But we have not got an inquiry going on into regional Australia, because Bob has got to go to Durban. He has to go surfing and he has to tell the people in Durban what a wonderful person he is. So let us not worry about regional Australia and the 26,000 people in regional Australia who are going to lose their jobs, including 18,500 in the Hunter. If you are listening to me, you people in the Hunter, I say that Joel Fitzgibbon is going to vote for 18,500 people to lose their jobs. Maybe he should just lose his job, or maybe he should do the noble thing and cross the floor and vote against it. Cross the floor, Joel; cross the floor, Sharon Grierson; cross the floor, Kirsten Livermore—

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Joyce, I want to draw your attention to the question before the chair. I ask you to direct your remarks to the question.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you very much. It is all about an inquiry that we need. We must extend the time. We need an inquiry to tell people that 18,500 people in Hunter Valley, 7,000 people in the Illawarra and 1,000 people on the Central Coast are going to lose their jobs. They are going to lose their jobs because of the carbon tax, because of this nutty, stupid policy. But they do not get the grace of an inquiry. The government is going to guillotine time. We are trying to get an extension of time, but you do not want to give us an extension of time. You do not want to tell these people that they are going to lose their jobs.

Then we go to Queensland. This is Labor Party modelling. This is from the Labor Party. In the Rockhampton and Gladstone area the economic activity will fall by 8.2 per cent. So I say to the people of Rockhampton, in the seat of Kirsten Livermore MP, that she should be encouraging an extension of time. Maybe we should have an inquiry in Rockhampton where we tell the people of Rockhampton what is going to happen to their lives if they vote for this. In the Mackay area economic activity will go down by 5.7 per cent. Who cares? Who cares about regional Australia when you can pander to the Manic Monkey Cafe of inner-urban Nirvanaville? Who cares about them? They are only the people who put the money on the table. Don't worry about them—we will somehow live without them in this new mad form of economics, with a Treasurer who has an award from the same place that awarded Bear Stearns. It also awarded Lehman Brothers as the bank of the year. It never gave Peter Costello anything but it did give Paul Keating the Treasurer of the year award before we had 'the recession we had to have'. Why not?

'This is all going to make sense. It is going to work. The Greens are going to look after you!' Why are we doing this to people? How did we get sucked into this? The Australian people will wake up to it. They hate it—absolutely hate it. Except on Twitter, I just do not find people who want a carbon tax. Everybody hates it. You will literally get chased down the street by people who were formerly supporters of the Australian Labor Party. They are blue-collar conservative workers who have bailed on the Australian Labor Party because the Labor Party no longer believes in labour. They have dropped the 'u' out of 'labour'. For the Labor Party, it is not about human labour; it is about the Greens. It is about these manic, nutty policies that are going to take us to hades in a hand basket.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What are the Greens getting out of it?

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens are going to Durban. So what are we going to change next? We want to have an inquiry and there are so many things we could ask. Going back to where I started from, I am only too happy when Bob Brown starts channelling Oscar Wilde: arguments are to be avoided because they are always vulgar and often convincing. What we want is a convincing argument, even just to temper this insanity before we get dragged along, because they are so indolent. They are structuring this in such a way that you cannot get out of it. Like a recalcitrant teenager, they are structuring this in such a way that we are stuck with this insanity.

Helen Kroger (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with real regret that I am standing up to discuss this because it is a motion that we should not have to consider and it is a demonstration that this is a sad day for Australian democracy. Why is it a sad day for Australian democracy? Because the government, in moving this variation of hours, is demonstrating that what we are witnessing here today is the tail wagging the dog. We are seeing the tail wagging the dog with the Greens running the show here. Senator Brown, the Leader of the Greens, said earlier on that this was based on consensus, that this was a consensus arrangement. It was clearly a consensus arrangement between the government and the Greens, but I would suggest that it would be reasonable to ask: who actually pitched this arrangement? Was it the government or was it the Greens who put this arrangement together?

This is a clear demonstration that we have a minority party running the agenda of this country. Let us not forget not only what has happened in the last 12 months since this government came to office but the way in which the agenda has rolled out over that time. We must note that when the Leader of the Greens, Senator Brown, gets up and speaks of a consensus arrangement he is the leader of a minority party that could not even win a seat in the House of Representatives in its own right. It could not win one seat. Such is its minority support in Australia that it could not win one seat in its own right. It only won its seat with preferences, and I would suggest to those who are listening to this broadcast that they stay tuned for the next election because I would like to see whether the member for Melbourne, Adam Bandt, can win that seat in his own right. I would think that the Australian people and the constituents of the seat of Melbourne will have a very different view as to who they are supporting at the next election.

So we have a minority party that probably do not get any more than 10 per cent of the vote across the country. We have a minority party that, as we see in the news polls on a regular basis, are not improving their support. Their support base is declining. We have a minority party that get up here in this chamber and argue about scrutiny of the media. They supported an inquiry into the media, and we hear day in and day out in this chamber that the Leader of the Greens hates criticism. They cannot cope with any criticism levelled at them. The minute that they are given proper and due scrutiny, they scream foul and call for a media inquiry. The sad fact for the Australian population is that the tail is wagging the dog. It is the Greens who are influencing and leaning on the government in terms of the agenda that has been established and it is the Greens that are very much behind this agreement to vary the hours. Why are we concerned about it? The parliamentary schedule, the sitting dates for each calendar year, is established by the government in the previous year. I understand that it is the Prime Minister of the day himself or herself who sits down and considers their policy and agenda criteria, their priorities and what they want to achieve in a year. One would think that the determination of that would be based on election commitments that were given. This government went to the last election, in August of last year, saying that there would be no carbon tax under any government that the Prime Minister leads, but it did a backflip. Why did it do a backflip? Because the Australian Labor Party could not form government in its own right. We had an agonising seven-day period, when clearly negotiations were going on behind the scenes, that ended with the Greens and some Independents supporting the current Prime Minister in forming government. But she and the government use that as an excuse as to why they cannot have a properly laid out legislative framework for the year. It is because of that that she has come back and said: 'No, a carbon tax is critical for this country. This package'—this so-called clean energy package—'is absolutely critical and it is vital that it gets through this year.' We know that is because as part of the deal with the Greens the Australian Labor Party in government is supporting the imposition of a carbon tax on all Australians.

If you look at the parliamentary calendar, you will see that it was established last year and was circulated to all MPs and senators so that they could plan their business itineraries for the coming 12 months. It is very important for MPs and senators to be able to do that. You will note that there is a great blank in the calendar during the first six months of this year. Only six sitting weeks were scheduled for the first half of this year, yet we have a fairly intensive program for the second half of the year. I am one to put up my hand and say that I do not mind being here at all and that I am prepared to do whatever hours it takes to make sure that we scrutinise legislation properly. Senator Conroy, you are sitting opposite; I will ask you. The shape of the parliamentary calendar begs the question: why did we sit for only six weeks in the first half of the year? Why was that determined? Did it have anything to do with the formal alliance of the Greens and the ALP, which I am going to call a coalition of the willing because it is a coalition? In the government's words it is a formal alliance, but the Australian public knows it is a coalition.

We all know that the parliamentary calendar was framed this way because you could not form a majority in this place until after 1 July. The suggestion that you could not properly consider the legislative framework flies in the face of integrity when so much more could have been done in the first half of this year and when it was the decision of this government not to go down that track. Do not come in here and cry foul that you cannot possibly get all the legislative work done when it was your decision that determined the framework for the parliamentary sitting period. Your failure to do this is yet another demonstration of this government's incompetence and mismanagement across the board. We have seen knee-jerk reactions to rolling crises in the country, and this is yet another example of this government not appropriately managing the agenda before it. We know this because of what the government and the Leader of the Greens, Senator Bob Brown, have said.

We know why we have to vary the business hours in the next few weeks. It is because of Durban, as Senator Brown has said in his own words. It is because he wants to go to Durban with his partner, Prime Minister Gillard. He wants to go with the delegation of 40 or 50 public servants from the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency that will go. He wants to go to the Durban conference with this parcel under his arm—this parcel that is the carbon tax, beautifully wrapped, probably in green velvet double bows. He wants to be able to go to the conference and say: 'Here we are; we have delivered it. No other country in the world has introduced an economy-wide carbon tax, but I have managed to convince the government here in Australia that this is what we are doing. I am the best man in the world.' It is all about international grandstanding. That is what it is about. It is not about proper scrutiny; it is about international grandstanding. It is a disgrace that the government is not standing up to the Greens in this endeavour. This is an indictment of the government and it will play out in the future. I have to say that, if we vary these hours today, you should be careful of what you wish for, because you know the Australian public does not support it. You will not take us to an election now to get an electoral mandate for this, because you know the Australian public does not support it. We say: 'Bring on an election.' If you want to play these games and form consensual alliances with the Greens whilst in office, be careful of what you ask for in view of a time when you will be out of office.

I want to turn to the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Clean Energy Future Legislation, which was mentioned earlier on. It is extraordinary that this joint committee was formally established only last Thursday. It has called for submissions, which had to be in writing and submitted within only five working days, I think. The first hearing is being held today. Treasury were asked, as was the minister, on countless occasions, for the modelling so that it could be properly considered through this process. Treasury had been non-forthcoming with that modelling. Yet I see that literally minutes or seconds before the beginning of that hearing today Treasury released their figures. That was only this morning—minutes before the hearing.

The point of the inquiry and the point of any of these inquiries is to provide proper scrutiny of all the relevant material. One would have thought that Treasury modelling based on a $23 per tonne tax would have been relevant to this inquiry—to the scrutiny of this legislation. Yet this modelling was only made available to the committee members literally minutes before the hearing convened. How could the members of the committee give that modelling due consideration so that they could ask Treasury relevant questions about to it? This is yet another example of the way in which this whole thing is being truncated—not so that there can be proper, transparent consideration and scrutiny of these 19 bills and 1,100 pages of extraordinary detail but so that the legislation can be rammed through before Durban in early December.

It was an even sadder day when I heard that convention that has been applied in this place for considerable time was just put aside—without any decent advice and certainly with no respect given to the opposition—when it was determined that the committee would be headed up by a government chairman, which is normal practice, and a deputy chair from the Greens, Senator Milne. It begs the question: how does that reflect on the independence of this committee to properly scrutinise this clean energy future package, as it is called, when the construct of the committee itself is not independent? We know what happens in other committees; we see it every day. The chair and deputy chair positions are held by government and opposition members or senators so that there is some form of independence in the committees.

The Senate committees are an incredibly important part of the business of the Senate, ensuring that all legislation is properly scrutinised. But that was certainly not the case with this joint select committee. One has to ask the question again: why is it that the Greens were able to displace normal convention—to displace an opposition senator in that deputy chair position and take it for themselves? I am asking these questions but, I must say, the answers look pretty obvious. It is a sad day when we see a minority party having this sort of influence over a government agenda. You have to question how that is playing out behind the scenes and what is going on. We see what is going on in here, but we do not know what is actually going on behind the scenes between these two parties.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Didn't you preference them? You elected Adam Bandt.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Conroy, cease interjecting.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You gave Adam Bandt your preferences

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Conroy, I have just asked you to cease interjecting.

Helen Kroger (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President, but it is an interjection I actually do not mind taking. The Greens did only manage to secure one House of Representatives seat for Adam Bandt, the seat of Melbourne, with preferences. It was a decision that may be considered in a different context next time around.

Senator Conroy interjecting—

Senator Sterle interjecting—

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask senators on my right to cease interjecting.

Helen Kroger (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for your courtesy, Mr Acting Deputy President. My challenge to the government is that they actually start walking the talk, as opposed to talking the walk. If they believe that the Greens are a problem for them—the Greens, who are causing a huge chasm within their own ranks between the Left and the Right of the ALP—then it is time they actually walked the talk and did something about it. I think Minister Conroy could well heed some advice on that one.

In closing, we are not going to support this variation of business hours. It is not because we do not want to be in this place. We do believe that the work we do here is vitally important. We do have concerns about the implications of this variation to business hours, which in effect will mean—including a possible visit from the President of the United States—that we will be in Canberra every week for a seven-week period, or something like that. This has huge ramifications for the effectiveness and the running of our electorate offices. It is a problem for those constituents who have organised meetings with us in advance. It is a problem for the work that we do at a local level. It means that members of parliament will not be able to get back and do the work that they do so assiduously when parliament is not sitting—because we know that the work of the federal parliament does not cease when people leave this place; there is an intensive business program on when people leave here. So this means that a lot of local constituent work will have to be put on hold.

We do not support this. We do not support this because it is just a shocking reflection on the government of the shambolic approach that they have taken to setting the legislative framework and schedule for this year. Even more concerning is the reflection on them of the way in which they are just responding to the agenda of the Greens. They are not in charge here. They are certainly not demonstrating that they are in control. They are very much responding to the demands—in many cases hysterical demands—of the Greens. It is a disgrace on them. I condemn them for the influence that the Greens have on them. We will not be supporting this.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with a heavy heart that I rise to make a contribution to this debate on Senator's Ludwig's motion to vary the hours and days of sitting and routine of business of the Senate, because in some way I feel dirtied and sullied by being dragged into this debate—

Senator Conroy interjecting—

and somehow complicit in being asked to endorse the government's breaking of an election promise. It is a question that comes to the credibility of this government. I note that Senator Conroy is in the chamber and interjecting. Whilst I will not respond directly to his interjections, I note that Senator Conroy is galvanising as much support as he can in his party to prevent Kevin Rudd from assuming the leadership once again. He is also trying to dump this dreadful policy, because there are many on the Labor side who realise the political damage that has been done to the Labor Party by the words of Ms Gillard—'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead'—and Mr Swan and other acolytes. That was a crystal clear, rock-solid promise, and we are being asked today to endorse the breaking of that promise by granting additional hours.

We know that many in the Labor Party do not want this to see the light of day, but we also know that the real power behind the Gillard throne is resident in the wedge at the end of the government side of the chamber, and that is Senator Bob Brown and his Greens party. If there ever was a credibility gulf amongst politicians and political parties, it is demonstrated every single day by the Greens party. We can talk about their openness and transparency requirements for donations. Whilst they rail against corporate donations, they have taken the single largest corporate donation in the history of politics in this country—$1.6 million from the founder of Wotif. Then, by some strange quirk of fate, some coincidence, Senator Bob Brown and his tribe have asked questions that are going to benefit that donor in his commercial operations. In any other forum, there would be questions about how such a coincidence arose, but not to the pious and sanctimonious Senator Brown, who says, 'I'm doing everything within the legitimacy of this parliament.'

This is the same party, might I add, that say they are out there looking after children and young people and speaking up for their interests and yet, when I introduced a private senator's bill to protect children overseas from predatory Australians who would seek to exploit them for child sex tourism offences, they voted against it. They voted against protecting children from predatory sexual tourists under Australian law. It makes you wonder where their moral compass is. As Senator Joyce said, this is the party that voted against an inquiry into the abusive rape of a 14-year-old Aboriginal girl in Queensland. This is the party of hypocrisy, the party that says you should not be allowed to use plastic water bottles unless it is for a medical emergency, and yet their deputy leader has on her own website a picture of herself clutching a plastic water bottle as she strolls around some mountain bushland environment. This is the party of hypocrisy, where Senator Bob Brown exceeded the number of flights of both the former environment minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and the shadow environment minister at the time, Peter Garrett, while travelling around the country and preaching to others that they should not be emitting these noxious fumes that are destroying the planet.

We have established beyond a shadow of a doubt—and I think the Australian people need to understand—just how dangerously hypocritical the Greens party is. What they say and what they do are two different things. What they say in public is to appease people and make them think they are protecting the environment, but what they do is that they are trying to shut down industrial Australia. They are trying to increase taxes. Unfortunately, they have an inordinate amount of power over a hapless, hopeless, rudderless government in Australia at the moment, and that is the Gillard government.

Frauds have been perpetuated on so many Australians with the misuse, abuse, waste and squandering of taxpayers' money. We have seen it with pink batts, with GROCERYchoice, with Fuelwatch and with a whole bunch of other schemes. Today it has been reported that regional rorts are going on, that two-thirds of the money has gone to Labor electorates and only one-third to other electorates in regional Australia—completely disproportionate. We know that the standards, scrutiny, accountability and ethics of the government and their alliance partners, the Greens, are at rock bottom, and that is why their vote is at rock bottom. That is why they are all scrambling around to get the numbers for Kevin Rudd to come back. I know there are those on that side of the chamber who are deeply concerned about that, because they possibly will lose their jobs. They will lose their frontbench jobs because they so brutally knifed Mr Rudd before the Australian people could do it. There will be a big reshuffle. There will be a grand realignment of the factional schemes. You may not see Senator Conroy and Senator Carr lining up on the same team anymore. But we will see a change of government and hopefully the restoration of some integrity to it. We need to get a bit of decency, honesty and transparency back in the public debate.

One of the areas that strikes me as extraordinary is that Senator Wong and others will stand up and talk about green jobs and the experience overseas. What I would like to do for the benefit of the Australian people and those listening to this broadcast is detail one of the experiences overseas of the great hope for Centre Left governments right around the world—and that is the American government, led by Barack Obama. Only this morning a commentator reported that $17.2 billion has been spent by the US government on creating green jobs. I wonder just how many jobs $17.2 billion could create under a Centre Left government. Remember: the dream that is being pitched to all Australians is that this carbon tax will not hurt our economy because it is going to create jobs. How many jobs did $17.2 billion create in America? Was it one million? Was it two million? Was it 500,000? Unfortunately, that was not the case. It created 3,545 jobs. If you quickly do the maths, it works out to be $4.853 million per job. This is the future that we are being sold. The Australian people are being peddled this nirvana. But the results are there. The examples are there.

If you look at Spain, you will see that it is virtually broke. It is suffering from this great European crisis where productivity is down, work ethic is down, government spending is up and money is being spent and wasted on these obscure green schemes that the Labor government has tried to impose upon us.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Bernardi, I want to draw your attention to the question that is in fact before the chair.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed, I do come back to it. We are talking about the decarbonisation of our economy, which is what this extension of powers is intended to legitimately pursue. We know that. You may have missed my reference to the $17.2 billion being spent in America to create 3,545 jobs. It concerns me that we are heading down the same path, because the Greens tail is wagging this dog of a government. That is not the future I imagine. I imagine a future for my children where there will be industry, productivity, growth and a sense of optimism about the future. Unfortunately, this tax, which we are being asked to endorse ipso facto through this extension of hours, endorsing a broken promise, is really beyond the pale. When we examine why this government is pursuing this ideological bent we see there is no benefit at all for Australia to go down this path and for the Senate to extend sitting hours without applying that time to examining the implications of this broken promise for the Australian economy.

I know the Treasurer released Treasury modelling just a few moments before a committee was due to sit. The credibility of this Treasurer has to be brought into question as well. I know much will be made of the fact—and he posed for a great photo—that he was named Euromoney Finance Minister of the Year. It follows a great tradition, as Senator Joyce referred to, set by Paul Keating, a former world's greatest Treasurer who gave us 'the recession we had to have'.

But I think the tradition of Euromoney awards is more starkly and contemporaneously spelt out by revisiting their 2006 awards. Euromoney said the best investment bank was Lehman Brothers. Of course, Lehman Brothers went broke in 2007. In 2006 Euromoney said that the best equity house was a group called Morgan Stanley. Of course, Morgan Stanley had to be bailed out to the tune of billions of dollars in 2007. In 2006 Euromoney, the same people who awarded Mr Swan Finance Minister of the Year, said the best risk management house was a group called Bear Stearns. Bear Stearns, of course, busted and went broke in 2007. In 2006 the best investor services according to Euromoney were Citigroup, another group that had to have billions of dollars worth of bailouts in 2007. So when they award Treasurer Swan as best finance minister of the year we are right to be dubious about the category he is inserting himself into because he follows in the great tradition of those busted outfits and the man who said Australia had to have a recession with 17 per cent interest rates, and it follows in the tradition that this Labor government has run up billions of dollars of taxpayer debt, mortgaging the future.

Labor want to further compromise the future of the Australian people and hurt successive generations by imposing an all-pervading tax on carbon dioxide. They are doing it under the mantle of presuming that there are going to be green jobs. We have busted that myth, just like Euromoney have given the kiss of death to other firms. We also know there is a very clear indication that this is a tax that will grow and grow and that tens of billions of dollars ultimately will be sent to countries without the scrutiny and accountability that exists under the Australian legislative and corporate framework. We also know that this is an attempt at an election sweetener by reforming some of the tax system and applying some additional benefits to pensioners and others, most of which would be welcome because of the cost-of-living rises that have taken place.

This is the disingenuous nature of it: the government has steadfastly refused to identify and acknowledge that this all-pervading tax will only increase in the future. It will go from $23 at the starting point and it will rise to $29 within a couple of years. Of course, that will put the price of electricity up. It will put the price of everything we use up because ultimately electricity is the thing that is used to light shops, keep refrigeration going, create cement; there are a whole range of applications. This is a tax on electricity, so nothing will escape it. It will continue to rise. Even when it goes to a market based mechanism, of course, which was rejected by the Labor Party; that was their 2007 policy—

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Bernardi, again I do want to draw your attention to the motion that is before the chair, which is a motion moved by Senator Ludwig with respect to the days and hours of meeting and routine of business.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, you must have missed my link between the reason we are having—

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Very subtle, Cory.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am known for my subtlety, thank you, Senator Collins.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I have simply drawn your attention to the motion before the chair, Senator Bernardi.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate that, Mr Acting Deputy President, and you are doing a mighty fine job and I congratulate you on that.

The purpose of seeking this extension of hours is to debate a broken promise by this government. It is a broken promise that is going to have a serious impact on electricity prices, a serious impact on the cost of living for everyone in this country and a serious impact on our international competitiveness. We are going to see the export of industry and the export of jobs; we are not going to see the creation of green jobs. We know that this government is desperate for the cash that is going to be generated from that. But it cannot even do that appropriately. This is a new tax where apparently everyone is going to be better off, but we know that is not going to be the case. When we are discussing these extended sitting hours and when we are discussing a range of measures that are going to impact on the Australian people, we on this side of the chamber are being asked to be complicit in the breaking of a solemn promise to the Australian people.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, you are being asked to come back and debate this.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Many of us take our promises seriously. I know Senator Sterle is interjecting. No-one takes anything he says seriously. I am not sure that he takes his own promises seriously. But the point is this: we are entrusted to speak up for the Australian people. When we go to an election we take a policy platform there and people vote for it. I know that people like Senator Sterle were elected on the basis that they were not going to support a carbon tax. I know that was the case because his Prime Minister, the one that he so warmly embraces as leading this country boldly into the future—

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Too right; you've got that right.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I only wish Hansard could pick up irony and sarcasm. When they are elected on this platform and when members of the House of Representatives are elected on this platform, it is right to question how they can break such a promise that is going to have such massive implications for this country (1) without proper scrutiny and (2) without actually taking it to the Australian people. These are common-sense questions that most Australians I know want to ask.

Despite the protestations of the Greens and those who are advocates and acolytes of the green agenda within the Labor Party, there is very little demand other than contrived, drummed up, astroturf support for this carbon tax out there in mainstream Australia. If you move more than five or 10 kilometres out from the major cities and you talk to the millions of Australians who are already struggling with the burdens placed upon them by this government, you will find that they do not want a carbon tax. They do not want a carbon tax, not because they do not care about the environment but because they know that it will do nothing for the environment. They know that it will not lower global temperatures one jot or tittle. We know that. We absolutely know that and no-one has ever disputed it. They also know that billions of their dollars are going to be sent offshore to unaccountable regimes or organisations. You are going to see it go to an international United Nations fund and you are also going to have to buy permits from nations which have a less than rigorous reputation for financial transparency and honesty. These are things that all concern us.

There is a more deliberate concern amongst the Australian people and that is that we have a government that have deceived the Australian people. I wish you could say that they had a deceptive aura of confidence or competence even, but unfortunately you cannot, because they have demonstrated no competence in any aspect of administering the national affairs of this country. We can look at it in so many ways—I touched upon pink batts and GroceryWatch and Fuelwatch. We can look at the rorting in Building the Education Revolution, as they called it. We can look at the laptops in schools rorting. We can look at border protection: the East Timor solution, the Malaysia solution. It can go on and on and on. It is one disaster after another. And today we are being asked to extend hours to be complicit in another disaster for the Australian people.

On this side of the chamber it is very clear that we will not support that and we will not support it because we want our integrity intact. We want to be consistent in our approach to taking effective policy solutions—not things that are going to damage the Australian people, not things that are going to irreparably damage our economy, not the myth of green jobs. We do not want the $17 billion that Barack Obama, President of the United States, spent on creating 3,545 jobs. We do not want that myth. We want accountability, we want strength and we want, most of all, competence from the Australian government.

Unfortunately, the weakness of the government, their shallowness, their lack of capacity in administrative skills and their lack of vision for the future of this country mean that they are now being driven by an extreme left-wing green ideology. We know the hypocrisy of that ideology. We know that they will stand up and say and do anything and then do something else behind the scenes. We know that they want to apply different standards to different people. It is like Orwell's Animal Farm, where some animals are more equal than others. Let me tell you that in this place we should all be equal and we should all have one vote. Unfortunately, those on the government side of the chamber have effectively given their votes away to their faceless men and to the faceless women of the Greens party. We know who is driving the government and the agenda. We know that Labor are weak and they are perhaps the worst government in the history of this country.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Not 'perhaps'; they are.

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, indeed, Senator Williams, they are. I have not lived as long as you, Senator Williams, so I will take your word for it.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You probably won't!

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The way I am going I may not, Senator Williams. The point is that we have a weak and hopeless government and now we have a green wedge that is seeking to drive its own ideological, obsessive agenda into destroying Australia as we know it and recreating it in the image of Bob Brown, Christine Milne and others like them. It is not the future for this country; it is not the future we anticipate and envisage for our children. It is a future which we can foresee by looking at America and Europe and at the failings of the green agenda there. That is why I do not support this motion.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this motion to vary the sitting hours of the Senate. What is this about? This is about the Greens wishing to go to Durban in South Africa in early December so that they can say to the rest of the world, 'Look at what we have achieved in Australia, our minority government'—a total of 10 members of parliament and senators out of a total of 226 in this place—'and how we dominate the government.'

This is about time; it is about wishing to change the hours of the Senate to accommodate the Greens—nothing more, nothing less. Yet in the three years I have been here I have noticed who the biggest time wasters have been: the Greens. How many divisions did they call when they had five, until 1 July this year, Greens senators in numerous divisions against at least 69, 70 or 71 other senators? And they say they have the numbers! They must be terrible at mathematics to think that five is greater than 70. Yet they are now saying, 'Let's extend time so that we can pass this legislation on the carbon tax and so we'—that is, the Greens—'can be complicit in the broken promise of our Prime Minister to the Australian people prior to the last election.' That is what this is about: satisfying the Greens to get the carbon tax/emissions trading scheme through this parliament. Forget about proper committee hearings and proper inquiries and the Senate doing its job properly; it is about passing legislation to satisfy Bob Brown and the Greens so that they can gloat when they get to Durban.

This carbon tax will be a long argument and a long debate, unless of course the Greens and the government pull the guillotine down on it, and a huge tax and cost impost on Australia. Why the rush? Why does it have to be rushed through this parliament? That is a question that everyone should be asking. Those out there in radio land listening to this broadcast and those who are watching it on the internet or in their offices should be asking: why the rush? Why are you going to impose a tax of somewhere between $72 billion and $100 billion on Australian industries by 2020 and have to rush it through? That is what this debate here and now is about. Why the rush? That is a question that everyone should be asking.

I find it amazing that the Greens are not rushing over to China to say to them, 'You put legislation through your parliament'—hang on, they do not have a parliament. I am sorry, I have overlooked an issue there.

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Universities and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a people's assembly.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Mason. It is the people's assembly. I find it quite concerning that last year China actually burnt 3.2 billion tonnes of coal—that is, 3,200 million tonnes of coal. They increased their consumption of coal last year by 434 million tonnes. Last year, Australia produced a total of 420 million tonnes of coal, yet China's consumption went up by more than that in just one year.

The Greens are saying: 'Give us extended hours. Let's rush this through before the end of November.' Yet they are not saying, 'Hang on, China's CO2 emissions a year are currently 10.3 billion tonnes'—yes, that is 10,300 million tonnes—'and by 2020 will go to 17.9 billion tonnes.' I must acknowledge here my colleague Senator Cormann, who gave me those figures, which were put out by Treasury. China's CO2 is going to go up by 7,600 million tonnes a year by 2020, but we stand here in this chamber debating time extensions to rush this legislation through Australia's parliament. The 578 million tonnes of CO2 that Australia is producing, excluding bushfires, which will be another big threat this summer after the last couple of wet seasons, will go up by 43 million tonnes a year by 2020. Then we will go into buying those credits from overseas. That will be the joke of jokes: fraudulent carbon credits exposed at billions of dollars. By 2020 we will be buying $3.5 billion in credits from overseas. We will be spending that much money but who will be checking that they are genuine? You know what I think about this carbon tax, Mr Acting Deputy President.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Do you like it?

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I do not like it. I think it is a fraudulent statement to the Australian people prior to the 21 August election. I am a firm believer in climate change. I totally believe in climate change. In fact, I believe the climate has been changing for millions of years. Just recently I was fortunate to spend three days at Airlie Beach, in the Whitsunday Islands, only to discover that 18,000 years ago the Whitsunday Islands were actually part of the Australian mainland because the sea levels were so low and that, 10,000 years ago, the globe warmed, the ice melted on the mainland and the seas rose and, hence, we now call them the Whitsunday Islands. The climate changed. What caused that climate change? What caused the globe to warm back then, Mr Acting Deputy President? Was it hoons in V8 Mustangs, putting out carbon dioxide and chucking wheelies? No, they did not exist then. Perhaps it was coal fired generators.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Williams, I know you are responding to an interjection but I do draw your attention to the question that is before the chair.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, perhaps you might draw the attention of the person who interjected and ask him to refrain from doing so in future. Would that be appropriate?

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, but you were very eager to accept his interjection.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I always am, because his interjections are so ridiculous.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask that all senators refrain from interjecting.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take your point, Mr Acting Deputy President, with total respect. Moving on from Senator Ludwig's interjection, I would like to ask: why the rush on this policy?

Why does it have to be through before the end of November? We do not see it rushed into other parliaments around the world. We see an emissions trading scheme of some 30 countries in Europe, where they produce 14 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide. About a dollar a head is their cost. But ours is going to come in at about $400 a head—$400 for every man, woman and child in Australia. And that is going to change the planet? No, it is not.

The point I make is that we should not agree to the extension of hours in this chamber, for two reasons. One is the enormous amount of time that the Greens have wasted in this parliament, not only in this current parliament, the 43rd Parliament, but the 42nd Parliament prior to that, through calling ridiculous divisions where, frankly, they should all carry a calculator and do some figures and they might know the real numbers that stay around the chamber when those divisions are called.

Secondly, this is a most important piece of policy with huge ramifications for our nation. Mr Acting Deputy President Marshall, as a member of the Labor Party you would share my concern on manufacturing jobs in Australia. We have seen from BlueScope Steel the announcement of 1,000 jobs to go there plus some 400 contractors. What we are facing now is 105,000 manufacturing jobs lost over the past three years. So why should we rush through another piece of legislation? Why should we extend the hours of this parliament on a policy that is going to cost more jobs in manufacturing? I thought the Labor Party actually cared about jobs, but that has obviously disappeared years ago. Why should we rush through a policy that the Transport Workers Union has referred to as a death tax? That was Tony Sheldon's evidence at our Senate select committee inquiry chaired by the very capable Senator Cormann. That is how the Transport Workers Union described the proposed 6.85c a litre increase in the excise on diesel for truckies.

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

He is going to be president of the ALP now.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He may well be the president as others are dropping off the perch.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I would ask senators not to interject. Senator Williams, please address your remarks through the chair.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I certainly will, Mr Acting Deputy President. I normally do. I apologise for sliding off course there for a brief second. So we have a tax that needs to be rushed through this parliament that the Transport Workers Union described as a death tax. Mr Sheldon described it as a death tax because he said, 'Put those extra cost on our truckies it will sweat the drivers and sweat the trucks.' He is saying they will have to work longer hours to make a living, especially owner-drivers, and that will mean more neglect of the truck, of the rig. It could be, 'Hang on, the tyre is almost bald. It's all right, times are tough, I will get another trip out of this tyre.' Brake linings might be worn. 'No, it's all right, I can squeeze another trip out of them before I replace the brake linings.' That is what Mr Sheldon meant when he described this tax as a death tax.

But back to the argument we are debating. Why should we extend the hours, why should we rush when these are the concerns the Australian people have about what is being proposed? The situation is that we are going to impose this amount of money on the 500 biggest emitters of carbon dioxide in Australia, and we really do not know who they are. We have not seen the list. We hear figures that if they happen to be responsible for more than 25,000 cubic tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year then they are in, but if it is 24,999 you are out. We know the cement industry is a big emitter, and they cannot afford any of this tax, especially the way the current Australian dollar is, allowing imports to be so cheap because of our high exchange rate, which is obviously brought about by high interest rates in this country, which is obviously brought about by government policy. But that is an argument for another day.

So we should not support the extension of hours here. We should not just kowtow to the Greens, who want this crazy legislation that was guaranteed to the Australian people by the Prime Minister, Ms Gillard, prior to the election would not be introduced. In fact, it should be delayed until after the next election. That would be true democracy, to allow the Australian people to have a say on it. We have the member for New England, Mr Windsor, who proudly says, 'I will survey my electorate. I am the people's representative.' Mr Windsor did that recently on whether we should have changes to our tax system—not the carbon tax—and whether we should support same-sex marriage. But he did not survey his electorate on the carbon tax. If he will not do his job, I am glad to say that I am doing it for him. Last Monday I sent out 57,000 survey forms into the electorate of New England and also to the electorate of Lyne, where Mr Oakeshott MP is the sitting member. He will not do a survey in his electorate as well. Mr Windsor said at the last election in TV adverts, and I saw them in my own lounge room, 'Vote 1 Tony Windsor, the people's representative.' If he is the people's representative, why doesn't he survey his electorate before there is any proceeding of this legislation in the House of Representatives or here? That is another reason why this should not be rushed through the parliament. That is another reason why we should not extend working hours here to have more sitting hours to rush through a policy simply because the Greens are running this government.

I will wind up by saying I do not support the motion being put forward. There is no cause for extension of working hours. We have seen the amount of legislation that has gone through this parliament this week. In fact, on Monday we almost ran out of legislation as bills were passing through so quickly. Now it is drop everything, extend hours, let us do the legislation for the Greens, the ones who are complicit in the Prime Minister breaking her guarantee to the Australian people prior to the election. The Australian people will not forget this. They will not forget many things this Prime Minister has done and this government has done to our nation. They will not forget the debt, the waste, the interest-rate rises and the commitment by the Prime Minister on Perth radio in July last year that she would never consider sending asylum seekers to countries which are not signatories to the refugee convention. But what is the argument in the House of Representatives today? It is over an issue where the government wishes to send asylum seekers to a country which is not a signatory to the refugee convention. Hence, the government has put up a bad argument for extending the hours for this particular reason. I urge my colleagues all around the chamber, perhaps some on the other side, to oppose this. But, no, if they were to do that they would be kicked out of their party and their future would be guillotined.

There is no argument for this. This is an important piece of legislation and it should run its normal course. It should be allowed to go up to Senate committees, as well as to the joint committee that has been established, so that the Senate can do its job properly and scrutinise the legislation that has come into this parliament and not simply have it rushed through to appease the Greens so that they can beat their chests and say, 'Look at me. Look at me,' when they get to Durban, South Africa, this December.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the question be now put.

Question put.

The Senate divided. [12:04]

(The President—Senator Hogg)

Senator Bob Brown did not vote , to compensate for the vacancy caused by the resignation of Senator Coonan.

Question agreed to.

Original question agreed to.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, Senator Brown is not here, and he is always keen to do this, so I ask that the record particularly show that Senator Brown was not here for this vote.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I would like to put on the record that Senator Brown was paired, thank you.

John Hogg (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not an issue. The motion has been passed.