Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity to speak again on the Clean Energy Legislation (Carbon Tax Repeal) Bill 2014 and related bills, the third time that these bills have been presented by the government to this House. We got an opportunity during the suspension of sittings to talk about why we are debating this package of bills yet again. The chaos, the dysfunction and the shambles that was the Senate process last week was a window into the dysfunction of this government, into the complete inability and incapacity this Prime Minister has to conduct his government in a calm, methodical way, undertaking serious negotiations with crossbenchers, whether in this place or in the other place.

Leaving that aside, what these bills will do yet again by the end of the week, if the government has its way, is present Australia with the position of having no meaningful policy on climate change whatsoever. The Prime Minister, the minister and backbenchers talk about these bills terminating the carbon tax, and they do that. The Labor Party went to the election in September last year saying that it also supported the termination of the carbon tax. That is not the issue between both sides of this chamber. The issue is what replaces it, if anything.

Our objection to these bills rests on the fact that this government intends to replace it with nothing. Not only is the carbon tax to be terminated; if these bills pass both houses, we will see no cap on carbon pollution—no discipline, no rigour whatsoever on the amount of carbon pollution produced in Australia. We will see no market mechanism whatsoever to deal with climate change. As the Leader of the Opposition said, those opposite argue that a market mechanism is the right way to stop people who are sick from going to the doctor, bringing down Medicare costs; but they will not introduce a market mechanism on climate change. We will see no legislated short-term target for carbon pollution reduction. The five per cent reduction target for 2020 will go. It will presumably, maybe, remain a slip of paper in the desk drawer of the Minister for the Environment or the Prime Minister, but there will be no legal mechanism to implement Australia's international obligations. There will certainly be no longer term target, as in the current legislation—the 2050 target that Australia signed on to, apparently with the support of the then opposition, the now government, to reduce carbon pollution by 2050. Again, there will be no such commitment by Australia anymore.

As has been said on many, many occasions, the government seem hell-bent on destroying every single independent strong voice, whether it is on climate change or any other area of policy. They will abolish the Climate Change Authority, following the abolition of the Climate Commission. The government cannot stand the idea that there would be strong independent voices advising the parliament and, much more importantly, advising the Australian community on difficult, complex, highly contested areas of public policy—in this case, climate change.

In the very short time that remains before we move to 90-second statements, I want to talk about the Labor Party's amendments. The amendments that I intend to move during consideration in detail have been circulated. I cannot say the same thing about the government's amendments, which it has cooked up in a deal with the Palmer United Party, to indicate to business quite which sectors will be covered by the price pass-through arrangements that will be put in place for the ACCC to police. We do not know what the form of the amendments is that will enable Australian households to know which price reductions the Prime Minister talked about up hill and down dale across the country for the last three years he is willing to stand by in this parliament. The member for Sturt has come in and curtailed debate. He has curtailed and guillotined the debate that this House can have on a critically important amendment we have not even seen yet. We do not know which businesses will be covered. We do not know what price reductions the Prime Minister is willing to stand by.

In contrast with that, the Labor Party has been steadfast in this area since before the election campaign. The amendments that I will move today, which have been circulated, are exactly the same amendments that we circulated as an exposure draft while we were still in government. They are exactly the same amendments that I moved in December, that I moved only a few weeks ago when the government was trying on a second occasion to get these bills through the parliament. They are amendments that would move to put in place, as quickly as possible, an emissions trading scheme—the type of scheme, as the Leader of the Opposition only a short time ago said, we see in our oldest trading partners: France, the United Kingdom, Germany, many parts of North America including California and a number of the north-eastern states, and also provinces of Canada

But perhaps more importantly, increasingly we see it in our own region. In China, the seventh emissions trading scheme started only a couple of weeks ago. In a few months time South Korea, our third-largest export partner, will start an emissions trading scheme, on 1 January 2015.

Our amendments are clear. Our position has been constant. Our position has been transparent. This government's position in this area remains utterly chaotic.

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