Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to Senator Lundy for her question. Mr President, as you know, the Rudd government is delivering a comprehensive response to the challenge of climate change, a challenge that unfortunately was ignored for too many years by those opposite. We are doing this because we recognise the need to act now. It is the responsible thing to do—the responsible thing for our children and to protect the economy and the responsible thing for the nation’s future.

Since releasing the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme green paper in July of this year, over 900 submissions have been received as part of the public submission process. Those submissions came from a broad cross-section of the Australian community, from households to big business. We will continue as a government to work with the community on the design of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. I am very pleased to advise the Senate that there is very broad support through these submissions for taking action on climate change. The fact is Australian households and businesses want action on climate change.

Unfortunately, those opposite and their colleagues in the other place appear to remain out of step with the rest of the nation. I am sure that most Australians would have thought and would have hoped that the election of a new opposition leader would mean that the opposition would turn over a new leaf when it came to climate change and that this would be an opportunity to finally put their legacy of neglect and of scepticism to bed. But it appears that the more things change the more they stay the same. Instead of decreasing the influence of the climate change sceptics who infect those opposite, what we see is that the Leader of the Opposition has promoted them.