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

I overheard a comment from my colleague Senator Milne that we might as well point out the obvious at the outset, which is that this committee is now dealing with a whole raft of amendments and changes to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation and the Minister for Climate Change and Water is tabling explanations as to what she is doing in the debate. The process is one of guided ignorance. The government and the opposition have been negotiating these amendments over the last couple of days. There is a rush to have the amendments come in to be debated. I am not going to prolong it except to say we are now dealing with billions of dollars of Australians’ money through a deal stitched up between the government and the Turnbull opposition without any airing of that deal with the public. There has been no committee to allow the public or business to feed in to this outcome which is going to divert billions of dollars of their money into the big polluting industries. There has been no committee because the Rudd Labor government and the Turnbull coalition voted that down today.

I have never known of a process in here where so much has depended upon the government and opposition getting together and treating the Australian public with utter contempt when it comes to the ability of the Senate to service their interests and take in information from the wider public, including the scientific community which is so important but which has effectively been shut out and had a deaf ear turned to it by this minister, this government and this opposition. There is no point in railing about that because the numbers are in here, and numbers rule in politics. It is the planet that is at stake, and the process here is one that is clearly going on the record but it is one that the government will live to regret and the coalition will live to regret. It is just a pity that the onrush of climate change—and the minister spoke about that in question time today—is only used as a veneer for the government’s failure to act in a proper fashion.

The amendments we are dealing with here will no doubt go through because the government and the opposition are providing the numbers for it. The debate becomes one in which the outcome is known regardless of the content and the submissions in the debate. The first thing the minister does is table her explanation for what is going on with the debate already underway. It is a signal of what a bereft process it is for anybody who thinks this is, as the opposition itself has described, perhaps the most important legislation to restructure Australia since Federation. The opposition, in league with the government, is treating the Senate and the people of Australia with contempt. At the outset that is a sign of where this committee is going to.

I predict there will be no changes here. There is going to be no listening ear from this minister. There will be no listening ear from the numbers that have it in here. There has been no committee. The Australian people, their businesses and the scientists who want to be heard on this issue, and should be, have been effectively locked out by the process. The government and this minister—is it for or failing climate change?—will live to rue the process that is unfolding here in the next couple of days. That is up to her; that is up to the government; that is up to the opposition.

My colleague Senator Milne, who has had a very large input into the debate on this issue and will continue to do so, has brought forward a series of amendments on behalf of the Greens. We will be speaking to those. We are not going to delay this debate. There is no point in that. But we will be heard; we will put on record the alternative; and we will test the government through the amendments because it is not just a matter of us voting for or against government amendments here. It is a matter for the government and the opposition to vote for or against the amendments that Senator Milne is bringing forward on behalf of the Greens. That is on the record, it will be on the record and it is something that we will be referring to in the future, as climate change continues to grow in the way in which it wreaks havoc on Australia’s environment, its lifestyle, its economy, its employment opportunities, its export income and the hopefulness and happiness which a community which respects future generations truly, through legislating in their interest, has a right to enjoy but which it is being deprived of in large measure by this legislation now before the committee.