Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

He is a psychic. Hours before he could even know, he just rejected it perfunctorily and completely. The honourable member behind me said, ‘He is a psychic.’ Well, he actually is the climate change minister’s sidekick, not a psychic. The sidekick’s senior minister, Senator Wong, addressed the National Press Club a little bit later. By now, the Frontier report was public. Of course, there was no time to have done anything more than quickly scan it. She may have scanned it—we do not know—but she certainly could not have absorbed it. What was her report? Just think about this. This is the most important piece of economic reform, the most momentous reform this parliament has considered for many years and possibly in our lifetime. It is a huge change to our economy and we all know it has enormous risks. The issue of the design is a crucial one that has been debated in many forums. Every single country has got a somewhat different scheme. There are great debates about design. It is a critical, crucial issue to the survival of many Australian industries and to the jobs of thousands of Australians.

And so, presented with a report from this expert group that has done many reports and studies and work for other governments, including other Labor governments, what does this enlightened, open-minded, thoughtful climate change minister say? She just says, ‘It’s a mongrel.’ All I can say is that she may well say it is a mongrel but that, by dismissing it so recklessly, she just underlines what a dog of a scheme she has in the Senate this week.

The fact is that the Australian people expect the government to do its work thoroughly on this. They expect a government to listen, discuss, consider and negotiate, especially when it comes to matters that affect their weekly budgets, their ability to get a job, their ability to make their small business successful and their ability to live in a growing and sustainable economy and environment—especially when it concerns this vital matter, the biggest, most significant policy-driven structural change to the Australian economy in our lifetimes. But this arrogant Labor government will not listen. It is determined to go ahead and implement its own flawed and friendless emissions trading scheme regardless of the costs and consequences. It sees no alternatives, hears no alternatives and certainly will not speak of any alternatives.

The government like to talk about climate change deniers. Let me say that the only denial at the moment is that being practised by the government. They are denying that there is any wisdom other than in themselves; they are denying that there are any designs that are valuable or useful to consider other than their own. We have a Prime Minister who, when asked about the legislation that will doubtless in some form become the benchmark and template for emissions trading schemes around the world—the American legislation—had no idea what we were asking him about. He was clueless.

The government will not shift from its ideological hang-ups: big government, high taxes, heavy spending and excessive regulation. Part of the genius and wisdom behind the Frontier Economics proposal is the fact that, because it results in dramatically lower electricity prices in the near and medium term, you do not require that enormous churn of money—that enormous tax grab by the government which the government then recycles. It is a vastly superior approach.

Of course, the government tries to pretend that it actually has a scheme that is complete, and it says to the opposition, ‘Well, where are all your detailed amendments?’ The government has not even finalised its own scheme. What it is asking the Senate to vote on is a coathanger. It is asking the Senate to vote for a coathanger that the government will then choose to hang whatever coat or jacket it wants to on. It is still designing its own scheme, and the assistant minister knows this better than anybody. Negotiations are still underway with the coal industry, led by the assistant minister opposite. That is Australia’s largest exporter. The coal industry and the assistant minister know that this scheme will destroy thousands of jobs and cancel billions of dollars of investment, including in the assistant minister’s own electorate. He is currently trying to negotiate, caught between the coal industry, the unions working in that industry and his ideological, left-wing colleagues on the other side, and he is trying to find some changes. They are not going to be agreed between now—

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