Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

I too thank the member for Indi for her amendments and hope she is feeling a little bit better. I also thank the member for Mayo for speaking on her behalf in the chamber. I appreciate the concern that the member for Indi has for regional communities. It's certainly a concern shared at least by everybody on this side of the chamber. I appreciate also the fact that she is seeking to protect regional communities from impacts of this bill because, rest assured, there will be impacts from this bill.

As I said in the second reading speech, it is an indictment on the government that it has utterly failed to include any safeguards in these bills and has, indeed, actively removed safeguards from the nationally determined contribution—the NDC. The coalition's 2021 NDC included a requirement for regular reviews of the impact of the government's climate change policies on regional communities, on jobs and investment, on energy prices and on agricultural land. The new Albanese Labor government have stripped all of these safeguards from the NDC. That is exactly the act that they have taken.

With respect to the amendments from the member for Indi, it is not good enough to have the Climate Change Authority do this work. The leader of the National Party is right; it is the equivalent of them marking their own homework. Worse still, it is like the minister himself marking his own homework. That's what these amendments would effectively enable. That's why we have decided, as an opposition, to also oppose this amendment. It's not good enough for a climate change policy body with a narrow field of expertise to be considering the very broad impacts that these bills would likely have on regional Australia. And so the coalition's approach in government was to have reviews conducted independently—reviews undertaken independent of government by the Productivity Commission. While I thank the member for Indi for her contribution today—I really do—the coalition will oppose these amendments. But we will explore further, through the committee process in the other place, how further safeguards can be placed around these bills.

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