David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Indi as well as the member for Mayo for putting these amendments up. While it is well intended, unfortunately it doesn't go to the heart of the issue. In fact, as a coalition government, we put in place a structured process of review that had independence. It had an independent review by the Productivity Commission, who are better equipped to undertake these reviews than the Climate Change Authority are. This is like having the Climate Change Authority assess their own homework. Why wouldn't we have an independent authority come in and understand the economic impact on regional and rural Australia?

So to be constructive, as the National Party always are, which is at the heart of representing regional and rural Australia and understanding the impacts this will have on regional and rural Australia, we will be working through the Senate committee process to make sure that we can work constructively to get back to the core principle of independence and having transparency on what impact this will have on regional and rural Australia and those people we represent that have borne most of the bill in us meeting Kyoto and Paris, so that that burden is not unfairly put on regional and rural Australia. We will work constructively on that, but we feel that these amendments are ill equipped to ensure the security for regional and rural Australia to participate in any climate change debate.

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