Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Isn’t that right? Why didn’t they turn up? It was only after they were threatened with a summons from the Senate that they turned up. I do not blame the department; they received their instructions from the minister. But they eventually turned up and had these statistics. I cannot wait for estimates. Let me now put them on notice that I cannot wait for estimates just to see how these figures are running. That was a good program, and again the Labor Party has slashed it.

We hear all this talk about an emissions trading scheme—the one that Senator Wong is in charge of. She obviously has no idea how to manage it. She has let the genie out of the bottle on that. They have put out this green paper, and I have not heard a person yet—except some in these radical environment groups—who has any confidence in the green paper and any confidence that the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Wong, or the government can handle this. It is becoming increasingly obvious that this is a dog of a proposal.

I heard the other day about a zinc refinery up my way in Northern Australia. If this emissions trading comes through in the way that Senator Wong and Mr Rudd are proposing, they will become unprofitable. What will they do? They will move to China, where they will be able to employ people at a much cheaper rate. All of those people at the refinery in Townsville will be without a job. This is at the behest of a party that claims to be interested in working families. Not only will the jobs be exported offshore but, more importantly, they will go to a country that is about half as efficient as Australia, which means, in other words, that they will pump out twice the amount of greenhouse gas to get the same end product. I have not yet heard China indicating when it is going to bring in an ETS.

The whole stupidity about the Labor government’s approach is that they will tax Australia out of existence, tax workers’ jobs, for the thought that they—Mr Rudd and Senator Wong—can be world heroes by leading the world. Australia produces less than 1.4 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions; and it does not matter what we do in Australia, we will not make one iota of difference to the changing climate of the world. Yet the Labor government for political reasons are determined to carry on at full strength.

If they were really serious about greenhouse gas emissions, what about clean nuclear power? There are no greenhouse gas emissions at all there. That would mean of course that we could do something for the changing climate of the world. Let us ask the Labor Party what their view is on that sort of energy. I know that they think it is okay to have uranium from three mines being mined and exported but to have uranium from the fourth mine does not seem to be equally acceptable. The Labor Party are all over shop on this but, if they are serious about carbon emissions, there is an answer. Why won’t they even have a look at it? I am not advocating it particularly but I am advocating looking at it. It should be in the mix, but the Labor Party seem incapable of doing that.

I do not want to say too much more. I know that many other people want to have a say on this and I have spoken a couple of times on the report. It is a very good bill. I congratulate those in the coalition who have promoted this bill. It will bring some transparency, some parliamentary control, to the solar rebates. I think that it is a good way to deal with it. I think that it will address all of the problems that have been identified by Senator Birmingham and Senator Williams, who spoke before me, and it is a piece of legislation that I would urge support for.