Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I stand here today with a great sense of weight and gravity because I think the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 [No. 2] is probably the most important piece of legislation that this country is going to see for quite some time. It is certainly the most important piece of legislation that I have had to deal with in my very brief four years in this parliament. I stand here as a representative of all of the people across New South Wales, but I unashamedly say that my primary focus is on those who live outside the capital city, those who live across regional Australia. I am far more comfortable in a pair of jeans and boots in a paddock than I am in a suit in this chamber, but I am here so that those people who are out there right at this minute in paddocks across this state harvesting in their jeans and boots have someone to be their voice here in this chamber, and it is my absolute privilege to do that for them. It is not just those farmers across regional Australia but all those people in the small businesses, all those people in those regional communities, who work so hard to be the backbone of this country, all those mums and dads and children right across this state, all those teenagers and all those single people right across this state, particularly in those regional areas, that I am here to represent. This is such a serious moment for them. We have seen all the hype and debate and spin around the ETS. What is missing is the awareness that this is so important. The decision that this parliament makes about these bills, if we do not get it right, will change their lives for ever.

How did we get to the point of having these bills here in the chamber before us? We got to this point because of the debate, so-called, around global warming and around climate change. We have heard a lot over recent times from the scientists about the warming of the globe and the contribution that, in their view, man is making to that change in the climate. I put it to you, Mr Acting Deputy President, that we have not had a balanced debate. There is a significant cohort of scientists who have an alternative view. We have not had a balanced debate. There is a significant cohort of individuals who have a differing view, but we have never had the debate.

We keep being told that the science is in and the science is settled, but by whom? By that particular cohort of scientists who believe that they are correct and that no amount of dissent should be entertained, that no amount of dissent should ever be appreciated or accepted because if you do—oh my goodness!—you are a sceptic. How dare you question the beliefs of this particular bunch of scientists! How dare you question that! I was brought up to believe that questioning was a good thing, that to question those things put before you, whether you were two, 15, 40, or 90 years old, was a good and a healthy thing because it meant that you were using your mind to make your own decision, that you were balancing up the debate before you, that you were looking at all the options and that you were coming to your own determination of what you thought was right. But that is not being allowed in this debate for one moment because, if you do not agree that man is causing global warming, you are a sceptic. That is wrong. Regardless of what your view is on whether or not man is causing that change, to pillory those people who ask the question is simply wrong.

But that is not what we are discussing today. Today we are discussing the CPRS bills that are before us. I commend the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Nick Minchin for pointing out earlier what a misnomer ‘CPRS legislation’ is. I also commend him on his speech to the chamber. The interesting thing is that when we go out there into the community around 90 per cent of people say that they have no idea how this ETS and this CPRS will work. They have no idea. I put it to you that the other 10 per cent are lying, because to understand how this is going to work is impossible. It is absolutely impossible, and anybody who says they know how it will work is probably stretching the truth a bit. As my good colleague Senator Mason said, ‘We haven’t even seen the regulations yet.’ We have not got a clue. We are working on what we assume are the principles on which this will work. Those principles are so incredibly indeterminate at this point that it is very difficult. But what we do know about are the basic premises—and that is why I, for one, am so against these bills and this ETS.

I want to make one thing very clear. We in the Nationals have always said that we want a healthier, cleaner future for the environment. There is no doubt about that. I think all Australians—every single Australian across the country—would want a cleaner, healthier, more sustainable future for the environment. That goes without saying. But this ETS is not the way to do it. I say to those people out there who are listening and those who perhaps one day might read my speech that just because you believe in an ETS does not mean you support a better environment. They are completely separate. Do not for one moment think, ‘I’m saving the environment because I support the ETS.’ That is a completely wrong premise; it is a furphy because it is simply not gong to do it. The ETS does not stand for a cleaner, healthier environment for the future.

What we need to look at here is a very simple set of circumstances. The government has a goal. Let us bring this right back to the simplicities: what is their goal? They want to reduce man’s effect on what is causing the globe to warm. I do not think there is any argument about that. This government wants to change man’s contribution to the warming of the globe. But the action that they are taking is completely incongruous with the goal that they are trying to achieve. It is completely incongruous: it is like apples and oranges. They are trying to introduce a set of legislation that will not achieve the goal that they are trying to achieve. It simply will not achieve it. The rest of the world is not on board. Until the rest of the world is doing this it is not going to make one tiny bit of difference to the climate.

So it fails sense and reason. It is beyond the realms of commonsense that the government should say, ‘Okay, we want to fix the warming globe. We don’t want it to warm up anymore so we’ll have a really good look at man’s contribution to that and we’ll fix it,’ when the mechanism that they have given us to fix it is not going to work. How stupid is that? If ever there was a stupid decision taken by a government this is it, because no matter how many hundreds of pages of legislation they introduce and no matter how many vain speeches get put forward by the Prime Minister and those opposite on how incredibly good this legislation is, it is not going to fix it. You cannot get away from that fact, and no amount of argument from the other side will lead you to the view that this is going to fix it. It simply is not.

But, of course, the other side have a Prime Minister who has to show leadership! There was a beautiful cartoon the other day of the Prime Minister underneath a big planet, with all the other world leaders saying, ‘Didn’t he get the memo?’ He is the only one that does not realise that he is the only one who is doing this at the moment—on some vain sort of avenue towards being leader of the world. I think that is where he is trying to head. Along the way he is forgetting the people of Australia. He is so concerned with what he is doing that he is forgetting the people of Australia.