Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

This is an arrogant, out-of-control government. It does not want accountability for its performance in the area of environment and heritage. The Australian public should always judge the Howard government by what it does, not by what it says. The parliamentary secretary has described climate change as a ‘very serious threat to Australia’, but also in 409 pages of amendments—literally thousands of amendments to this act—there is not one single mention of climate change—not one. This bill has been three years in the making and there is not a single mention of the greatest threat facing not just Australia but the globe. There is not one single measure contained in this bill to cut Australia’s soaring greenhouse gas pollution, which, if you exclude the land use changes by the New South Wales and Queensland governments, grew by 25.1 per cent between 1990 and 2004. As I said, judge them by what they do, not what they say.

I would have thought that climate change would be on the government’s radar by now, but it seems that the climate sceptics are still running climate policy for the Howard government. The government has responded to other issues with legislative measures but the absence of any climate change measures in these amendments would suggest that they simply do not see it as a priority. Labor certainly welcomes any attempts to reduce red tape when it comes to legislation where that issue is clearly identified and Labor agrees with one comment by the parliamentary secretary when he said in his second reading speech:

... the government sees no need for administrative process for process’ sake.

But the parliamentary secretary made an important point when he noted that the 2006 Banks report on regulatory burden did not recommend a single change to the EPBC Act. It is not surprising, however, given that the Prime Minister just two weeks ago said that he did not want to respond to ‘theoretical issues’—

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