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

We get laughter from Senator Macdonald who, a moment ago in his delivery said, ‘the Great Barrier Reef will adapt’, so we have a presentation of nonsense non-science in a debate where we are expected to confront reality—not duck from it—and to act in the widest interests of this nation, not the sectional interests of those who already have the money and the power.

Instead of that, under the prime ministership of Kevin Rudd we have a prescription for polluters. We have through this legislation a $16.5 billion handout to those people who are causing the problem above and beyond other citizens—$16.5 billion over four years going to polluters on the basis that the more that you pollute, the more you get. It is an extraordinary failure in the responsibility of the Rudd government to this nation and its 20-plus million people—going on 35 million people by mid-century, we are told—its environment, its amenity, its economy and its employment prospects. We know from wiser counsel like Sir Nicholas Stern, ex-World Bank, adviser to the British government and eloquent speaker to both the big parties here in Canberra. They have ignored him and turned their backs on the issue.

Those economies which become environmental trailblazers will be the strongest economies in the years ahead. Instead we are held back by the powerhouses across the road from this parliament: the Minerals Council of Australia, the coal miners and the National Association of Forest Industries—lobbyists who corrupt the process of decision making in this parliament; who have an open door to prime ministerial and opposition leaders’ offices, that of the Minister for Climate Change and Water and those of the ministers several; and who make this parliament now move towards a prescription for failure in this legislation to tackle arguably the greatest challenge the nation faces in the 21st century. People in the future will look back at this failure as a studied failure, because we know the consequences and we know the responsibilities we have on our shoulders. And we know the avenue to fixing it and gaining from it is being ducked studiously by the Prime Minister, by the cabinet and by the opposition, all under pressure from vested interests who want more money to pollute, as they have done in the past, under a prescription which says, ‘The difference you will have to make will be marginal.’

It will not be commensurate with what the scientists tell us we have to do if we are going to be save the Great Barrier Reef. I remind members of their failure to come and listen to leading scientists yesterday—there were eight people from this parliament of more than 200—who told us the Great Barrier Reef is already worth $5.6 billion to the economy each year and 66,000 jobs depend upon it.