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

I want to pick up Senator Colbeck’s claim that I am saying that business is bad. Of course, I did not say that at all. As you will have heard, Madam Temporary Chairman, what I did say—and Senator Colbeck smiles at his duplicitous delivery to the chamber—was that bad companies should not be rewarded when good companies are doing the right thing. The amendments of the Greens and the Democrats are saying: let’s make this a level playing field in the market so that where energy efficiency is identified it becomes a requirement to employ it, in the interests of reducing the impact of greenhouse gases on the climate. It is a very big component of getting things right.

Senator Colbeck might want to see Gunns in the same light as every other company. We don’t. Gunns, for example, through its destruction and burning of forests—that season is again upon us in Tasmania—puts enormous amounts of greenhouse gasses unnecessarily—there is no energy gain from this—into the atmosphere of Tasmania. We know that the Stern report said that stopping the burning of old-growth forests could make a bigger saving around the world than ending all the transport systems of the world, and it can be done now. It is the quickest way, beyond energy efficiency, to turn around the enormous threat of climate change. Gunns is a bad company. But for every bad company there are a stack of good companies who are doing the right thing.

Senator Colbeck’s party is advantaged by donations, and large ones at that, from Gunns Ltd. I think we are seeing a government that has been in too long, that is in thrall of and under gains from a corporate sector that is doing the wrong thing and that wants to stay the government’s hand from bringing in proper legislation to level the playing field so that those companies doing the right thing—and there are thousands of them—are rewarded, not penalised. That is what this debate is about.

Senator Colbeck has got it very wrong. He is new. He does not understand the complexities of the arguments here. But making simple political statements, as he has done, and misrepresenting what I have said is not going to shield him from that. He can go as red in the face as he likes sitting over there, but the fact is that we expect a more mature debate and an argument from Senator Colbeck as to why he is failing to endorse amendments like those from the Democrats and Greens. Those amendments simply say that, where savings can be found in this critical period of climate change—even the Prime Minister accepts the realities of it these days—we need to move from simply saying that people can do what they like to saying that the government will ensure that there is a level playing field, that energy audits are required and that when savings can be found in terms of not polluting the atmosphere they shall be implemented. That is what we are debating here. Let’s make it fair for all companies so that the good ones are not penalised and the bad ones are not allowed to continue their polluting trade at the expense of the atmosphere. That is what this debate is about and that is the level of argument that we challenge Senator Colbeck to take up.