Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health Administration) Share this | Hansard source

I can understand why Senator O’Brien is embarrassed by the scheme that his government has put forward for consideration of the Senate. I can well understand why Senator O’Brien is embarrassed. But the reality is this: we have got before us a scheme that is flawed. We have got before us a scheme that will not make any difference to the global environment. It will not reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. It will cost jobs. It will put pressure on the economy. It will put pressure on regional Australia.

Has this government done its homework? Has this government properly assessed what the impact on the economy, on jobs and on regional areas is going to be? No, it has not. Do not take my word for it; do you know what Paul Howes from the AWU said about the Treasury modelling? They are very quiet over there because they know what the answer is. He said it was inadequate. The Treasurer needs to do some more modelling, in particular, given the current global economic downturn and conditions.

Do you know who else said this modelling was inadequate? ACOSS—hardly climate change sceptics or climate change deniers or conservative acolytes. They cannot be accused of doing the bidding of the Liberal Party, surely. ACOSS, AWU and the CFMEU; we had witness after witness that said the Treasury modelling was inadequate and that more modelling was required.

As a committee, we were actually trying to assess and go a bit deeper. We were trying to do the work of the government. As a committee, we wanted to know what the impact was going to be on jobs—not just a fake, flawed modelling assumption that there will be full employment. We wanted to know what the impact was going to be on jobs and we wanted to know what the impact was going to be on regional Australia. So we said to the government that we would like to get access to the underlying information—the model codes, databases and a series of other things.

The Senate Select Committee on Fuel and Energy first wrote to the Treasurer on 8 December 2008. It took the Treasurer nearly three months before he got back to us. Do you know why he got back to us? Because we had given notice of a motion in the Senate ordering him to provide that information. He ignored the first order and came into the chamber with the flimsy excuse that in his view it was not in the public interest for that information to be released and it was about the contractual obligations of the Commonwealth. We got back to him and said that parliamentary privilege overrides the contractual obligations of the Commonwealth—which the government well knows. We went backwards and forwards.

In the end, they claimed commercial harm would be caused to two external consultants they had contracted. We made another order. The committee and the Senate bent over backwards to accommodate the legitimate issues that were raised in relation to commercial harm, insofar as we considered that they were legitimate. We ensured that the information could have been provided in a very confidential way to the Senate committee. Any breach of that confidentiality as per the order would have been a breach of parliamentary privilege and a criminal offence.

Monash University was one of the two external consultants. The Treasurer tried to hide behind the excuse of Monash University to cover up the modelling information that we needed to assess the impact of the government’s flawed scheme on the economy and jobs. But Monash University said, ‘We’re quite happy for you to have it; we’re happy for you to waive confidentiality.’ They wrote to the Treasurer and said, ‘We’re happy to waive confidentiality based on the provisions in that Senate order.’ What would you expect me to do then? Of course I wrote to the Treasurer. We had a good position: an order which requires the government to produce a particular piece of information and the statement from the consultant, Monash University, who provided most of the information that the government was sensitive about. We wrote to the Treasurer on 17 March and said, ‘Please give us the information.’ It was another three months before I got a letter back. Do you know when I got that letter back? The day after I gave notice of another motion. It was hand delivered to my office.

As the chair of a committee of the Senate, I had to wait six months to get information that we legitimately requested from the government. What has the government got to hide when it comes to the impact of its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme on the economy, on jobs and on regional Australia? Why is the government not forthcoming in providing the information that it was properly requested to do by a committee of the Senate? Commercial harm was claimed in relation to one aspect of it. But there was a whole range of other information that we asked for—information critically important for us to make a proper judgment about the impact of this scheme on the economy and on jobs. The government was trying to bully us into dealing with it then and there.

The handling of this process by the government has been a farce. Remember the announcement by the Treasurer on 12 February of a new inquiry by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics into the choice of an ETS? That was obviously about the battle that was going on between Senator Wong and Minister Ferguson—between the believers and the realists in the cabinet. Those who heeded the comments in January-February, given the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, as the Prime Minister kept reminding us at that time, thought perhaps we should have another look at what is being proposed. So on 12 February there was the announcement of a new inquiry. But on 19 February the inquiry was canned. They were all over the place. Then there was the announcement a couple of weeks ago: ‘We are going to delay it by a year.’ Anybody who suggested a year ago that it should be delayed by a year was a heretic, a non-believer, a climate change sceptic. This is beyond a joke. What we have been asked to consider today is a bad scheme and a flawed scheme. It will not reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. It will cost jobs. It will put pressure on the economy. It will put pressure on regional Australia. We should not support it if the government forces it to a vote now. We should wait for Copenhagen and see what the rest of the world is doing.