Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

If the National Party has alternative figures, put them before the Senate. But on best estimates there is $9,500,000,000 in subsidies in this country, from state and federal governments—largely Labor governments, but it has been built up under coalition governments in the past as well. That is money being drained out of the economy to put into the pockets of those who are promoting not just the burning of fossil fuel, in this day and age—and I know our economy has been based on that—but the expansion of that. That is what the National Party, and indeed the Labor Party, are in favour of, with billions of dollars more set aside. This is in direct subsidies through infrastructure spending coming up in the future. What for? For coal-loading facilities to expand and accelerate the digging up and export of coal from Australia to be burnt elsewhere on the planet, not least Japan and China, and to put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. For what purpose? To line the pockets of these big multinational corporations that are largely owned outside this country.

If Senator Boswell or any of his National Party colleagues want a debate on this, they can name the time, the place and the adjudicator and I will be there to debate it. We have last century thinking getting in the way of this century innovation. Other countries are way ahead of us with their renewable energy targets. The Greens say 35 per cent. Austria—and there is a big hydro component to this—is up over 80 per cent. Denmark is aiming for much more than half of its energy economy to be based on renewable energy. The argument has come from the National Party and its Liberal Party colleagues—and a lot of Labor Party members as well—that we cannot progress to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in this country before the rest of the world does it. This is the China syndrome: ‘Until China does it, we won’t.’ But other countries around the world, including China, are way ahead of us in moving to renewable energy.

Then we hear from Senator Boswell that we should stay behind because we will get the advantage of cheap, subsidised—and taxpayers pay for those subsidies—coal-burning industries in Australia. We have just had the debate about burning forests, which is highly subsidised by the taxpayer under the Rudd government as well. It is time that they were taken on about this. And we will take them on about this, and we will do it around this country. What is happening here is that we are supporting the fossil-fuel-burning industries to expand and supporting the logging industry to start burning native forests at Eden, in the Tamar Valley and elsewhere in this country. This will rip away the high job-creating potential of the clean, green economy of the future.

It is very sad indeed that the best that the Labor government could do today was to cave into the coalition to give these big polluters another windfall. That is effectively what has happened with the agreement made today between the coalition and the opposition. They have lined up again. Who is the beneficiary? Is it the Australian public? Not on your life. Is it small business? No, it is not. This arrangement made today will line the pockets of the big polluters. That is what the outcome will be. And Senator Boswell comes in here—