Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am effectively in continuance with the member for Moncrieff and I have very similar concerns. In this debate on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009and many of us have sat through it—we have failed to see the government’s argument that we need to act immediately on climate change translated into a valid argument for haste with this legislation. They are very different arguments. We have this debate closing today with just eight people in the public gallery. That reflects on the government having again failed to take the people with them on the complexities around what is the most important legislation brought before this place in nearly a decade.

Let me for a moment compare this legislation with the GST legislation of the 1990s. Members in this place will recall it was this side of the parliament that took the people with them. They were some of the most hostile debates in a generation, but we went step by step through its implications for Australian families. We walked the aisles of the shopping centres and talked about the impact of the GST on people of every socioeconomic background. But what we are seeing today is the opposite.

This is incredibly important legislation that is basically a naked piece of legislative scaffolding, upon which regulations are going to be riveted in the months and years to come. That is the concern of this side of the House. The member for Charlton must accept that the industry that is concerned on our side is also his industry and the workers who are concerned are also his workers. Those who express scepticism and diversity of thought are merely representing the sentiments of the community. Do not cloak this in a belief that it is a battle against deniers, because that was the song sheet of 2007. So often, boxers are only as good as their last fight. The government may well have won in 2007, fighting and seeking out deniers in evangelical zealotry, but the debate has moved on. We have moved on and this side of the chamber has put down serious solutions that are talking about recognising offsets and putting in voluntary carbon trading as of next year—and they have all been rebuked because the government would prefer to have this simplistic 2007 argument all over again. That is the political side of this legislation.

Does this scheme does start in 2010? No. In 2011? Perhaps no. It will be mid-2012. So why the haste in bringing this legislation through now? Wait five months for Copenhagen. But that is not being contemplated by the government. A great tragedy is that any valid debate about the shape of the trading system for Australia has been washed away. Read the legislation and all you will see are very superficial references to OTNs and to caps and to trading and to defining who is affected. But look for the regulations. Only six regulations have been written for this legislation. There are 30 more to come, and no-one knows exactly what the content of those regulations will be. The problem is that the government will not come back here and debate those further additions, because they are sneaking the legislation through under the cover of night, with barely any interest here in the parliamentary galleries. We have schools here today—we have Baranduda and Mary MacKillop—and those schools are watching the most important piece of legislation, but there has not been any sort of meaningful debate from the government seeking out the deniers and exposing them.

If I have to apologise for this side of the House having a diversity of view, I will do it happily because it represents what is happening in the community. Eighty per cent of people want something done, but only a very small proportion of the Australian population really have a sense of what has to be done and how it will be done, and the impacts it will have. That is what this chamber should be debating, but it is not happening. Contrast that attitude with this side’s approach to complex and important legislation like the GST. We seriously engaged the Australia population, but that has not happened on this occasion.

Lastly, when we look to our major neighbours, as previous speakers have said, we have the US evolving legislation that is completely different from ours. The US legislation is effectively providing 100 per cent cover to export industries. Legislation in the US is effectively exempting coal, and it is guaranteeing up to 30 per cent of export entitlements to the power industry. Effectively, a nation with half of the export exposure that Australia has, by percentage of GDP, is looking after its exporters. I say to the member for Charlton: we have not even begun this debate in this House. We are effectively handing you a signed cheque. Yes, we will have the equivalent of a new tax, but you have not even told us what that tax will be. At least we talked about levels for the GST before we brought it to this chamber. I think this is almost, in an intellectual way, dishonest. It is dishonest to confuse the general desire of the community for something to be done with hasty, bungled and rushed legislation. We need a bipartisan approach on something as important as this. This government, by acting with such political haste, has prevented that occurring. I urge the House to support the amendments. (Time expired)

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