Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, I was just looking for what Mr Turnbull later said. That was what Lord Monckton said. He said that this is a great policy. It gives a nod to climate change and, if necessary, can be easily turned off.

Fast-forward a year and the member for Wentworth goes on Lateline and says:

… I think there are two virtues of that from the point of view of Mr Abbott and Mr Hunt.

One is that it can be easily terminated. If in fact climate change is proved to be not real, which some people obviously believe—I don't. If you believe climate change is going to be proved to be unreal, then a scheme like that can be brought to an end.

So we can see here, from Lord Monckton to Malcolm Turnbull's quotes, that the opposition basically have a policy which is all about chicanery. It is all about conspiracy theories. It is all about designing a policy that will get them through the next election and provide them with a fig leaf for their resistance to the idea that the science is right. We heard it in the member for Riverina's defence of this MPI topic. He clearly does not believe that climate change is a problem. The references in this MPI to an 'unelected committee' are really targeted, as I said before, at those extremists who now make up the coalition's activist base.

We then heard their attacks on good Australians. We heard their attacks on Cate Blanchett. We heard their attacks on Michael Caton. These are people who are part of our cultural life, who have worked hard and who are our exports to the world. We heard Senator Barnaby Joyce out there attacking Cate, saying she was hurting people, and we heard the Leader of the Opposition in this parliament yesterday abusing her for having an 'ecomansion'. This deliberate bullying and abuse of Australian actors, this revolting political abuse that we just heard from the member for Riverina, is an attempt to paint good Australians as elitists. That is what it is an attempt to do. It is all part of this Boston Tea Party Republican revolt against the elite—Sarah Palin. That is the political appeal. That is the strategy behind it. It is anti-elitist. It is pitchfork-wielding conspiracy theorist. We saw them out the front of this parliament at their carbon tax rally, and right behind the Leader of the Opposition's head was a sign saying, 'Say no to carbon tax 4 UN/IMF global governance = agenda 21 genocide.' Those are the sorts of people who are supporting the opposition.

Poor Cate Blanchett. She must have thought that she was back in the Lord of the Rings, surrounded by hobgoblins, surrounded by orcs—these horrible denizens of the political world, horrible denizens of the conservative world, attacking her, having a go at her. The member for Warringah here, the Gollum of Australian politics, clutching his precious ring of negativity, his precious ring of opposition, desperately attempting to extract the last morsels of political gain out of his opposition to sensible Australians, verballing Dr Garnaut—this is the opposition's political strategy. It has nothing to do with good policy in this country. It is all about pandering to foreign extremists like Lord Monckton, meeting with him in private—'Solved! Lord Monckton, your views are so good!'—and then talking about unelected committees. Well, at least they are committees of Australians. At least they are not foreign lords. At least we are not appealing to this weird collection of international conspiracy theorists.

All I can say is: if that is really the opposition's strategy, it is not going to work. It is simply a strategy that is designed to cover up their massive divisions, and their divisions are big. On one hand there are the believers in climate change—there are many in the opposition, and they are horrified at the position the party is taking—and then there are those like the member for Riverina who are quite happy to deny climate change, who are quite happy to do anything, who are quite happy to quote environmentalists who put it all on black, who put it all on some technology turning up in the future. If we have a problem, well, we will just learn to adapt as the planet burns and the next generation of Australians and citizens around the world have to deal with an increasingly warmer planet and all the consequences that go with that. They have a strategy that is basically to get through the next election with this policy of direct subsidy, which will cost the nation $30 billion to top-end polluters. If there are no changes in that, by 2050 it might cost the future government $18 billion a year. That will be the 'small investment' the coalition makes—this weird sort of pork-barrelling exercise for the big end of town.

This is what the Liberal Party has now degenerated to. Fraser, Hewson and others are walking away from the Liberal Party because this once great bastion of moderation in Australian politics, has become a sort of home for foreign extremists, for bizarre ideologies of world government, and it rejects the influence of sensible, decent, hardworking Australians, like Cate Blanchett. We hear the abuse in the parliament of a great Australian actress and of a great Australian actor like Michael Caton—this abuse of good Australians.

Why do they have this political strategy? It is to deny the undeniable. We know that a little while ago the member for Flinders said in his honours thesis:

… the market system is a preferable regime, as it … ensures that the polluter bears full responsibility for the cost of his or her conduct …

We know that the shadow Treasurer, the member for North Sydney, said last year:

… inevitably we'll have a price on carbon … we'll have to.

So the member for North Sydney knows that one day we will price carbon and the member for Flinders knows that we will price carbon. The only people who will not admit it are people like the member for Riverina, and basically they want to engage in appealing to conspiracy theories, listening to foreign extremists, abusing good Australians, purging all reason and good policy from their party and, finally, ignoring the national interest and the moral obligation we have to future generations.

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