Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I very strongly support Senator Milne’s motion that the Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts References Committee inquires into Australia’s future sustainable and secure energy supply. I am at a loss to understand Labor’s position on this. Senator O’Brien has pointed out that Australia is arguably the biggest polluter of the developed countries in terms of global heating gases, that in our region the amount of gases being put out is increasing enormously, that the Australian coal industry is the biggest supplier of coal burning in the region as well as domestically and that the post-Kyoto program is nowhere on the horizon. But the Labor Party is going to vote against an inquiry to try to move the decision makers of this country to an informed earlier decision about where we should be going, which is what Senator Milne’s motion proposes that we in the Senate do. I think that for the Labor Party, on the day it voted for uranium enrichment, to vote against an inquiry—