Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Saturday marks the eighth anniversary of the Greens political party voting down the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in the Senate, a criminal act against this planet. I don't exaggerate. That was a crime committed against the planet that demonstrated the hypocrisy of that political party, because they put their sordid political interests ahead of the needs of the environment. I might say they are opportunists of the highest order. They put their political interests ahead of the needs of the environment, a cause that they were supposedly founded to protect.

Let me go through it. They opposed the CPRS because, supposedly, it wasn't environmentally strong enough. They decided they needed to hold out for something more pure that somehow would protect the environment more.

What rubbish! How can I say that with such certainty? Because within two years they supported an emissions trading scheme, through the Clean Energy Future package, that was much browner, had greater protections for industry, provided twice the amount of money for legacy coal-fired generation—$7 billion versus $3 billion—provided an additional $300 million for the steel industry, granted 94½ per cent free permits to emissions-intensive trade exposed industries, locked in a default emissions reduction target of minus five per cent and was nowhere near as broad in its application of a carbon price to the transport sector. If this was about policy purity, why could they support, two years later, a scheme much browner than the scheme they voted down? It was because they wanted the 2010 election to be fought on climate change. They knew that, if they kept the issue in the headlines, it would maximise their vote. It was an act of pure political cynicism by Bob Brown and Christine Milne, and they should be condemned by history for putting their political interests ahead of the needs of the environment.

We've seen lots of rubbish in rebuttal to my media release outlining this issue. The worst example, the most ahistorical one, was that it didn't matter if they voted no, because it wouldn't have passed the Senate anyway. What rubbish! They can't even read Hansard. If they'd revisited the Hansard from that vote, they would've realised that two Liberal senators, Senator Judith Troeth from Victoria—a much respected departed colleague—and Senator Boyce from Queensland, voted yes for the CPRS. The five Greens Senate votes were the swing votes. If they'd voted yes, it would've passed 38 to 36, and we would've had a soft introduction of a $10 carbon price. After a year it would've moved to the international carbon price, which would've been globally competitive. The world wouldn't have ended. Whyalla would still have existed. The sun would still have shone. People would've realised that they could live with a carbon price. We would've made the necessary transition and taken advantage of the opportunities for a low-carbon future.

Instead, the Greens set in train a series of events that directly led to the hung parliament, then to the ridiculous and disgraceful scare campaign by Tony Abbott that led to the election of Tony Abbott, the member for Warringah, in 2013, which led to the current four years of dysfunction and chaos that we've seen with this government. That all came from that single cynical action of voting down the CPRS. The Greens committed a crime against the planet. They have on their hands the blood of the planet, something they were founded to protect. It shows yet again that they are as cynical, desperate and opportunistic as any other political party in this country, and what makes it worse is that they're hypocrites. They claim to be above the hurly-burly, the knife fight that is politics. They claim to be pure, holier than thou, but they are just as cynical as the worst Sussex Street operator, just as bad as the spivs in the WA Liberal Party, just as cynical as Graham Richardson, and they will be condemned in history because they've put back the cause of climate change in this country by at least 10 years and opened up the door to Tony Abbott. I stand to condemn them. I stand to say: as long as I'm in this place I will never let them live down the fact that they put their political interests ahead of the planet. Shame, Greens, shame!

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 12:08 to 12 : 26