Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for North Sydney for introducing this motion. As my colleagues have expressed, I'm sorry that this is her last term as a consequence of the electoral boundary changes because she has brought a great deal to this House. This motion is a case in point. It is about sensible debate to set aside political differences to do more to protect Australia's nature and biodiversity, and I agree wholeheartedly with the need to do exactly that.

When Labor took office in 2007, we worked to create a carbon pollution reduction scheme. The scheme was due to start in July 2010. The Leader of the Opposition, the Liberals' Malcolm Turnbull, supported it. Our hopes were high. In December 2009, there was a leadership spill in the Liberal Party. The member for Wentworth was defeated by one vote by the member for Warringah, Tony Abbott. The member for Warringah opposed the carbon pollution reduction scheme. Did anyone else oppose it? As it turns out, it was the Greens. Two Liberal senators actually crossed the floor when it came to the vote. We could have had the carbon pollution reduction scheme. The Greens senators voted against it.

It's been estimated that if that bill had passed, Australia's carbon emissions could be more than 200 million tonnes lower. Electricity would be more affordable and the air we breathe healthier, for all. It didn't happen. But Labor didn't give up. In 2011, the Gillard Labor government managed to achieve the passage of a world-leading package of measures to reduce carbon pollution and shift the Australian economy to a clean energy future. The Abbott government repealed it. Now the coalition and the Greens have teamed up again to block Australia's first national environment protection agency and Environment Information Australia. Contrary to the suggestion from, sadly, the member for Warringah, this is not hubris and this is not rhetoric; this is the real reality of the numbers. We did not have the numbers in the Senate. The Greens had the opportunity in August to vote in support of it. They told us they had no issue with any of the content in that bill, but they chose to play politics and simply blocked it. You can say that was a consequence of anyone else, but it wasn't; the only people that mattered in that time and place were the people in that Senate. They did not pass the bill.

My community, like me, want to support better environmental laws, and they've seen how I voted on this matter; I voted in support of a federal EPA. But clearly it was not enough. For this upcoming election, to the voters in my community: you need to understand that if you want these reforms to get through you have to not only vote for me to be back in the House to vote as I did, as my record shows; you need to vote for Labor in the Senate. The Greens and the Liberals have shown their colours. They will not support the environmental change that you are asking us to deliver. We will deliver it but we need your support. We need you to vote for Labor in both the House and the Senate.

Unlike that record of the Liberals and the Greens—opposition and blockers—Labor has an extraordinary track record, as I've already articulated. But what about the present time? It's Labor that is saving the Great Barrier Reef and its abundant life forms from the 'endangered' list. It's Labor that's rescuing the Murray-Darling Basin, investing $2.8 billion in new dams; the Liberals promised 100 new dams and they delivered two! It's Labor that doubled the funding to national parks. It's Labor that stopped Jabiluka from being mined for uranium. It's Labor that's worked for heritage listings for places like Cape York and Murujuga. It's Labor that funds the science and teaches us to understand what we need to protect. It's the Liberals who defunded the CSIRO and closed down laboratories. We voted to invest $1½ billion in Antarctic science; the Liberals voted against it. It's completely unbelievable. It's Labor that invested $550 million and saved threatened species. The Liberals want to withdraw us from the United Nations nature treaty. I could go on.

Right now I've got Liberal candidates and Nationals candidates, unbelievably, trapsing around our territory in Western Australia, up in the Perth Hills. My community wants people who will vote in both the House and the Senate for environmental reform. It will only be Labor who does it.

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