Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I think it does not matter because we have seen two very clear, different positions in the last three months from the opposition—a side that now has on the table an emissions trading scheme based on GGAS in New South Wales. The second line on their website says, ‘It is the first mandatory emissions trading scheme in the world.’ That is the basis of their scheme. They are not being truthful to the people of Australia in promoting that. They have a market based response and they are pretending it is something different. This debate is going to die. It is a sad death because the concept of a market based response in a market economy, putting a price on carbon and putting true pricing into the energy sector, is a sensible way forward for the national interest of this country.

The amendments I move this morning work on the detail of the bill. This is the third time these same amendments have been put up. It is of concern, on the slight chance this legislation hits the ground and gets through, that there is an enormous amount of ministerial discretion left in this legislation. When it comes to the crunch on how a particular issue is going to be dealt with, it is left as a question of ministerial discretion, I think, 25 times in this bill.

To the minister, whoever that minister may be in the future, I say: who wants to be the person in the chair having to make a decision to remove a lot of these transitional elements in the legislation—for example, fuel credits? Who is going to be the person, man or woman, sitting in the chair who is going to say: ‘I remove fuel credits. Come on Australia, come and enjoy my company’? It is not going to happen. We have to remove the political elements of this. We have to make sure the science is true, the science is supported and the science is allowed to fly. The way to do that is to remove the political elements of this and the amount of ministerial discretion, and to try and instil, as we have with so many other elements of government, an independent element in this process. We did it with the Reserve Bank. We consider the economy so pure and so important that we have an independent Reserve Bank board. If this is the moral challenge of our time then we should instil independence, arm’s length from government, in this process. At the moment, we do not have that. It is wrapped up in ministerial discretion in the future. It is a lesser bill because of that. I do not think it really matters, but I hope the government considers this third time round.

See this speech in context