Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

sensitive today. I do not know why; I cannot understand why. I was addressing my remarks to Senator Fielding, for the reason that he will get the vote on this. I have addressed my remarks to Senator Xenophon; he has made his position clear. I expect him to support the opposition on this resolution—as he indicated yesterday he would if the government did not agree to delay the bill till August. We are not agreeing to delay the bill till August. We made it clear that our position is that the bill ought to be debated this week. That has been known for months. We would ask him to consider that. But he has made his position clear. Senator Fielding did not make his position clear in the longer term. Yesterday he supported the resolution. His argument was that he did not want to be dealing with it late at night. Well, what I would say to him—if his position is that he is not going to support dealing with the bills this week—is: say so. Be honest, be upfront and say so. Then we would all know where we all stand.

The same argument goes for the opposition. If what they are saying, as we all know it is, is that they are too scared to deal with the CPRS this week, then they should have the honesty to say so. Do not push the bill back to be the last bill debated this week, knowing that it is your intention, as Senator Barnaby Joyce has made clear, to talk it out—to filibuster. Surely, now, after all the argy-bargy; surely, on the Tuesday of the last week, you could at least work up the courage to be honest, to speak to your bill and say, ‘We are doing this because we do not want to deal with the CPRS.’ That is why you are doing it. Be honest, say so, and we can all get on with it. But what we have now is this facade that if this passes then the implication is that we will deal with the CPRS later this week. If that is the case, that is great. I will move a motion on sitting hours that allows us to complete that bill this week, and we will sit any hours that the Senate requires to do that. We will sit Thursday night, Friday and Saturday. If you are honestly saying to us, ‘We are just moving it to the end because we think the other bills are more urgent,’ and if the sorts of statements made by Senator Parry yesterday are to be believed, then the opposition will support a motion on sitting hours that allows us to deal with it. But if, as we all know, this is merely a rather unsubtle tactic to ensure that we do not get to the bill, then let us be honest; let us not rely on fake emails or subterfuge; let us just say that the position of the Liberal Party is: ‘We are too scared to deal with the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme this week. We are too racked by division. We want to put it off until some time after the end of the year—next year sounds good—because it is all too hard.’

As I understand it, Senator Xenophon’s position is ‘August’, Senator Fielding’s position is unknown, and the opposition’s position is ‘on the never-never’. This government is ready to debate the legislation on its CPRS scheme. There has been extensive consultation. There has been a green paper. There has been a white paper. Everyone has known that the debate is coming on. So if people are not prepared to debate it now you have got to wonder why. And the only explanation for the opposition is that they cannot reach any consensus. The leader does not feel secure enough to take on people like Senator Cash whose views are from the flat-earth side of the opposition and who do not believe—as Senator Minchin does not—that there is any contribution to global warming from human activity. But because they cannot resolve those difficulties they come in here and hide behind a procedural resolution, which they did not even speak to. I have got to give it to Senator Parry—he gave it his best shot yesterday. It was not very convincing, but he moulded some sort of argument. I am not surprised, though, that he did not have the courage to run it twice, because it did not warrant a second airing. It was pretty thin. I have had to run some thin ones myself, Senator Parry, but running them twice is hard, I know.