Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Unlike the member for Fisher, I will not be tedious or repetitious and I will actually talk about the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2010 and cognate bills and the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. I will actually talk about our policy, the policy of the opposition, some of the history of where we are today and why the Senate and the opposition should actually side with the government on this. It is because it is in the national interest, in the global interest and, in fact, in their own best interest.

It is always entertaining to come into this place and listen to all sorts of people make all sorts of speeches on matters which they have no belief in or commitment to. It is a real dilemma for a lot of people in the opposition when they really do not believe in what their party is doing. So you hear these bizarre contributions where it is all at the edges and where they try to divert attention from the actual debate to something about camels or something else. You will hear all sorts of things. They will provide wonderful and bizarre statistics and unique examples. They will offer ridiculous solutions. They will find unholy bedfellows and cuddle up to anyone who even looks remotely like siding with them on these matters. They will play the politics of fear and smear, which is nothing new in this place.

Anyone who is a veteran of listening to these speeches will understand exactly what that is about. It is about diverting attention from the real matters at hand that are absolutely of critical importance to our generation. In the end, we are the people who are charged with making the decisions, with moving the debate and the policy forward and with providing a national platform—(Quorum formed)

I thank the opposition for calling a quorum and interrupting my speech because it does two things: one is that it gets my colleagues in to listen to me—so thank you very much—and the other one is that it proves that I must have been saying something so significant that those opposite really did not want to hear it. They are up on their feet now and they want to stop me again. If you give me an opportunity to go through my speech, you will have an opportunity yourself later.

There is no question that this is a global issue. It is an issue that does start at home. If anything, it starts at the national level; and that is exactly what we are proposing. The real risk of climate change is great; and it is something that we must do something about. This is not an issue where we can all sit by and watch and hope that somebody else will take charge. Australia on our own will not change the world. On our own Australia will not have the weight, the gravitas or the capacity to change what is happening in the climate; but we do have a significant opportunity. What we can do is to lead. We can lead by demonstrating to the rest of the world that when you are committed you can take positive action and you can make a difference. We can also innovate. We can look at new ways of doing things and create new economies. We can show the rest of the world how it can be done—whether it is through solar energy plants, whether it is wind energy, whether it is wave energy or whether it is through a range of other innovative things that we can do. We can create new markets and create new technologies. We can assist our neighbours. We can assist the Pacific island countries in our neighbourhood with their issues related to climate change, which I can tell you for them are very real; and they are very real today, not tomorrow.

We can begin the process which everyone in the world is beginning to take on board. We can do that in a proper fashion with a process. We can set a basis and have rules. We can establish a system. What we can do is make it affordable and we can make it acceptable to people. We can make it real. All of this may seem complex and a little confusing at times, and I can understand that because there are a whole range of people out there whose only task in life is to make it complex, to make it confusing and to ensure that ordinary people do not get a real opportunity to make a fair assessment of what it is. Let me put it to you in three points that really encapsulate what we are talking about and how we can move forward.

When you are talking about climate change, the first thing that you must do is to set some sort of a limit—put a cap in place, some sort of measure or benchmark. That is what our policy is about: putting in a cap, having something to measure to and having a benchmark. Without that, you have nothing. If you do not have a benchmark then how do you know where you are going, how do you know where you need to be and how do you know what you ought to be doing to get there. It is a critically important part, and it is simple—everyone understands that. The second thing you must do is to charge the actual polluters, not the taxpayer and not others. You need to give the polluters the incentive but you also need to actually charge the polluters themselves. It is the carrot and stick approach. That will effect change. A voluntary system will not, but charging the polluters will. The third thing you need to have is a market based system. You need to compensate people. People should not have to pick up the bill for what is taking place in the world. They will through a range of mechanisms but there ought to be compensation in place. Really it is quite simple—it is the three Cs: you put a cap in place, you charge the big polluters and you compensate people for the costs that they will face. These are not complex matters; and this is exactly what we ought to be doing.

Let me elaborate on a couple of those points. When we talk about a cap, it is about putting a limit on the amount of carbon pollution that all emitters actually make. Some will emit more carbon pollution than others. But by setting a benchmark, by setting a cap, what we say to people is ‘if you come in below that then you have spare capacity’, if you like. If you come in above that then there is an incentive to reduce your emissions. If you do not, we will charge you for it. It is as simple as that. If you do not, either because you do not want to or because it is difficult or uneconomical today, then you pay a price. We charge the big polluters.

What that means is that you set up a market based system where those who pollute less—and the incentive for them is to reduce their pollution emissions as much as possible—trade on the credit they have and trade it with the big polluters who, for whatever reasons, cannot match the cap. That gives you a market based system. The beauty about a market based system—and the Liberal Party should be very familiar with this concept—is that it is the market that decides, not politicians, not bureaucrats, not anyone else. It is actually based on some real principles about letting the market decide. Let it pick the winners. We are not going to tell you how to do it. We are not going to tell you how to achieve it. We are going to say: ‘Here is a set of rules, here is a system, here is a guide. There is a global marketplace for this. That way we are not just bound on what we do here but on what the rest of the world does as well. Here are the playing rules and a level playing field. You go and do what is necessary based on that.’ For some reason, the great triumphant confluence of supposedly the Liberal Party, small business, big business and the friends of business now seems for the first time to think that a market based solution somehow is evil, wrong and nasty and it should be something else—we should just slug the taxpayer. I do not recall that ever having been the policy of the Liberal Party anywhere in policy statements, but it is nice to see that there has been a change—this massive swing to the ultra-Left, Cuba revisited, from the Liberal Party. So we have put in place a market based system, charging the polluters.

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