Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I begin my remarks this evening on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 and related bills with what is agreed by almost everyone in this chamber and that is to quote the majority report of the Senate Select Committee on Climate Policy:

The balance of the evidence ... suggests that climate change is occurring, is driven by anthropogenic factors and is a grave threat to accustomed ways of life and natural systems.

Those are Senator Colbeck’s words, not mine. I say almost everyone agrees with this statement because clearly there are some exceptions. One of those exceptions is a fellow senator from my own home state, Senator Cash, and indeed probably Senator Boswell as well. Senator Cash, in her own separate qualifications to her coalition colleagues’ majority report, said that she rejected that conclusion. Senator Cash also said that despite this rejection of the science she still believes the planet deserves the benefit of the doubt. But, although she believes the planet deserves the benefit of the doubt, she does not believe that we have a responsibility to act—or at least not before Copenhagen and not before the Obama administration does. So climate change becomes not our problem, it seems, but someone else’s responsibility. Senator Cash argues that to act prematurely would be to the detriment of Australians. She says it would cost jobs, especially in Western Australia.