John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 [No. 2] put forward by the Rudd government. I commence by looking at the term in it. My colleague Senator Parry has said he cannot see the word ‘tax’ anywhere, and perhaps ‘tax’ should be in it. It is called the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, but carbon is not a pollutant. In fact, 70 per cent of the food we eat is carbon. So, under the title of this legislation, when you have your evening meal tonight enjoy it, because it is 70 per cent pollution that you will be eating under what is proposed here. I have in front of me the original list of hazardous air pollutants—173 pollutants are listed. There is carbon disulphide and carbon tetrachloride. There is no ‘carbon’ or ‘carbon dioxide’ mentioned there. So I say the title of this scheme is a furphy in itself.

Carbon is essential to life: 18 per cent of our bodyweight is carbon; carbon dioxide is food for our plants. Without carbon dioxide in the atmosphere we do not have anything green. Crops, trees, plants and grasses are destroyed without carbon dioxide. Everything around us contains carbon, yet the title of this legislation is about carbon pollution. That is wrong, and the word ‘pollution’ should be removed from it. If the government want to call it the carbon dioxide reduction scheme, so be it, but it is not a carbon pollution reduction scheme because carbon is not a pollutant.

We can see how the climate has changed. The climate has been changing for millions of years. The climate has been changing over time since day 1. We have been in and out of many ice ages. All of a sudden we now have some people pushing an agenda and saying that they are going to control the climate. I find that simply amazing. People say: ‘It’s climate change that caused the droughts in many parts of New South Wales since early 2002. They were caused by the coal fired generators producing electricity and by the exhaust fumes from motor vehicles and other transport, trucks, tractors et cetera.’ Well, I question what caused the 12-year drought in western New South Wales from 1895 to 1907. There were not coal fired power generators in those days and there were very few motor vehicles, yet the droughts ran on. As Dorothea Mackellar said, in Australia we are in a land ‘Of droughts and flooding rains’. Just last week we heard the Prime Minister talking about climate change, global warming and how hot it has been in Adelaide, making records, but he did not mention that at the same time in Perth it was 19 degrees and raining. Yesterday I was interested to hear, when listening to Macca on Australia All Over, that they were talking about how 12 months ago yesterday it was snowing in Gundagai. But that does not get a mention. They only talk about the hot days; they do not talk about the cold days.

I intend to bring some common sense into this debate. I refer to the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Penny Wong, when she said, ‘We must act now. It is vital to save the earth, to save the planet.’ On 27 March 2009 in an address to the International Peace Institute in New York, Minister Wong said:

And we have reached a point where action is needed, and needed now, while we still have an opportunity to act.

So what have the government done? They have delayed it for 12 months. What irony! What hypocrisy! Minister Wong said in March in New York that we must act now, but then she said: ‘Oh no, we are going to put it off for 12 months. We will put it off and introduce it on 1 July 2011.’ Why is that?