Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I was hoping my points were moving him. In 2007 Prime Minister Howard went to the election with an emissions trading scheme policy. The climate issue has progressed by four years and we see the coalition has regressed by many more years in their categorical opposition to an emissions trading scheme. On one hand, the coalition would have you believe that they are the party of free enterprise, but on the other hand they staunchly oppose a market based mechanism in our economy to help lower the amount of carbon pollution.

On one hand they feign interest in international engagement and good global citizenship, but on the other hand they like to see Australia stand idly by while the rest of the world takes action and we become a global laggard. On one hand they say that Australia needs to be a leader in innovation; at the same time, they do not want to see anything done for industry to gear itself up for a clean technology and green-collar economy of the future.

The bottom line is that they are on the wrong side of history in this debate for one simple yet very straightforward and powerful proposition: what they are putting forward to Australia does not work in our future interests. Forgetting the political analysis for a moment, if we look at the debate on logical grounds—you could call it the front-bar-at-the-pub common sense test; call it what you like—we see that in any analysis that steps back from the daily changing headlines the coalition’s proposition does not stack up because of their contractions and contradictions on climate change and pricing.

I think they are also getting found out for their association—and not all of the people who are opposed to this are cranks—with some of the extremist groups who fronted up for their association in yesterday’s rally, if I can call it a rally. Many regard the Leader of the Opposition’s association with some of those extreme views as unbecoming of a leader of a major political party in Australia. I did wonder about that particularly obnoxious, nasty placard, which is in the Fairfax papers, which the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Mackellar, the member for Indi and an assorted raggle-taggle bunch of coalition MPs were standing in front of.

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