Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The government has been caught out on global warming and so is seeking to gag debate. Since this issue was last debated in this parliament, the world has moved and the Australian population has moved. People understand that there is now an urgent need to tackle global warming. Because this government has been caught out without any effective policy that will work at all and because members of this government have been exposed as the science-denying shills for the fossil fuel sector that they are, they are now seeking to gag debate.

Since this set of bills was last brought before the parliament, we know that the world is moving towards exactly the kinds of trading schemes that are about to be repealed. Our Prime Minister came out and said, 'No, the world's moving the other way and no-one is taking them up,' but could not point to one country for which that is the case. In fact, within a matter of months we are going to be trading with Korea, which will have an emissions trading scheme. Provinces in China will have an emissions trading scheme. The President of the United States has urged action, including amongst his own states, to move towards putting a price on pollution. But this government has been caught out, so it is now in a rush to remove the only effective action, which in the last year drove down pollution in our energy sector by five per cent.

The government have also been caught out because now, for the first time, after people have had the opportunity to witness the government in action and test the veracity of their claims, the Australian public realises that, just as the government said one thing and did another on education, just as they said one thing and did another on health, and just as they said one thing and did another on pensions, they are saying one thing and doing another on climate. What they intend to do will not make electricity cheap again in this country. People know the reasons that power bills have gone up. This will not make electricity cheap again. What it will do is say to polluters, who at the moment are finally paying for some of the cost of their pollution, 'We don't mind; you can now go back to polluting for free.' That is the fundamental difference between the measures being repealed here and the government's sham of a policy. Under the arrangement that we have at the moment, polluters pay and we use some of that money to give compensation to households. Under the government's proposal it is the other way around: polluters get money and the households pay—the households of Australia will pay to give money to big polluters to keep on polluting. People are realising this. It is slowly dawning on the population that they were misled at the election, so the government are trying to ram through these bills and gag debate on the issue of our time.

People have also been realising, since this matter was last before this parliament, that the extreme weather events that we are witnessing in this country are influenced by global warming. People do not want the angry summers that we have seen. Australia has experienced the hottest day, the hottest month and the hottest year on record—we do not want that to become the new normal. We do not want to go into every summer wondering where the next bushfire will be and where the heatwave will strike and wondering if it will affect us or those close to us. People realise something is going on and they want action. That is why, this week—no coincidence that it is coming at the same time as the gag—polls have been published that show that, for the first time, more people want to keep the price on pollution than support the government's attitude. So the government, in the face of public opinion, is now rushing to repeal an infrastructure that is working.

Not only that—we heard a bit about the price on pollution—but the government is bundling up other bills in this motion. It is bundling up the repeal of the Climate Change Authority, which advises Australia on the state of the science and what action we should take. The government intends to repeal the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which is actually working, returning money back to the government and driving down pollution. It is building wind farms and solar farms. The government did not say anything about that in this motion to suspend standing orders, but, of course, it just wants everything off the table so that it can deliver for big mining and the fossil fuel sector that put it in office. We should not support this gag.

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