Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

It is our very upfront position that the government should defer consideration of this bill on the triple grounds that it does not have a start date for two years, that for Australia to legislate in advance of Copenhagen is utterly irresponsible and reckless, and that to advance this legislation prior to the United States legislating, the world’s biggest emitter of anthropogenic CO2, is ridiculous and reckless. So we have very good grounds and very public grounds. There is nothing we are hiding at all about this. It has been a position that we have held several weeks that this bill should be deferred. There is nothing secret about that.

We are very happy to debate this bill at the appropriate time. It is our upfront position that this bill should not be debated this week and we have motions on the Notice Paper to that effect, so we reject outright the proposition from the Senate leader. I would urge the Senate to support the motion now before the chair that the Senate deal with those bills which are in fact urgent and which the Australian people expect us to deal with which are budget bills or have 1 July start dates. Those are the bills which the Senate should be dealing with. As soon as we deal with those, we can resume debate on the government’s CPRS albeit that we believe that it is a bill which should be deferred.