Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I start my contribution with a quotation:

The Rudd Government does not appear to be serious about tackling global warming. Rudd’s claim that ‘climate change is the great moral challenge of our age’ has clearly been forgotten or blatantly disregarded.

That quote comes not from a Liberal Party fancier but from none other than Mr Dean Mighell, the State Secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, Southern States Branch, in his submission to the inquiry. This act by the Rudd Labor government at budget time, without any warning, without any mandate, without any consultation—simply introducing a means test for the subsidy—clearly shows how hypocritical the Rudd government is in relation to climate change and alternative energy.

Unfortunately, I was only able to attend one day of the hearings. Somewhere along the line it got difficult for the participating members to find out when the committee was sitting. The day of hearings that I sat through in Melbourne clearly showed that the industry, environment groups, community groups, councils and individuals from the general public were absolutely aghast at a government that many of them conceded they had voted for because, amongst other things, they liked Mr Rudd’s ideas about Kyoto and saving the planet’s environment. They went with him in the election in 2007, and they more than others felt absolutely betrayed by the action in relation to the means test on this rebate. We heard witness after witness in Melbourne and we read submission after submission of those that came in—small businesses, industry people and tradesmen whose lifelong ambition to have a successful small business was shattered by Mr Rudd overnight on budget night.

The submissions we got mirrored the response I got the day after the budget in Townsville in North Queensland, where I have my office—a city that boasts 300 days of sunshine every year and, because of that, a city that is very keen on the use of solar energy. Two small business men in Townsville came to me almost in tears. One of them admitted that for the first time ever he had voted Labor because he had liked Mr Rudd’s approach to the environment and to alternative energies in particular. They were almost in tears because the businesses they had been building up over the last two to three years were shattered overnight. They gave facts of people ringing up the day after the budget saying: ‘I’m sorry. I know I have a contract with you, but I simply cannot afford to go through with it.’ I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.