Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I move an amendment to the amendment which has been moved by the Manager of Opposition Business:

That paragraph (2) be amended as follows:

That the committee consist of 14 members, four members of the House of Representatives to be nominated by the Government Whip or Whips, three members of the House of Representatives to be nominated by the Opposition Whip or Whips, one Greens member, one non-aligned member, two senators to be nominated by the Leader of the Government in the Senate, two senators to be nominated by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, and one Greens senator.

I will speak briefly to my amendment to the amendment. The amendment moved by the Manager of Opposition Business would seek to appoint an additional Liberal member from the House of Representatives to the committee but de-elect the Greens party member from that committee. The government are prepared to show how flexible and reasonable we are prepared to be by allowing an extra Liberal member to be elected to this committee. However, there are things we are not prepared to do, given that the member for Melbourne was an active participant in the MPCCC, something that the opposition declined to participate in. They declined to participate in the process. Now they come along here and, with the comments of the Manager of Opposition Business, have made it very clear that what they are about is just delay, delay and delay, and at the end of it all they will say no. That is their process. They sat on their hands for 12 years in government. They were frozen in time while the world warmed around them. They refused to participate in the processes. They did not just refuse to participate in taking action here in Australia, they refused—after signing the Kyoto protocol—to ratify the Kyoto protocol. This is in spite of the fact that Australia, under Minister Hill, got a very good deal out of the Kyoto protocol at the conference, whereby Australia's target under the Kyoto protocol was 108 per cent. That is because Australia is a high carbon economy.

That situation was acknowledged by the international community and Australia would have been permitted to increase its emissions based upon 1990 levels. But those opposite walked away from it. They said it would destroy the economy if we ratified the Kyoto protocol—and yet they say they met the target. They said it would destroy the economy if we tried to meet the targets—but we met them anyway. That is the illogicality of the position that they have held with regard to taking action on climate change.

Australia is prepared to take action now under this government. This amendment I am moving today will allow the additional member from the opposition to participate in the committee. We are pleased that the opposition has decided to get on board, get with the program, and participate in this joint committee but we will keep an appropriate balance. There will be a member of the opposition appointed and an additional member of the government in order to facilitate that process.

I noticed when the Manager of Opposition Business spoke about committees' composition that the ones he referred to were ones of the Labor government. That is because there is no committee they can point to in the entire time in which they were in office in which the government did not have an absolute majority on that committee. Not one. Not one in 12 years—regardless of the composition in the Senate, regardless of the composition in the House of Representatives and regardless of the composition of the overall parliament. Not one. And we had to indeed take action with the crossbenchers to make sure that the crossbenchers got their share of questions during the parliament, because of the way that they responded.

We have not done that. The amendment to this amendment will ensure that there is proper participation from both houses. It will ensure that the government does not have an absolute majority, so we do not seek to have that imposed on the parliament, but this is a fair amendment to the amendment moved by the member for Sturt. I support the amendment. I will then support the amendment as amended by my motion and then will support the motion before the House.

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